About the event: Over the last two decades, the United States has supported a range of militias, rebels, and other armed groups in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Critics have argued that such partnerships have many perils, from enabling human rights abuses to seeding future threats. Is it possible to work with such forces but mitigate some of these risks? In Illusions of Control: Dilemmas in Managing U.S. Proxy Forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Erica L. Gaston explores U.S. efforts to do just that, drawing on a decade of field research and hundreds of interviews with stakeholders to unpack the dilemmas of attempting to control proxy forces.

The book has been described by reviewers as a "grim but necessary autopsy of America’s policy failures” in the last two decades (Ariel Ahram) and a book that casts light on the "moral hazards and strategic pitfalls of partnerships forged in war" (H.R. McMaster). Gaston’s conclusions not only suggest a greater need for strategic thinking in how risks are managed and weighed in U.S. Security Policy, but also help nuance the academic frameworks and lenses used to understand proxy warfare dynamics. By combining insights and tools from the fields of international relations that incorporate a more diverse set of international actors with domestic bargaining and organizational theory, the book helps to expand the theoretical toolkit for understanding foreign policy generation.

About the speaker: Dr. Erica Gaston is Head of the Conflict Prevention Programme at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s SIPA programme. Her most recent book with Columbia University Press, Illusions of Control: Dilemmas of Managing U.S. Proxy Forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, was recently short-listed for the Conflict Research Society’s Book of the Year Prize 2025. Her prior academic articles and book compendiums have considered changing norms and practices within international humanitarian law.

She has a B.A from Stanford University, a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, and a PhD from Cambridge University.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Scholars of nuclear brinkmanship have long debated whether nuclear crises are dominated by a balance of resolve, or whether nuclear superiority may offset that balance in favor of the more technologically advanced competitor. Recent studies indicate the latter, suggesting that the high accuracy of modern strategic weapons may have ushered in a “new era of counterforce dominance.” The state that masters those weapons, they argue, can steel their resolve if they become confident in their ability to eliminate an adversary’s retaliatory nuclear forces in a disarming first strike. Yet these counterforce enthusiasts overlook an important technological headwind: the complexity of advanced weapon systems can confound nuclear planners’ ability to predict their performance in a real nuclear exchange. This challenge is particularly acute for counterforce systems that cannot be tested in operational settings, and whose failure would bring catastrophic consequences on their user. Drawing from scholarship in complexity theory and science and technology studies, Lawrence argues that nuclear competitions are also beset by a balance of nuclear humility: States with more grandiose, technically demanding nuclear doctrines can be less confident in their knowledge, must work harder to retain their capabilities, and can hence be less certain in the success of their nuclear missions. More humble competitors may address their vulnerabilities with relatively modest innovation, and fret less over vagaries of the unknown. Crucially, the advantages and disadvantages of technological humility can run against those traditionally associated with the balances of capability and resolve. Lawrence illustrates this dynamic by constructing a Monte Carlo simulation of a counterforce strike with modern US strategic missiles on China’s silo-based missile force. He shows that small variations in parameters that cannot be known to the attacker with certainty correspond to wide variation in strike outcomes. The resulting uncertainty in costs to the attacker complicates popular strategic theories of damage limitation.

About the speaker: Christopher Lawrence is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and International Affairs in Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. He studies the histories of U.S. nonproliferation engagement with North Korea and Iran, as well as the epistemic communities in the West that create knowledge about those countries’ nuclear programs. His academic writing has been published in International Security, Social Studies of Science, Journal of Applied Physics, and IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. He has also written policy analysis for various online publications, including Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and War on the Rocks.

Prior to Joining SFS, Christopher carried out postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation; Harvard’s Program on Science, Technology and Society and Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; and Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security. He carried out his PhD dissertation in Nuclear Science and Engineering at University of Michigan, where he developed novel neutron-spectroscopy techniques for characterizing nuclear warhead components for treaty verification.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Nuclear power in Eastern Europe has been framed in various ways depending on political context: as a uranium state-building project, a key element of international decarbonization efforts, a model for reducing energy dependence on Russia, and an environmental risk slated for phase-out. Yet, one crucial aspect remains overlooked: how gendered expertise has sustained Bulgaria’s nuclear industry for decades—and how it remains entangled with the social hierarchies shaping nuclear energy production.

This talk draws on ethnographic and historical research, along with footage from a film-in-progress, to explore the labor, expertise, and social lives of women working in nuclear spaces along the Danube River. It focuses on two key sites: the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant, which continues to expand, and the Belene Nuclear Power Plant, a stalled project since the end of socialism. As laboratory technicians, construction managers, and power plant engineers, these women navigated state socialist labor policies, shifting gender expectations, and the demands of both career and family. Their perspectives offer deeper insight not only into the evolving role of women’s expertise in the nuclear power industry but also into how human labor itself is being reconfigured in relation to aging nuclear infrastructures—whether left to decay or reimagined as part of the “green” energy transition.

About the speaker: Elana Resnick is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and leads the Infrastructural Inequalities Research Group. Her published work includes articles in American Anthropologist (2021), American Ethnologist (2024), Cultural Anthropology (2024), Journal of Contemporary Archaeology (2018), and Public Culture (2023). Her forthcoming book, Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe, will be published by Stanford University Press in July 2025.

