Abstract: On March 11, 2011, an enormous earthquake triggered a 50-foot tsunami, inundating the six-unit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan. The flood caused damage to the plant’s electrical systems far beyond what the plant’s owner or government regulators had ever anticipated. Ultimately, three reactors suffered core melt accidents and released substantial quantities of radioactive materials into the environment. After the accident, Japan and many other countries sought to identify the root causes of Fukushima and take steps to reduce the risk of future accidents. In the U.S., a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) task force identified multiple deficiencies in its regulations and made twelve recommendations to strengthen safety requirements. However, due in part to nuclear industry lobbying, the NRC rejected most of the task force recommendations and adopted only weakened versions of the remaining ones. Today, as Fukushima becomes a distant memory, the NRC is implementing a “transformation” initiative that could actually weaken critical safety requirements. This talk will discuss the lessons of the accident for nuclear safety, and the extent to which the NRC’s post-Fukushima actions adequately address them.

Speaker Bio: Edwin Lyman is the Acting Director of the Nuclear Safety Project and Senior Scientist of the Global Security Program. His research focuses on nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and nuclear power safety and security. Dr. Lyman is a co-author of  Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster (New Press, 2014). In 2018, Dr. Lyman was awarded the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award from the American Physical Society.

Before joining UCS, Dr. Lyman was president of the Nuclear Control Institute. From 1992 to 1995, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies. He earned a PhD in physics from Cornell University in 1992.

Note: This seminar series is open only to Stanford faculty and scholars.

The Project on Democracy and the Internet’s Fall Seminar Series on Free Speech, Democracy, and the Internet is hosted by Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford, and Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, every Tuesday, from September 25 to November 27 (excluding holidays).

The goal of this seminar series is to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing as we address the impact of the internet on democracy and build this new field of study. Guest speakers from academia and the technology sector will cover topics including disinformation, polarization, hate speech, political advertising, media transformation, election integrity, and legal regulation of internet platforms in the U.S. and abroad.

Please RSVP for the first 5 sessions above. Future sessions will be announced at a later date.

Note: This seminar series is open only to Stanford faculty and scholars.

The Project on Democracy and the Internet’s Fall Seminar Series on Free Speech, Democracy, and the Internet is hosted by Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford, and Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, every Tuesday, from September 25 to November 27 (excluding holidays).

The goal of this seminar series is to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing as we address the impact of the internet on democracy and build this new field of study. Guest speakers from academia and the technology sector will cover topics including disinformation, polarization, hate speech, political advertising, media transformation, election integrity, and legal regulation of internet platforms in the U.S. and abroad.

Please RSVP for the first 5 sessions above. Future sessions will be announced at a later date.

Note: This seminar series is open only to Stanford faculty and scholars.

The Project on Democracy and the Internet’s Fall Seminar Series on Free Speech, Democracy, and the Internet is hosted by Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford, and Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, every Tuesday, from September 25 to November 27 (excluding holidays).

The goal of this seminar series is to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing as we address the impact of the internet on democracy and build this new field of study. Guest speakers from academia and the technology sector will cover topics including disinformation, polarization, hate speech, political advertising, media transformation, election integrity, and legal regulation of internet platforms in the U.S. and abroad.

Please RSVP for the first 5 sessions above. Future sessions will be announced at a later date.

Note: This seminar series is open only to Stanford faculty and scholars.

The Project on Democracy and the Internet’s Fall Seminar Series on Free Speech, Democracy, and the Internet is hosted by Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford, and Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, every Tuesday, from September 25 to November 27 (excluding holidays).

The goal of this seminar series is to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing as we address the impact of the internet on democracy and build this new field of study. Guest speakers from academia and the technology sector will cover topics including disinformation, polarization, hate speech, political advertising, media transformation, election integrity, and legal regulation of internet platforms in the U.S. and abroad.

Please RSVP for the first 5 sessions above. Future sessions will be announced at a later date.

Note: This seminar series is open only to Stanford faculty and scholars.

The Project on Democracy and the Internet’s Fall Seminar Series on Free Speech, Democracy, and the Internet is hosted by Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford, and Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, every Tuesday, from September 25 to November 27 (excluding holidays).

The goal of this seminar series is to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing as we address the impact of the internet on democracy and build this new field of study. Guest speakers from academia and the technology sector will cover topics including disinformation, polarization, hate speech, political advertising, media transformation, election integrity, and legal regulation of internet platforms in the U.S. and abroad. Please RSVP for the first 5 sessions above. Future sessions will be announced at a later date.

Natural Experiments in Health Care

Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD

Ruth L. Newhouse Associate Professor of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School

Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD, is the Ruth L. Newhouse Associate Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and a physician in the Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. As an economist and physician, Dr. Jena’s research involves several areas of health economics and policy including the economics of physician behavior and the physician workforce, medical malpractice, the economics of health care productivity, and the economics of medical innovation. Dr. Jena graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with majors in biology and economics. He received his MD and PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago, where he was funded by the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2007, he was awarded the Eugene Garfield Award by Research America for his work demonstrating the economic value of medical innovation in HIV/AIDS. In 2013, he received the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award to fund research on the physician determinants of health care spending, quality, and patient outcomes.  In 2015, he was awarded the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) New Investigator Award. From 2014-15, Dr. Jena served as a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Diagnostic Errors in Health Care.

