Abstract:

The Islamization of universities has been the cornerstone of the Iranian regime’s higher educational policy since its ascent to power in 1979. Since the victory of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has relentlessly attempted to control and suppress dissident students and professors in an effort to train a new generation of ideologically driven students. Although the Islamic Republic was successful in co-opting a group of university students by means of ideological and materialistic incentives, a majority of students became less ideological and more critical of both the regime and its staple ideologies. These continuous struggles between the state and universities have given rise to several important questions: Why and how has the Islamic Republic Islamized and controlled universities? To what extent have these strategies succeeded or failed? Why and how have students responded to state domination?

Speaker Bio:

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Saeid Golkar is a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Service at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and concurrently, a non-resident Senior Fellow on Middle East Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA). His research focuses on international and comparative politics of authoritarian regimes with an emphasis on the Middle East. His book, Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Post-revolutionary Iran (Columbia University Press, 2015), was awarded the Washington Institute silver medal prize.

Speaker Bio:

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Ilya Zaslavskiy is a member of the Advisory Board at the Hudson Institute's Kleptocracy Initiative for which he wrote a report How Non-State Actors Export Kleptocratic Norms to the West. He is also Head of Research at Washington-based non-profit Free Russia Foundation and head of Underminers.info, a research project exposing kleptocrats from Eurasia in the West. Ilya is an Academy Associate at Chatham House where he was a Fellow and also continues as an energy consultant for western companies working in developing countries. In September 2018 Council on Foreign Relations will publish Ilya's report on Energy Reform in Ukraine.

Does Diversity Matter for Health? Experimental Evidence from Oakland

Abstract:

We study the effect of diversity in the physician workforce on the demand for preventive care among African-American men. Black men have the lowest life expectancy of any major demographic group in the U.S., and much of the disadvantage is due to chronic diseases which are amenable to primary and secondary prevention. In a field experiment in Oakland, California, we randomize black men to black or non-black male medical doctors and to incentives for one of the five offered preventives - the flu vaccine. We use a two-stage design, measuring decisions about cardiovascular screening and the flu vaccine before (ex ante) and after (ex post) meeting their assigned doctor. Black men select a similar number of preventives in the ex-ante stage but are much more likely to select every preventive service, particularly invasive services, once meeting with a doctor who is of the same race. The effects are most pronounced for men who mistrust the medical system and for those who experienced greater hassle costs associated with their visit. Subjects are more likely to talk with a black doctor about their health problems and black doctors are more likely to write additional notes about the subjects. The results are more consistent with better patient-doctor communication during the encounter rather than the differential quality of doctors or discrimination. our finding suggests black doctors could help reduce cardiovascular mortality by 16 deaths per 100,000 per year - leading to a 19% reduction in the black-white male gap in cardiovascular mortality.

Marcella Alsan, MD, MPH, PhD

Associate Professor of Medicine and Core Faculty Member at the Center for Health Policy and Primary Care and Outcomes Research, Stanford University

Marcella Alsan, MD, MPH, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine and a Core Faculty Member at the Center for Health Policy / Primary Care and Outcomes Research. Alsan received a BA from Harvard University, a master’s in international public health from Harvard School of Public Health, a MD from Loyola University, and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University. Alsan trained at Brigham and Women’s Hospital - in the Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency Fellowship - then combined the PhD with an Infectious Disease Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Alsan attends in infectious disease at the Veterans Affairs Hospital.

Dr. Kenneth Dekleva's talk is one of the first times that a leadership analysis/political psychology profile of North Korea's Kim Jong Un has been presented in an academic setting.  He will discuss how such a profile can be useful to academic scholars, policy makers, and the national security community.