Resnick’s scholarship has received multiple awards, including the 2022 American Anthropological Association GAD Prize for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship, the 2023 Women’s Forum Article Prize from the British Association for Slavonic & East European Studies, and the 2024 Association of Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS) Heldt Prize for the Best Article in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Women’s and Gender Studies. Her current research focuses on the environmental and social politics surrounding nuclear power development and decommissioning in Europe. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and has received research support from the Wilson Center, the Council for European Studies, the School for Advanced Research, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Fulbright Program.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

All images are copyrighted and may not be reproduced, copied, or used without explicit written permission.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

SCCEI Seminar Series (Spring 2025)

Friday, May 16, 2025 | 12:00 pm -1:20 pm Pacific Time
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way

Renegotiating Patriarchy: Property, Lineage, and Gender Inequality in Contemporary China

Gender wealth gaps persist across societies, often attributed to individual factors such as education, work experience, and lifetime earnings. However, structural inequalities rooted in traditional patriarchal kinship systems—characterized by patrilocal marriages and patrilineal inheritance—systematically exclude women from inheriting family wealth. To examine how women and their families navigate these institutional barriers in wealth and inheritance, I conduct original surveys and field research in China, where rapid economic and demographic transformations coexist with enduring patriarchal norms. Specifically, I demonstrate that in the Chinese context, where surname inheritance is closely tied to wealth inheritance, declining fertility rates, coupled with economic and cultural shifts, have spurred growing public support for assigning maternal surnames to children. I further show that this renegotiation of patrilineal practices surrounding surnames and lineage enables Chinese women to maintain a closer bond and secure greater support from their natal families. These findings shed light on the mechanisms through which social change unfolds within patriarchal systems and reveal key conditions for women’s empowerment in the private domain.

Please register for the event to receive email updates and add it to your calendar. Lunch will be provided.

About the Speaker 
 

Fangqi Wen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Ohio State University. Before joining OSU, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University and a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Sociology at ​Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. She received her PhD in Sociology from New York University.

Fangqi’s research centers on the relationships among social institutions, demography, and gender inequality. Specifically, she examines the sources of inequality and how women and their families renegotiate patriarchal social norms. Additionally, she studies social stratification and mobility in historical settings and investigates the misperceptions of inequality and social mobility in the contemporary world. Her work has appeared in academic journals such as Demography, Social Science Research, Population and Development Review, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and has been featured in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and South China Morning Post.

Questions? Contact Xinmin Zhao at xinminzhao@stanford.edu
 

Dr. Janar Pekarev, a Stanford Global Digital Governance Fellow, will present his research exploring the impact of AI on military decision-making and the nuances of AI-driven command and control. His work uses simulated scenarios with AI feedback ranging from accurate to intentionally flawed. It measures decision accuracy, decision time, and user confidence to determine how varying AI feedback influences the quality and speed of decisions.

The research integrates a machine learning model and an override-rule module within an end-user interface. It operationalizes key principles of the laws of war—distinction, proportionality, and military necessity—through scenario simulations and a blend of qualitative and quantitative metrics. A stepwise experimental design enables a close examination of human-machine interaction dynamics, particularly how the transparency of AI reasoning affects human trust, decision-making biases, and ethical judgments under uncertainty. Though conceptual at this stage, the intent is to facilitate broad empirical validation and interdisciplinary collaboration, thereby augmenting our understanding of adaptive, transparent, and ethically grounded human-machine teaming in military operations.

The Global Digital Governance Fellows program is a joint initiative with Stanford Libraries, Vabamu, and Estonia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

About the Author

Dr. Janar Pekarev is a Global Digital Governance Fellow in the Program in Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Janar holds the rank of Major with more than 20 years in the Estonian military. He is a Fellow at the Estonian Military Academy and a member of multiple NATO STO research groups, including SAS-MSG-ET-FV (Emerging and Disruptive Technology) and NATO STO SAS-160 (Ethical, Legal, and Moral Impacts of Novel Technologies on NATO’s Operational Advantage), as well as an Estonian Ministry of Defence project on cognitive warfare against a superior adversary. Holding a PhD in Sociology and a BA in Law from the University of Tartu, he adopts an interdisciplinary approach that integrates law, military science and technology, and sociology. His research focuses on human-machine teaming within the military domain, with particular emphasis on AI weaponization and the moral programming of the use of force. He has contributed to the field through numerous publications in journals and presentations at academic conferences.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Several studies have underscored the significance of familiarity and collegiality in shaping judicial behaviors in U.S. federal courts. However, the distinct features of the U.S. judicial system might not always offer the most appropriate framework for examining cognitive biases. This research utilizes an extensive dataset of 84,335 decisions from Taiwanese appellate courts on civil cases to explore the impact of familiarity within a career judge system. Contrary to the U.S., in Taiwan, lower court judges are temporarily promoted to appellate courts for three years, after which they return to their district courts for further tenure. By examining the judicial actions during their initial and subsequent promotions, and contrasting these with the practices of permanent appellate judges, Dr. Chang and his associates identify similar biases among Taiwanese judges as those previously reported in the literature. The large and diverse nature of their dataset, along with the random allocation of court cases in Taiwan, strengthens the claim that judicial biases are widespread and consistent across various legal systems. Moreover, Dr. Chang and his associates specify two distinct sources of familiarity, differentiating them clearly from collegiality, thus enriching the understanding of the intricate factors that influence judicial decision-making.

Speaker:

Yun-chien Chang is the Jack G. Clarke Professor in East Asian Law at Cornell Law School and Director of the Clarke Program in East Asian Law & Culture. Prior to joining Cornell, he was a Research Professor at the Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Prof. Chang is the (co-)author or (co-)editor of 20 books and has published over 160 journal articles and book chapters. He is a co-editor of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies and serves as an Associate Reporter for the Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property. He is President Emeritus of the Asian Law and Economics Association and a director of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies. His current research interests include the economic, empirical, and comparative analysis of private law—particularly property law—as well as empirical studies of judicial systems. Prof. Chang holds J.S.D. from New York University School of Law and earned his LL.B. and LL.M. from National Taiwan University. He is also a member of the Taiwan bar.