"Rabbit-Proof Fence" is a 2002 film based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara. It concerns the author's mother, and two other young mixed-race Aboriginal girls, who ran away from the Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth, in order to return to their Aboriginal families, after being placed there in 1931. The film follows the girls as they trek/walk for nine weeks along 1,500 miles of the Australian rabbit-proof fence to return to their community at Jigalong while being tracked by a white authority figure and a black tracker.

The film will be moderated by The Europe Center faculty affiliate Krish Seetah, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Director of the ‘Mauritian Archaeology and Cultural Heritage’ (MACH) project, which studies European Imperialism and colonial activity.

"Rabbit-Proof Fence" is the last film in the annual SGS Summer Film Festival running from June 17th to August 26th.  This year's festival features films from around the world that focus on the topic of “Imagining Empire: A Global Retrospective” and offers a flexible lens with which to look at both historical and contemporary geopolitical and socioeconomic contexts.  For more information on the film festival, please visit: https://sgs.stanford.edu/sgs.stanford.edu/2015-film-festival.

Abstract: Chevaline was the codename given to a highly-secret program begun in 1970 to improve the performance of the UK's force of Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missiles in order to give them the capability to overcome Soviet ABM defenses deployed around Moscow. After much technical difficulty, delays in project timescale and cost escalation the new system was finally introduced in 1982, but it had already attracted major criticism for the expenditure involved, claims of project mismanagement, the rationale that underpinned its development, and its concealment from proper parliamentary scrutiny. This lecture will explore the background to the program, why it ran into so many problems, and how it became one of the most controversial episodes in post-war British defense policy. An understanding of the problems confronted by the attempt to improve Polaris illuminates a number of key themes and issues that are of relevance to policymakers concerned with strategic weapons programs and project management.

About the Speaker: Matthew Jones’ current research focuses on British nuclear history during the Cold War. He has also written on many different aspects of US and British foreign and defense policy in the 20th century, and has a long-standing interest in empire and decolonization in South East Asia. Jones’ first book, Britain, the United States and the Mediterranean War, 1942-44 (Macmillan, 1996), examined strains in the Anglo-American relationship by strategic issues and command problems in the Mediterranean theater. His book, Conflict and Confrontation in South East Asia, 1961-1965: Britain, the United States, Indonesia, and the Creation of Malaysia (Cambridge University Press, 2002), looks at the federation of Malaysia during British decolonization in the early 1960s. After Hiroshima: The United States, Race, and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945-1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2010) addresses US nuclear policies in Asia in the period of the Korean War, confrontation with China, and early engagement in Vietnam. His current project on UK nuclear policy encompasses the development of nuclear strategy within NATO, the Anglo-American nuclear relationship, and European responses to strategic arms control. In 2008, Jones was appointed by the Prime Minister to become the Cabinet Office official historian of the UK strategic nuclear deterrent and the Chevaline program, a commission that will lead to the publication of a two-volume official history exploring British nuclear policy between 1945 and 1982. Jones’s journal articles have appeared in Diplomatic History, Historical Journal, Journal of Cold War Studies, and English Historical Review. He gained his DPhil in Modern History at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, in 1992.

Abstract: With the development of cyber capabilities by an increasing number of states, policymakers as well as scholars have been calling for the negotiation of a new international treaty to regulate cyber warfare. This paper provides an account and analysis of relevant debates in the United Nations with a focus on the position of four states – Russia, China, the US and the UK. Discussions have been concentrated in the First Committee of the General Assembly which has been seized with the issue since 1998 when the Russian Federation submitted a proposal for an international convention to govern the use of information and communication technologies for military purposes. While these efforts towards a wholesale international treaty have not materialized, Russia and China continue to advocate a change in the legal status through the promulgation of additional norms. In contrast, the US and the UK have been firm supporters of applying current legal regimes, including the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, to the use of cyber capabilities by states. In advancing these positions, two powerful narratives have emerged each emphasizing different aspects of the cybersecurity debate.

About the Speaker: Elaine Korzak is a postdoctoral cybersecurity fellow at CISAC. She earned her Ph.D from the Department of War Studies at King´s College London in 2014. Her thesis examined the applicability and adequacy of international legal frameworks to the emerging phenomenon of cyber attacks. Her analysis focused on two legal areas in particular: international law on the use of force and international humanitarian law. Elaine holds both an MA in International Peace and Security from King´s College London and an LL.M in Public International Law from the LSE. Her professional experience includes various governmental and non-governmental institutions, including NATO´s Cyber Defence Section as well as the European Commission´s Directorate-General on Information Society and Media.

Democracies do not legally bind parties to their policy promises. Thus winning the power to set policy through elections requires making credible commitments to pivotal voters. This paper analyzes theoretically and empirically how the commitment problem affects partisan conflict over redistribution. A theoretical model shows that under majoritarian electoral rules parties' efforts to achieve endogenous commitment using citizen candidates to policies preferred by the middle class leads to different behavior and outcomes than suggested by existing theories that assume commitment or rule out endogenous commitment. Left parties may respond to rising inequality by moving to the right in majoritarian systems but not under proportional representation. The theory also unbundles the anti-left bias attributed to majoritarian systems. The empirical analysis finds evidence for key implications of this logic using panel data on party positions and by analyzing devolution in Britain as a natural experiment to compare candidates under alternative electoral rules.

This talk is part of The Europe Center's "European Governance Seminar Series."

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