* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/4X0CfpgDSoQ

 

About the Event: This ambitious and incisive book presents a new vision for American foreign policy and international order at a time of historic upheaval. The United States global leadership crisis is not a passing shock created by the Trump presidency or COVID-19, but the product of forces that will endure for decades. Amidst political polarization, technological transformation, and major global power shifts, Lissner and Rapp-Hooper convincingly argue, only a grand strategy of openness can protect American security and prosperity despite diminished national strength. Disciplined and forward-looking, an openness strategy would counter authoritarian competitors by preventing the emergence of closed spheres of influence, maintaining access to the global commons, supporting democracies without promoting regime change, and preserving economic interdependence. The authors provide a roadmap for the next president, who must rebuild strength at home while preparing for novel forms of international competition. Lucid, trenchant, and practical,An Open World is an essential guide to the future of geopolitics.

 

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Open-World-America-Contest-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0300250320/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=an+open+world&qid=1588687676&sr=8-4

 

About the Speaker: Rebecca Lissner is an Assistant Professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College and a Non-Resident Scholar at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies. Previously, Dr. Lissner held research fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, the Council on Foreign Relations, and International Security Studies at Yale University. Dr. Lissner’s research and writing focuses on international security and American foreign policy. She is the co-author of An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for Twenty-First-Century Order (Yale University Press, 2020) and is working on a second book examining the effects of military interventions on American grand strategy. Her scholarship has been published in Political Science Quarterly, the Texas National Security Review, Survival, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and International Peacekeeping. Her policy writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Quarterly, among other publications. Dr. Lissner received an AB in Social Studies from Harvard University and an MA and PhD in Government from Georgetown University.

ABSTRACT

This talk is based on the co-authors' recent paper "How Much Will the Pandemic Change Egyptian Governance and for How Long?" The Egyptian regime has reacted in an unexpected way to the global pandemic—with civilian, technocratic, and expert bodies leading the way and even some (admittedly officially patrolled) political debate being allowed to emerge. This talk examines these recent developments and evaluates whether they mark a real change in Egyptian governance, and if so, why, what kind, and will it last.

Co-Authors Bios

Amr Hamzawy is currently a senior research scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He studied political science and developmental studies in Cairo, The Hague, and Berlin. He was previously an associate professor of political science at Cairo University and a professor of public policy at the American University in Cairo. Between 2016 and 2017, he served as a senior fellow in the Middle East program and the Democracy and Rule of Law program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC. His research and teaching interests as well as his academic publications focus on democratization processes in Egypt, tensions between freedom and repression in the Egyptian public space, political movements and civil society in Egypt, contemporary debates in Arab political thought, and human rights and governance in the Arab world. His new book On The Habits of Neoauthoritarianism – Politics in Egypt Between 2013 and 2019appeared in Arabic in September 2019. Hamzawy is a former member of the People’s Assembly after being elected in the first Parliamentary elections in Egypt after the January 25, 2011 revolution. He is also a former member of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights. Hamzawy contributes a weekly op-ed to the All Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi.

Nathan Brown is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at The George Washington University. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and serves on the board of trustees at the American University in Cairo. His contributions span a wide range of topics, including Islamist movements, Egyptian politics, Palestinian politics, and Arab law and constitutionalism. Dr. Brown served as the president of the Middle East Studies Association between 2013 and 2015. He was previously named a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and is a former fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His previous research was funded by the United States Institute of Peace and two Fulbright fellowships. He received the Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Award for Scholarship from George Washington University in 2015 and the Harry Harding teaching award from the Elliott School of International Affairs in 2014. His dissertation received the Malcolm Kerr award from the Middle East Studies Association in 1987. Dr. Brown is the author of six books, including Arguing Islam after the Revival of Arab Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), and When Victory is Not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). He received his B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. in politics and Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. 

This event will take place on Zoom. Registration is required: http://bit.ly/Invisible_China

As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as FSI Senior Fellow Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in their new book Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern.

Drawing on extensive surveys on the ground in China, Rozelle and Hell reveal that while China may be the second-largest economy in the world, its labor force has one of the lowest levels of education of any comparable country. The low levels of basic education of such a large share of workers may leave many unable to find work in the formal workplace as China’s economy changes and manufacturing jobs move elsewhere.

