At a TEDx event in Ulaanbaatar, CISAC affiliate Undraa Agvaanluvsan discusses nuclear power in Mongolia after Fukushima.
Ten years into the war in Afghanistan, Payne Distinguished Lecturer Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and the former Commander of the American-led Coalition Forces there, set out to examine the transition to Afghan sovereignty. Eikenberry laid out three broad sets of questions: How well are we doing in the campaign in Afghanistan, what are the significant challenges we’ll face in achieving our goals and objectives, and what are the implications for American power and influence in the 21st century.
Watch the video below.
Bechtel Conference Center
Karl Eikenberry is the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University (FSI). Within FSI he is an affiliated faculty member with the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and an affiliated researcher with the Europe Center.
Prior to his arrival at Stanford, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 until July 2011, where he led the civilian surge directed by President Obama to reverse insurgent momentum and set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty.
Before appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring in April 2009 with the rank of Lieutenant General. His military operational posts included commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces from 2005-2007.
He has served in various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. Security Coordinator and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Deputy Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Army Staff.
He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, has master’s degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Ambassador Eikenberry earned an Interpreter’s Certificate in Mandarin Chinese from the British Foreign Commonwealth Office while studying at the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense Chinese Language School in Hong Kong and has an Advanced Degree in Chinese History from Nanjing University in the People’s Republic of China.
His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman badges, and master parachutist wings. He has received the Department of State Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards, Director of Central Intelligence Award, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Distinguished Civilian Service and Department of the Army Meritorious Civilian Service Awards. His foreign and international decorations include the Canadian Meritorious Service Cross, French Legion of Honor, Czech Republic Meritorious Cross, Hungarian Alliance Medal, Afghanistan’s Ghazi Amir Amanullah Khan and Akbar Khan Medals, and NATO Meritorious Service Medal.
Ambassador Eikenberry serves as a Trustee for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relation, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Council of American Ambassadors, and was previously the President of the Foreign Area Officers Association. He has published numerous articles on U.S. military training, tactics, and strategy, and on Chinese ancient military history and Asia-Pacific security issues. He has a commercial pilot’s license and instrument rating, and also enjoys sailing and scuba diving. He is married to Ching Eikenberry.
CISAC Conference Room
Launched in 2005, the Draper Hills Summer Fellowship on Democracy and Development Program is a three-week executive education program that is hosted annually at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The program brings together a diverse group of 25-30 mid-career practitioners in law, politics, government, private enterprise, civil society, and international development from transitioning countries. This training program provides a unique forum for emerging leaders to connect, exchange experiences, and receive academic training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work.
For three weeks during the summer, fellows participate in academic seminars that expose them to the theory and practice of democracy, development, and the rule of law. Delivered by leading Stanford faculty from the Stanford Law School, the Graduate School of Business, and the Departments of Economics and Political Science, these seminars allow emerging leaders to explore new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote democratic change in their home countries.
Guest speakers from private foundations, think tanks, government, and the justice system, provide a practitioners viewpoint on such pressing issues in the field. Past program speakers have included; Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy; Kavita Ramdas, former president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women; Stacy Donohue, director of investments at the Omidyar Network; Maria Rendon Labadan, Deputy Director of USAID; and Judge Pamela Rymer, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Fellows also visit Silicon Valley technology firms to explore how technology tools and social media platforms are being used to catalyze democratic practices on a global scale.
The program is funded by generous support from Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills.
The program's all-volunteer interdisciplinary faculty includes leading political scientists, lawyers, and economists, pioneering innovative research and analysis in the fields of democracy, development, and the rule of law. Faculty engage the fellows to test their theories, exchange ideas and learn first-hand about the challenges activists face in places where democracy is at threat. CDDRL Draper Hills Summer Fellows faculty includes; Larry Diamond, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper, Erik Jensen, Francis Fukuyama, Steve Krasner, Avner Greif, Helen Stacy, and Nicholas Hope.
