Anyone who has followed the US presidential race knows that Senator Barack Obama, if he runs and wins, will be the first African-American to live in the White House. Fewer know that, if that happens, he will also become the first US president to have lived in Indonesia as a child and to have had an Indonesian stepfather.

Until now, this bit of biography might have mattered only to fans of political trivia. But elements of the conservative press have made an issue of Obama's links to Indonesia by insinuating that during his time there he might have absorbed radical Islamist ideas at a Muslim school. "Hillary's Team Has Questions about Obama's Muslim Background" ran the headline in Insight Magazine that started the flap. The editor may have wished to kill two birds - the presidential hopes of both Obama and his main rival for the Democratic nomination - with a single stone. Readers who believed the report would have thought twice before supporting Obama, while those who considered it false would have thought less of Hillary for stooping to plant it.

Official spokespeople for Obama and Clinton, respectively, quickly denied the allegation as "completely false" and "an obvious right-wing hit job." But not before the charge had been repeated by Fox News and debated in the blogosphere.

Barack Obama's parents met at the East-West Center in Honolulu. He was born in 1961. Two years later his parents divorced. His mother remarried. His new stepfather was Indonesian. In 1967, when Barack was six years old, the family moved to Indonesia's capital, Jakarta. There, as described in his 1995 biography, Barack attended a private Catholic school and, later, a "predominantly Muslim" one. In 1971, when he was ten, his mother sent him back to Hawaii to continue his schooling.

Investigative reporting by CNN, the Associated Press, and other responsible media has established that the notion that Obama was influenced by a radical Islamist agenda is absurd. He was never enrolled in a madrasah. Nor is it surprising that students at the secular public school he did attend were "predominantly Muslim" - nearly nine-tenths of all Indonesians are. The atmosphere in Jakarta in 1967-69 was basically secular. Muslim head scarves, for example, were rare. I know because I lived there then.

Obama was sent to a Catholic and then to a secular public school. His parents, of modest means, could not afford tuition at the international school. At the public school, which welcomed pupils of various faiths, Obama's parents registered him as "Muslim" only for convenience. The Indonesian Communist Party had just been destroyed, and atheistic Marxism outlawed. Pupils were required to state an affiliation with a major world religion. When enrolling a child, the common practice was to list the father's faith.

Obama's stepfather, Soetoro, was only nominally Muslim. Like many if not most other ethnic-Javanese Indonesians at that time, he was a "statistical Muslim." That label was applied to those who, if required by a school registrar or a census taker to state their religion, would say "Islam," but who were Muslims far more from habit or heritage than by practice or conviction.

Should we be glad that this smear has been so quickly put to rest, and move on? Yes. But not before noting - and regretting - an irony: Precisely when tides of disregard for the United States and its policies are sweeping the world, when Americans more than ever before need to understand Muslim societies, American fears of Islam are being evoked and stoked.

Far from being seen as a detriment to his presidential candidacy, Barack Obama's prior exposure to a foreign culture should be counted as an asset.

At the same tender age as Obama's when he was in Jakarta, I was in Moscow attending a Soviet elementary school. I remember my teacher frowning at me when, on the anniversary of Lenin's death, unlike my Russian classmates, I couldn't manage to cry. My parents, my sister, and I could have lived in the building that housed the American Embassy - a "golden ghetto." But my father wanted us to learn the Russian language and experience Russian life. I am grateful that he did.

The idea that Americans, children or adults, should wrap themselves in familiar cocoons and avoid encounters with anything strange, including Indonesian Islam, is worse than just bad parenting. It is a willful parochialism that the United States as a country cannot afford. Not in this post-9/11 world. Not if we wish to engage with that world as it actually is - rather than as we might, in fearful isolation, imagine it to be.

This opinion piece was printed in the San Jose Mercury News on February 1, 2007 under the title "Obama's international background an asset, not a flaw." To read the version that was printed in the Mercury News please click on the link below. It was also printed in Yale Global Online. There is a link below to that version.

As if the nuclear arms control process didn't have enough difficulties, in December 2006 Russia decided to deal it another blow. At the inauguration of three new Topol-M road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, the commander of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces announced Moscow's plan to equip these missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs). Few additional details have been released, but it appears that most of Russia's about 150 Topol-M missiles will carry three--and maybe more--nuclear warheads, something they weren't initially designed to do.

The most visible effect of this move would be the almost certain death of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which regulates U.S.-Russian nuclear disarmament.

Siegfried S. Hecker, a prominent U.S. expert on nuclear technology and policy, was appointed co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University on Jan. 16. He also assumed positions as a professor (research) in the Stanford School of Engineering's Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow at FSI.

Hecker's "scientific achievements as a metallurgist, his leadership and talent as the head of a renowned U.S. Department of Energy laboratory and his decades-long dedication to improving global security make him an extraordinary choice to help direct CISAC in the years ahead," FSI Director Coit D. Blacker said, announcing the appointment.

Political science Professor Scott Sagan, whom Hecker joins as a co-director of CISAC, said he is "thrilled to have Sig Hecker as a partner" in leading the center. "Hecker follows in a long line of distinguished scientists--Sidney Drell, William Perry, Michael May, and Christopher Chyba--who have become leaders of CISAC's efforts to produce cutting edge policy-relevant research," Sagan noted. "Stanford University is extremely fortunate to be able to have a scholar-practitioner of Sig Hecker's stature coming to CISAC to help guide our multidisciplinary efforts to address the tough security challenges facing the world right now."

The center, traditionally co-directed by a scientist and social scientist since its founding in 1983 by physicist Drell and political scientist John Lewis, draws from a range of disciplines to focus on current problems in international security.

An emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Hecker has fostered U.S. cooperation with Russian nuclear laboratories for 15 years to secure the vast stockpile of former Soviet nuclear weapons and materials. At CISAC, where he has been a visiting professor since fall 2005, Hecker has contributed to international projects to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and secure materials for making them.

Looking forward to the new assignments, Hecker said, "I have enjoyed the Stanford environment--the students, faculty, and the great range of international issues being examined. I look forward to the new challenge of leading CISAC with Scott Sagan, as well as teaching and research in management science and engineering."

With Lewis, Hecker has made three visits to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the last three years, gaining rare access to and expertise on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. His reports on the program's status provide valuable insights to U.S. diplomats and scholars seeking to resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. With Sagan, Hecker has participated in meetings with security experts from China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States to secure nuclear weapons and materials and lessen tensions in South Asia.

Last fall, Hecker co-taught Stanford's popular management science and engineering course, Technology and National Security, with CISAC and MS&E colleague Perry. Hecker lectured on nuclear weapons history and technical fundamentals, nuclear terrorism, and North Korea.

"Dr. Hecker has added 'outstanding professor' to his list of many accomplishments," Perry said. "I am delighted he has accepted this appointment and look forward to working with him."