In this book talk event, Rozelle, who is also the director of FSI’s Rural Education Action Program, will be joined by Hongbin Li, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, who will moderate a discussion about the major themes of the book. A question and answer session with the audience will follow the discussion.

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Scott Rozelle holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow in the Food Security and Environment Program and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner. 

 

Hongbin Li is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Hongbin’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics.

 

This event is part of the Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP) 2020-21 Colloquium series "Health, medicine, and longevity: Exploring public and private roles"

Hong Kong time: Friday, October 16, 2020, 8:00am - 9:15am

Gabriel Leung, one of Asia’s leading epidemiologists and Dean of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, provides an update on the global pandemic and policy responses in Asia. Leung’s presentation draws on his deep experience in research and policy, including research that defined the epidemiology of three novel viral epidemics, namely SARS in 2003, influenza A(H7N9) in 2013 and most recently COVID-19. Leung also served as Hong Kong's first Under Secretary for Food and Health (2008-11) and fifth Director of the Chief Executive's Office (2011-2).

Gabriel Leung is the fortieth Dean of Medicine (2013-), inaugural Helen and Francis Zimmern Professor in Population Health and holds the Chair of Public Health Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He was the last Head of Community Medicine (2012-3) at the University as well as Hong Kong's first Under Secretary for Food and Health (2008-11) and fifth Director of the Chief Executive's Office (2011-2) in government.

Leung is one of Asia's leading epidemiologists and global health exponents, having authored more than 500 scholarly papers with an h-index of 66 (Scopus). His research defined the epidemiology of three novel viral epidemics, namely SARS in 2003, influenza A(H7N9) in 2013 and most recently COVID-19. He led Hong Kong government's efforts against pandemic A(H1N1) in 2009. He was founding co-director of HKU's World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control (2014-8) and currently directs the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health at the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park (2020-).

Leung regularly advises national and international agencies including the World Health Organisation, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Boao Forum for Asia, Institut Pasteur, Japan Center for International Exchange and China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is an Adjunct Professor of Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Adjunct Professorial Researcher of the China National Health Development Research Center.

He edited the Journal of Public Health (2007-14), was inaugural co-editor of Epidemics, associate editor of Health Policy and is founding deputy editor-in-chief of China CDC Weekly. He currently serves on the editorial boards of seven journals, including the British Medical Journal.    

He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Medicine.

This event is part of Shorenstein APARC’s fall webinar series "Shifting Geopolitics and U.S.-Asia Relations"

REGISTRATION LINK: https://bit.ly/3gPVXlt

Chair/discussant:  Donald K. Emmerson, director, Southeast Asia Program, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

Topic:  Analysts of Southeast Asia, struggling to find commonalities that its eleven diverse countries share, have long distinguished the region’s mainland from its maritime portions. Aspects of the contrast include the mainland’s greater proximity to China. A controversial hypothesis follows: that subcontinental Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and possibly Thailand (but arguably not Vietnam) are more likely to become peninsular parts of a sphere of influence overseen by China than are the region’s more insular or archipelagic countries—Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste. In support of the mainland versus maritime distinction, historical, cultural, and socioeconomic differences can also be cited. But how much do they really matter? Does the mainland-maritime contrast, for example, enhance or impede the ability of Southeast Asian countries to retain national independence and fashion a common front in defense of the autonomy of their region?  Or is location irrelevant?  And if other factors matter more, which ones, how, and why? The webinar will offer and explore answers to these and related questions.

Richard Heydarian is an Asia-based academic and columnist, who most recently was a Visiting Fellow at National Chengchi University, and formerly an Assistant Professor in political science at De La Salle University. As a columnist, he has written for the world’s leading publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and is a regular contributor to Aljazeera English, Nikkei Asian Review, South China Morning Post, and the Straits Times. He is the author of, among other books, The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt against Elite Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China, and the New Struggle for Global Mastery (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). As a policy adviser, he has advised Philippine presidential candidates, presidential cabinet members, senators, and the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and is also a television host in GMA Network in the Philippines.