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TITLE:  The China Wide Web:  The information Dilemma and the Domestsication of  Cyberspace

Qitong Tom Cao
Major:  Political Science; Computer Science (minor); MS&E (Computational Social Science) (coterm)

Abstract:

In order to preempt severe public discontent, an authoritarian government needs its citizens to convey their true political attitudes. But it does not want their attitudes to be communicated among themselves, which may trigger protests or even subversion in case widespread dissatisfaction exists and becomes citizens common knowledge. This information dilemma thus poses a fundamental threat to the stability and governance of all authoritarian regimes. This thesis, however, argues that the Chinese government is resolving the information dilemma through an innovative approach  by domesticating its internet. On this domestic cyberspace, social media companies delete unfavorable content and report user data to the regime, which can be analyzed to reveal citizens true political attitudes. As such, the government manages both to restrict communication of discontent and to gain knowledge of the political inclination of the public. I will demonstrate formally that this domestic cyberspace presents an optimal solution for authoritarian regimes, and that the Chinese government could attract the bulk of their internet users to the domestic cyberspace despite its inability to fully block access to foreign websites. Finally, I will show empirically that domestic social media also helps increase propaganda efficacy, which reduces perceived level of discontent and further consolidates regime stability. Together, this strategy may potentially afford the regime an information advantage enormous enough to secure its stability without fear of overthrow.

TITLE:  Whose California?  Power, Property Rights, and the Legacy of the 1851 California Land Act

Marin Callaway
Major: International Relations; Spanish (minor)
 

Abstract:

Health Economics and Policy by Victor Fuchs

With Introductions by Douglas K. Owens and Stanford Dean of Medicine Lloyd B. Minor

Remarks by Victor Fuchs

"Riding Two Horses Without Splitting Your Pants"

Luncheon at 11:30, before talk

How does Southeast Asia incentivize a major power like China to exercise restraint, particularly in the ongoing dispute in the South China Sea (SCS)? Prof. Huang will argue that regional consensus, interactive deliberations, and insulated negotiation settings are most likely to induce China to shift its policy in the SCS toward supporting regional initiatives that it previously deflected, resisted, or opposed, and toward reevaluating the efficacy of using force. Conversely, regional disunity and fragmentation would render China more likely to practice power politics. Without joint influence, the states of Southeast Asia are unlikely to alter China’s preference for pursuing its interests in the SCS by coercive means intended to minimize the capabilities of other claimant states and thereby sustain its unilateral approach to maritime security.

A key question for this research is the extent to which confidence-building diplomacy based on voluntary cooperation between China and Southeast Asia can cultivate habits of avoiding conflict without the binding agreements and formal sanctioning mechanisms that have proven so hard to negotiate. Preliminary findings suggest the need for scholars and practitioners to be more creative, precise, and consistent in studying and suggesting how Southeast Asia can project and implement its security norms in ways that incentivize change in the foreign policy paradigm of an imposing external power.

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RSVP required: Click here to register.

This is a book talk with Carter Eckert, the author of Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea: The Roots of Militarism, 1866-1945

Discussants:
Barak Kushner: Reader in Japanese History, University of Cambridge
Yumi Moon, Associate Professor of History, Stanford University

About the book:
For South Koreans, the twenty years from the early 1960s to late 1970s were the best and worst of times—a period of unprecedented economic growth and of political oppression that deepened as prosperity spread. In this masterly account, Carter J. Eckert finds the roots of South Korea’s dramatic socioeconomic transformation in the country’s long history of militarization—a history personified in South Korea’s paramount leader, Park Chung Hee.

For more information about this event, please visit CEAS event website.

This event is sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies, APARC Korea Program, Department of History, Stanford Humanities Center, and the FSI Japan Fund.

Public procurement accounts for a substantial portion of the taxpayers' money: approximately 12% of GDP and 29% of government expenditure in OECD countries. Governments are expected to carry it out efficiently and with high standards of conduct to ensure sustainable growth. In this talk, Lee will explain the unique auction system in South Korea's public procurement market, and discuss how government purchases can lead firms and the economy to grow. Firms that obtain short term public procurement contracts experience increased growth and activity, above the effects of the activity associated with the public contract, and this is observed especially among small, young and financially-constrained firms. Lee will also draw policy implications from those findings.

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