Our network of 186 alumni who graduated from the Draper Hills Summer Fellows program hail from 57 developing democracies worldwide. Their professional backgrounds are as diverse as the problems they confront in their home countries, but the one common feature is their commitment to building sound structures of democracy and development. The regions of Eurasia, which includes the former Soviet Union and Central Asia, along with Africa constitute over half of our alumni network. Women represent 40% of the network and the program is always looking to identify strong female leaders working to advance change in their local communities.
Previous Draper Hills Summer Fellows have served as presidential advisors, senators, attorneys general, lawyers, journalists, civic activists, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, think-tank managers, and members of the international development community. The program is highly selective, receiving several hundred applications each year.
Please see the alumni section of the website for a complete listing of our program alumni.
Our Summer Fellows include:
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Stanford will pay travel, accommodation, living expenses, and visa costs for the duration of the three-week program for a certain portion of applicants. Participants will be housed on the Stanford campus in residential housing during the program. Where possible, applicants are encouraged to supply some or all of their own funding from their current employers or international nongovernmental organizations.
Kris Cheng is not your average senior at Stanford University, studying Energy Resources Engineering and traveling to places as diverse as rural Mongolia to research solar technology uses for nomadic communities. He is a self-taught photographer with an eye for the dramatic, capturing subjects in their natural environment but posed to enhance the style, expression, and intensity of the human condition. Kris's portraits explore the intimacy of his subjects, while also depicting the harsh realities of poverty and underdevelopment. This budding photographer captured the attention of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, when he submitted the winning photograph in a competition sponsored by the Center.
The CDDRL photo competition was intended to encourage students, faculty, and staff, to submit their original photos, which illustrate themes central to CDDRL's research mission. The selection committee was impressed by the diversity and professionalism of the entries received depicting scenes of democratic expression, abject poverty, and new technology use, among others. From over 60 entries, Kris Cheng's image of a small boy gazing into a trash-clogged river in an unincorporated slum outside of Manila in the Philippines was selected. His imagery captured both the challenges and opportunities of the work we are engaged in and his technical style left the selection committee wanting to know more about this young photographer.
I sat down with this incredibly humble engineer who is an avid outdoorsman with a penchant for adventure sports and extreme environments, to discuss his winning photograph, the journey that brought him to where he is today, and his plans for photography going forward.
Q: Kris, tell me a little bit about yourself and when you first embraced photography.
A: I started becoming interested in photography as a hobby at the end of high school when I was a senior. I went all over taking photos, traveling, and kept taking more photos and was continuously improving. Overtime, it became a passion and something that I am intimately attached with - second nature, in a sense.
Q: Did you ever have any formal training in photography or is it all the learn as you go method?
A: I adopted the learn as you go approach to photography, taking a lot of photographs, searching the Internet to find images I like and exploring why I liked those certain images. Being self-taught, I found the Internet to be an amazing resource to learn from other photographs, replicate others, imitate other styles, and gain new techniques and insights to apply to my own work. Photography is a creative process that doesn't lend well to a rigid school environment, so for me it's been learning by doing. See what you like and don't like, and always keep maximizing or minimizing those characteristics. It's an iterative approach.
All of my favorite photographers were more or less untrained - Joey Lawrence and Chase Jarvis are among the photographers I follow the most.
Q: Stylistically, how would you describe your genre of photography? Your photographs are remarkable in the way you incorporate light and reflections, please tell me more about how you achieve this effect.
A: I do a more stylized and dramatic form of photography that I guess you could call elaborate portraiture. Everything I do is more or less planned. I get an idea in my mind for how I want them (the subjects) to look and pose based on what they have been doing. In this sense, it is not artificial, but rather trying to bring out certain qualities I see in the subject. I use a wide range of lighting equipment, such as remotely triggered external flashes to achieve the effects in my pictures depending on the location. My travel-sized lights are not nearly as powerful as the sun, so I had to wait until a golden period around sunset each day when I could achieve the desired lighting effects.
Q: Do you have a particular niche?
A: I do a wide range of photography, including fashion, nature, and commercial work. I don't have a particular niche per se, but I do have a very distinct style evident in all of my photos.
Q: How do you gain the trust of subjects in your photographs to capture them in such intimate and realistic ways? What is the process you go through to gain their confidence?