Ann Marie Murphy is Professor at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University, Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, and 2019-2010 ASEAN Research Program Fulbright Scholar.

Dr. Murphy's research interests include international relations and comparative politics in Southeast Asia, U.S. foreign policy toward Asia, and governance of non-traditional security issues.  She is co-author (with Amy Freedman) of Non-Traditional Security Issues in Southeast Asia: the Transnational Dimension, (2018) and co-editor (with Bridget Welsh) of Legacies of Engagement in Southeast Asia (2008). Dr. Murphy’s articles have appeared in journals such as Asian Security, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Orbis, Asia Policy, World Politics Review and PS: Political Science & Politics.  Dr. Murphy is a founding partner of the New York Southeast Asia Network and is currently completing a book on the impact of democracy on Indonesian foreign policy with the generous support of the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is the Director of the Institute of Security and International Studies and Professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. He has authored articles, books, book chapters and over 1,000 op-eds in media outlets. His sought-after views have appeared on CNN, BBC, Bloomberg, among others. Thitinan has provided briefings to diplomatic missions, investors, and business conferences on Thai domestic politics and regional geopolitics. In 2015, he was awarded an op-ed prize from the Society of Publishers in Asia. Subsequently, he was appointed ASEAN@50 Fellow by New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs & Trade; and Australia-ASEAN Fellow by Sydney’s Lowy Institute.  He completed his M.A. at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Ph.D. at the London School of Economics, having lectured internationally and held visiting positions at renowned universities, including Stanford University, while serving on several editorial boards of academic journals. 

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/bUXHbUj5uxE

 

About the Event: While most civil wars today are fought within Muslim-majority states and, frequently, by armed groups that self-identify as Islamic, we know little about the relationships between and amongst Islamic humanitarian law, Western (treaty-based) humanitarian law, and the rhetoric and behavior of Islamic armed groups. Our legal analysis suggests that, while there is a great deal of overlap between Western and Islamic humanitarian law, this overlap is not perfect. Our empirical analysis, which focuses on both the words and behaviors of Islamic armed groups, suggests similarly mixed results. Specifically, we find that, on average, Islamic armed groups do not appear to be more or less compliant with Western or Islamic humanitarian law than non-Islamic armed groups when it comes to civilian targeting and child soldiering. While they often appeal to Islamic humanitarian law, Islamic armed groups appear to be bound by similar political and military – rather than religious or legal – constraints to non-Islamic armed groups.

 

About the Speaker: Tanisha Fazal is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict.  Fazal’s current book project analyzes the effect of improvements in medical care in conflict zones on the long-term costs of war.  She is the author of State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation (Princeton University Press, 2007), and Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Cornell University Press, 2018.

This event has been postponed. Please see below for details.

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.
 

Sponsored by the Stanford China Program and the Stanford Center at Peking University.
 

International institutions established after WWII and shaped by the Cold War facilitated attainment of unprecedented peace and prosperity.  But what worked well in the past may no longer be adequate to address the challenges and opportunities in the world these institutions helped to create.  Should legacy institutions be reformed, replaced, or supplemented by new mechanisms to manage new global challenges?  This program will examine whether existing institutions of global governance are adequate, and if not, why changing them will be difficult.

 

Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009. From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Fingar's most recent books are The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, editor (Stanford, 2016), Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017), and Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Jean Oi (Stanford, 2020).

 

Stephen Stedman is a Freeman Spogli senior fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and FSI, an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. 

In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance. In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.  His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

This event is available through livestream only. Please register in advance for the webinar by using the link below.

REGISTRATION LINK: https://bit.ly/34pAVrb

Inside the Billion Dollar Whale Scandal: 2020 Shorenstein Journalism Award Recipient Tom Wright to Headline Award Panel Discussion

Tom Wright, winner of the 2020 Shorenstein Journalism Award, addresses these questions and more in his keynote address.

Wright is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Billion Dollar Whale, which unravels the story of one of the world's greatest financial scandals involving the multibillion-dollar looting of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. Wright’s work sparked investigations by law enforcement and regulators in multiple countries and outrage in Malaysia, where the ruling coalition, after 61 years in power, suffered a landslide defeat in a shocking 2018 election.