Jake Shapiro Bio: Jacob N. Shapiro is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and co-directs the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. His research focuses on political violence, economic development in conflict zones, and security policy. He is the author of The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations. His research has been published in Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, American Journal of Political Science, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Perspectives on Politics, Political Analysis, Public Opinion Quarterly, Security Studies, World Politics, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military Operations Research, Terrorism and Political Violence, and a number of edited volumes. Shapiro is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an Associate Editor of World Politics, a Faculty Fellow of the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS), a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), and served in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserve. Ph.D. Political Science, M.A. Economics, Stanford University. B.A. Political Science, University of Michigan.

Eli Berman Bio: Eli Berman is chair and professor of economics at UC San Diego, research director for international security studies at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, faculty member at the UCSD school of Global Policy and Strategy, member of the Empirical Studies of Conflict research project, and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His book Radical, Religious and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism was published in 2009 by the MIT Press. Berman received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. His latest publications are “The Empiricists’ Insurgency” (with Aila Matanock), and "Modest, Secure and Employed: Successful Development in Conflict Zones," (with Joseph Felter, Jacob Shapiro and Erin Troland). Grants supporting his research have come from the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Science Foundation. His research interests include economic development and conflict, the economics of religion, labor economics, technological change, and economic demography.

Abstract: The way wars are fought has changed starkly over the past sixty years. International military campaigns used to play out between large armies at central fronts. Today's conflicts find major powers facing rebel insurgencies that deploy elusive methods, from improvised explosives to terrorist attacks. Small Wars, Big Data presents a transformative understanding of these contemporary confrontations and how they should be fought. The authors show that a revolution in the study of conflict--enabled by vast data, rich qualitative evidence, and modern methods—yields new insights into terrorism, civil wars, and foreign interventions. Modern warfare is not about struggles over territory but over people; civilians—and the information they might choose to provide—can turn the tide at critical junctures.The authors draw practical lessons from the past two decades of conflict in locations ranging from Latin America and the Middle East to Central and Southeast Asia. Building an information-centric understanding of insurgencies, the authors examine the relationships between rebels, the government, and civilians. This approach serves as a springboard for exploring other aspects of modern conflict, including the suppression of rebel activity, the role of mobile communications networks, the links between aid and violence, and why conventional military methods might provide short-term success but undermine lasting peace. Ultimately the authorsshow how the stronger side can almost always win the villages, but why that does not guarantee winning the war.

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Abstract: In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, democracy is in retreat, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars.

The root of this dismal record is the foreign policy elite’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, and other liberal values around the world. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. 

Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end these misguided policies, but his erratic style of governing and flawed grasp of world politics have made a bad situation worse. The best alternative is a return to a strategy of “offshore balancing,” eschewing regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering.  This long-overdue shift will require creating a foreign policy elite with a more realistic view of American power. 

Speaker Bio: Stephen M. Walt is Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy, co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 200.  He received the ISA’s Distinguished Senior Scholar award in 2014.  His writings include The Origins of Alliances (1987) Revolution and War (1996), Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (co-authored with John J. Mearsheimer, 2007).  His latest book is The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (2018).

Abstract: The purpose and force of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty hinges on a legal distinction between "nuclear weapons states" and "non-nuclear weapons states." But rather than being a self-evident distinction based entirely on material differences, the distinction is constructed and negotiated—not just by the conventionally powerful but by disempowered states. This article argues that the NPT is a discursive resource for states that the treaty does not legitimate. The NPT’s power comes from the legal categories it institutionalizes and perpetuates. In order to understand the origins and effects of dividing the terrain of nuclear politics into nuclear and non-nuclear states, I analyze the meeting documents of the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) which negotiated the treaty from 1962-1969. I find that the “non-nuclear” states used the designation as an identity that set them apart from nuclear states. Using these categories like identities is not without political consequence—for example, India’s unique diplomatic approach toward the NPT shapes both the discourses it advances and policies it pursues.  In contrast to existing approaches that examine the distinction primarily through material terms, this article turns to state practice to reveal how being nuclear or non-nuclear is used as a legitimating tool in nuclear politics. The article also shows that, while most approaches to international law presume that the law either constrains state power or has no effect on it, the case of the nuclear/non-nuclear distinction illustrates that international law does matter, but perhaps not in the way assumed by IR realists or institutionalists.

Speaker Bio: Sidra Hamidi is a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. She completed her PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University in 2018. Her research explores the role of identity and discourse in contemporary and historical nuclear politics. Specifically, she studies the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear states in technical, legal, and normative contexts. She locates the politics of this distinction in the diplomatic practices of Israel, India, and Iran. She completed her MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago. Her commentary has appeared in The Washington Post, Duck of Minerva, and E-IR. She is also interested in international relations theory and political science conceptualization and methodology.