A: I understand the importance of the human connection and photography is secondary to this, a way of documenting interaction. I went to Mongolia last year to research solar technologies and their applications for nomadic households, namely cooking. I was working with the non-profit ADRA in integrating one of their entrepreneurial programs for impoverished families and went on a 20-day trip across Western Mongolia with some Mongolians. All interactions were unplanned, and we stayed with families for a few days at a time to do experiments with solar cooking, gain input, and test out conditions in the field. For me, it was very important to establish a relationship of trust with these Mongolian families and interact using humor as a bridge.
For my type of photography, it is essential to engage with people and make them feel comfortable. After I felt that a mutual sense of trust had been reached, I would let them know that I had a camera and make sure they were comfortable with their photo being captured or if they had particular preferences. I always make it a point to send the prints after they are done, though with nomadic families it's not exactly easy.
Q: That provides a great background to your work in Mongolia but I would love to hear more about your trip to the Philippines where you captured the winning image.
A: Two summers ago in 2009, I traveled to the Philippines to conduct a feasibility study of biogas integration into a village. That particular picture was taken in an unincorporated slum that was in the process of being transformed into a village by a non-profit called GK just outside Manila. We spent two days there and it was really hard to get to know people as I was busy with my own work and there were significant language barriers - I didn't have the type of time afforded to me in Mongolia. In this village, I came across a little boy who was looking over the trash filled river that ran through his slum, and it was striking how the boy was interacting with these conditions. Places like these are a common occurrence throughout the Philippines and especially the developing world as a whole, and through the perspective of this boy I was hoping to convey the scene from a more intimate and "local" point of view. These kids play in and around the river like it's nothing, because this is their reality and they know nothing different.
Q: What has been your favorite place to photograph from among your international travels?
A: It partly depends on where I am in terms of photography. The Philippines was a really good stepping point for Mongolia in terms of audacity and planning. I learned a lot from my experiences in the Philippines, and was really able to build and expand on that when I went to Mongolia. I expect this trend to hopefully continue.
Q: Is there a future trip planned?
A: Yes, certainly! Not this summer as I need to stay in the area and get a job, but I am expecting my next trip to be up north to Greenland for a different photographic experience that is particularly focused on nature.
Q: Have you ever considered using your photographs to build awareness and bring attention to development challenges?
A: Photography goes hand in hand with the work I have been doing in international development and I hope that my work is eye-opening for a lot of people. I know there is a lot more I could be doing to make that a focus but at this point in my career I am not sure how far I want to take photography in comparison to other development projects that I feel are more tangible.
Q: But are the two necessarily mutually exclusive? Can't development and photography go hand in hand?
A: I have definitely thought of that and in what ways we can combine the two to use photography in a very new way that can provide a more lasting impact. Documentary photography has no doubt proven to be an enormous force for social change on a variety of occasions, but this is certainly not the only way photography can play a role in development. Photography touches on a very important aspect of the human condition, especially when dealing with issues of empowerment and self-worth, and I think there is much more potential to capitalize on that. Kids with Cameras (an NGO) is a great example.
Q: What are your tools of the trade?
A: I currently have a Canon 5D Mark II and use a 16-35mm f2.8 and 50 mm f1.4 lens, with a whole range of additional accessories and equipment. I started with an entry level Nikon D50 camera several years ago and slowly worked up my way up. Luckily, my side work freelancing allows for me to pay for my personal work and equipment.
Q: Tell me more about the professional work you do.
A: My professional work includes freelance commercial work like music photography, portraiture, and magazine profiles. I recently contributed to a feature on eco-fashion for the New York Times, which entailed a sustainable fashion photo shoot. Before, I would just take any job I got and went full steam ahead with it for the sake of experience and (some) money, but now I'm able to be more selective with what I take on.
Q: Have you ever exhibited your photos?
A: Not really, I know a lot of other people have but I do not necessarily like to heavily promote my work. That's not really my style, and I have other commitments to balance. I haven't tried but am open to getting more exposure. To be honest, I haven't done a stellar job of properly displaying my work outside of the Internet.
Q: Do you imagine a future career for yourself as a photographer? Where do you see yourself heading with this hobby for which you are clearly talented?