The keynote will be followed by a guided interview with the award winner led by Meredith Weiss, Professor and Chair of Political Science at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, SUNY.

The event will conclude with an audience Q&A session moderated by Donald K. Emmerson, Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Follow us on Twitter and use the hashtag #SJA20 to join the conversation.

Speakers:

Meredith Weiss is Professor and Chair of Political Science in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her research addresses social mobilization and civil society, the politics of identity and development, parties and elections, institutional reform and (anti)corruption, and subnational governance in Southeast Asia, with particular focus on Malaysia and Singapore. She has conducted fieldwork in those two countries as well as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste, and has held visiting fellowships or professorships in Australia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and the US.

Her books include Protest and Possibilities: Civil Society and Coalitions for Political Change in Malaysia (2006), Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow (2011), The Roots of Resilience: Political Machines and Grassroots Politics in Southeast Asia (2020), and eleven edited or co-edited volumes, most recently, The Political Logics of Anticorruption Efforts in Asia (2019) and Toward a New Malaysia? The 2018 Election and Its Aftermath (2020).  Her articles appear in Asian Studies Review, Asian Survey, Critical Asian Studies, Democratization, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of Democracy, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, and elsewhere.

Professor Weiss co-edits the Cambridge University Press Elements book series on Politics and Society in Southeast Asia and is an associate editor for Southeast Asia of the Association for Asian Studies’ (AAS) Journal of Asian Studies. She co-founded the Southeast Asian Politics related group of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and chairs the APSA’s Asia Workshops steering committee, is past chair of the AAS’s Southeast Asia Council, and is on the Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG) Council. She received her MA and PhD in Political Science from Yale University and a BA in Political Science, Policy Studies, and English from Rice University.

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The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of US $10,000, recognizes outstanding journalists who have spent their careers helping audiences around the world understand the complexities of the Asia-Pacific region, defined broadly to include Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Australasia. Award recipients are veteran journalists with a distinguished body of work. News organizations are also eligible for the award.

The award is sponsored and presented by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at Stanford University. It honors the legacy of the Center’s benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. It also symbolizes the Center’s commitment to journalism that persistently and courageously seeks accuracy, deep reporting, and nuanced coverage in an age when attacks are regularly launched on the independent news media, on fact-based truth, and on those who tell it.

An annual tradition, the Shorenstein Journalism Award alternates between recipients whose work has mostly been conveyed through American news media and recipients whose work has mostly been conveyed through news media in one or more parts of the Asia-Pacific region. Included among the latter candidates are journalists who are from the region and work there, and who, in addition to their recognized excellence, may have helped defend and encourage free media in one or more countries in the region.

Learn more at https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/events/shorenstein-journalism-award.

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About this Event:  This book offers a novel theory of the nuances in relationships between business and political elites in three authoritarian regimes in developing Asia: Indonesia under Suharto’s New Order, Malaysia under the Barisan Nasional (BN), and China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). How did business-state relations in all three regimes come to be seen as “crony,” and why do some crony arrangements generate growth and political stability and others stagnation or crisis? The book develops conceptual models of state-business relations (mutual alignment and mutual endangerment) and explains their genesis. I argue that the main factors explaining why one pattern dominates over the other are the political status of capitalists, determined during regime formation, and the political management of the financial system. The research draws on extensive archival and interview sources as well as novel datasets on corporate filings in each country.

 

About the Speaker:  Meg Rithmire is F. Warren MacFarlan associate professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit. Professor Rithmire holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and her primary expertise is in the comparative political economy of development with a focus on China and Asia. Her first book, Land Bargains and Chinese Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), examines the role of land politics, urban governments, and local property rights regimes in the Chinese economic reforms. A new project, for which Meg conducted fieldwork in Asia 2016-2017, investigates the relationship between capital and the state and globalization in Asia. The project focuses on a comparison of China, Malaysia, and Indonesia from the early 1980s to the present. The research has two components; first, examining how governments attempt to discipline business and when those efforts succeed and, second, how business adapts to different methods of state control.