A: Four years ago, I had no idea where this was going to lead or that it would get me to this point, but I guess that goes with a lot of the things I do. Hopefully, this will be something I can balance with my career, although there were a few moments when I was tempted to drop everything and just become a photographer. Lately, I have gotten into documentary filmmaking because it is a natural progression for a lot of photographers and further allows me to make a real impact with my work to highlight different social issues. It suits me well to travel to all these places where no one wants to, or is willing to go. I thrive in extreme environments.
For more information on Kris Cheng's photography, please visit www.krischeng.com.
The nine other finalists in our CDDRL photo contest include (in no particular order); Thomas Alan Hendee (student), Jorge Olarte Blanco (student), Rachel Quint (student), Francis Fukuyama (staff), Jon Strahl (student), Omar Shakir (student), and Marina Latu (staff). Please reference the gallery below for samples of their winning entries.
A reception honoring our winner and finalists will be held on Friday, January 28 from 11:30-1:00 pm in the lobby of Encina Hall.
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Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He is a current commissioner and former vice chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, where he directs efforts to monitor, investigate, and provide recommendations on the national security implications of the economic relationship between the two countries. Previously, he was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Secretary of Defense's Office of International Security Affairs and practiced law in New York prior to his government service. At AEI, in addition to his work on the national security implications of U.S.-Sino relations, he coordinates the Tocqueville on China project, which examines the underlying civic culture of post-Mao China. Mr. Blumenthal also contributes to AEI's Asian Outlook series. Kao-cheng Wang received his Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Pennsylvania. He is Professor and former Director of Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, Tamkang University, Taipei. Suisheng Zhao is Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies and Executive Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation, University of Denver. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the US Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary China. |
Oksenberg Conference Room
In this panel discussion, three leading scholars in the field of China and Taiwan studies will examine recent developments and future prospects for Taiwan's participation in international organizations, from the World Health Assembly to a range of other UN-affiliated and other international organizations (including new and less formal groupings such as the Community of Democracies). More broadly, this panel discussion will examine how Taiwan is now trying to, and might in the near future, engage the international community and international organizations, in an era when relations across the strait are thawing but Beijing is still actively limiting Taiwan's international space.
Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He is a current commissioner and former vice chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, where he directs efforts to monitor, investigate, and provide recommendations on the national security implications of the economic relationship between the two countries. Previously, he was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Secretary of Defense's Office of International Security Affairs and practiced law in New York prior to his government service. At AEI, in addition to his work on the national security implications of U.S.-Sino relations, he coordinates the Tocqueville on China project, which examines the underlying civic culture of post-Mao China. Mr. Blumenthal also contributes to AEI's Asian Outlook series.
Kao-cheng Wang received his Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Pennsylvania. He is Professor and former Director of Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, Tamkang University, Taipei.
Suisheng Zhao is Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies and Executive Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation, University of Denver. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the US Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary China.
Oksenberg Conference Room
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).
During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.
Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
A well-known puzzle in the study of Asian democratization is the inverse relationship between the level of democracy and the support for the "D" word. According to the latest Asian Barometer survey, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Cambodia have a much higher level of overt support for democracy than those well-recognized democracies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. To unravel this puzzle, the authors develop a new regression method for the two-dimensional typological analysis including the "D" word and the liberal democratic attitude. Four ideal types of democratic orientation are defined and analyzed: Consistent Democrats (high support for democracy, high liberal democratic value), Critical Democrats (low support for democracy, high liberal democratic value), Non-Democrats (low support for democracy, low liberal democratic value), and Superficial Democrats (High support for democracy, low liberal democratic value). Different from most of the regression methods, the dependent variables in typological regression include the radius and the azimuth and therefore transform the categorical nature of the two-by-two typology into distinctive types with a continuous character. The preliminary result indicates the high support rate of the "D" word in those less democratic countries is associated with a phenomenon that the word "democracy" has lost its distinctive semantic meaning and could embrace all desirable political values, covering any variety of political systems in the world.
Professor Min-hua Huang received his Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Michigan, and his B.A. in Business Administration from National Taiwan University. He is currently teaching at the Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University. In this special seminar, he will address the above issues, leading us to reconsider democracy and democratization in Asia.
Philippines Conference Room
