About the event: Autonomous weapons systems (AWS) have sparked significant debate in international politics and research, especially regarding their ‘critical functions’ of target selection and engagement without human intervention or control. As a response to potential ethical and legal concerns, as well as security-related risks, AWS have been subject to an ongoing international regulation process at the United Nations since 2014. The primary focus of this process has been on maintaining human control over the use of force. However, since its initiation more than a decade ago, no regulatory framework has been agreed upon and core concepts, such as human control, are still highly contested.

Anna's research investigates why the regulation of AWS have not been successful (so far) by analyzing the co-production of weapons technology and arms control politics. In this talk, she shows that it is not solely determined by state interests. Rather, it is influenced by a complex interplay of knowledge production practices and discourses both within and outside of these processes. Moreover, with recent developments in and applications of artificial intelligence (AI), new questions about the nature of human-machine relations in war come to the fore, further complicating the regulatory landscape.

About the speaker: Anna-Katharina Ferl is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative (SERI) at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the regulation of artificial intelligence and autonomy as well as the practices of knowledge production in international security. Anna received her PhD from the University of Frankfurt in 2024 and previously worked as a researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). In addition to academic publications, she has also contributed to several policy reports on topics such as German arms control policies and gender-specific aspects of new technologies in international security.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Research shows that women are less likely to protest and have less cellphone access than men. Since studies indicate that cellphones can boost protest participation, we ask whether the gender gap in mobile ownership influences gender disparities in protest turnout. We find that the growing gender digital divide in cellphone ownership exacerbates the participation gap. We use survey data from Africa to show that where women systematically own fewer cellphones than men, they protest less frequently than men. We use a variety of methodological techniques to address concerns of endogeneity. We also probe one mechanism underpinning this relationship; we demonstrate that women who do not own cellphones face a political information disadvantage that limits their engagement. We conclude that unequal cellphone access further entrenches women’s position on the political margins.

This paper was co-authored with Tiffany Barnes, Emily Rains and Jingwen Wu.

About the speaker: Jakana Thomas is Associate Professor in the School of Global Policy and Strategy and Department of Political Science at University of California San Diego. Her research focuses on political violence and conflict processes with an emphasis on understanding women’s participation in and experiences with contentious politics. Her work has been published at the leading Political Science and International Relations journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics and International Organization, among other outlets. She is PI on a Blue Shield Foundation funded project examining Californians’ experiences with violence across their lifespans (CalVEX).

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

After more than three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, international support for Ukraine is coming under increasing attack, even as it is more important than ever to safeguard Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty. 

This paper builds on two waves of online public opinion surveys in eight countries bordering Ukraine and/or Russia (Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan) to analyze the drivers of popular attitudes towards the war among citizens of neighboring countries, and identify the factors that may counter the growing war fatigue and the barrage of misinformation and propaganda from Russia (and increasingly from Western politicians). We also present the results of a pre-registered survey experiment, in which respondents were selectively exposed to an empathy induction prompt that encouraged them to reflect on the challenges of daily life in war-time Ukraine, and tests the impact of this empathy treatment on different dimensions of support for Ukraine.

Speaker: Grigore Pop-Eleches

I am a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the Politics Department at Princeton University. I joined the Princeton faculty in 2003 after receiving my PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley. I am co-director of the Princeton Workshop on Post-Communist Politics(Link is external).

My main current research interests are in comparative political behavior with a focus on authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes (largely in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union). I have also worked on comparative and international political economy of Eastern Europe and Latin America, and on democratization and democratic backsliding, with a focus on the role of electoral behavior and political parties.

My first book, entitled "From Economic Crisis to Reform: IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe" was published by Princeton University Press in February 2009. My second book, "Communism's Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes" (joint with Joshua A. Tucker), was published in 2017 by Princeton University Press. My work has also appeared in a variety of academic journals, including The American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, Studies in Comparative International Development, and East European Politics and Societies.

REDS: RETHINKING EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY

The REDS Seminar Series aims to deepen the research agenda on the new challenges facing Europe, especially on its eastern flank, and to build intellectual and institutional bridges across Stanford University, fostering interdisciplinary approaches to current global challenges.

REDS is organized by The Europe Center and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and co-sponsored by the Hoover Institution and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Learn more about REDS and view past seminars here.

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How Transnational Conservative Networks Target Sexual and Gender Minorities

In the past three decades, remarkable progress has been made in numerous countries for the rights of individuals marginalized due to their sexual orientation and gender identity. The advancements in LGBTI rights in a variety of diverse countries can largely be attributed to the tireless efforts of the transnational LGBTI-rights movement, forward-thinking governments in pioneering nations, and the evolving human rights frameworks of international organizations. However, this journey towards equality has been met with formidable opposition. An increasingly interconnected and globally networked resistance, backed by religious-nationalist elements and conservative governments, has emerged to challenge LGBTI and women's rights, even seeking to reinterpret and co-opt international human rights law.

In this lecture, Phillip Ayoub draws on his new book with Kristina Stöckl to investigate this complex landscape, drawing from over a decade of in-depth fieldwork with LGBTI activists, anti-LGBTI proponents, and various state and international organization actors. Moral conservative TANs have employed many of the same transnational tools that garnered LGBTIQ people their widespread recognition. As the double-helix metaphor suggests, rival TANs have a reciprocal relationship, having to navigate each other’s presence in an interactive space and thus using related strategies and instruments for mutually exclusive ends."

Phillip M. Ayoub is a professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at University College London. He is the author of four books and volumes, including When States Come Out: Europe’s Sexual Minorities and the Politics of Visibility (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and his articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Social Forces, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, the European Journal of International Relations, the European Journal of Political Research, the Review of International Studies, Mobilization, the European Political Science Review, the Journal of Human Rights, Social Politics, Political Research Quarterly, and Social Movement Studies, among others. Further information can be found under www.phillipayoub.com.

About the event: In this talk, Elena Kempf shares material from her forthcoming book on the history of weapons prohibitions in international law from the 1860s to the 1970s.

She argues that weapons prohibitions during this period emerged as a central site of contestation about the limits of the legitimate application of new technologies to war. These debates involved diplomats and international lawyers, but also medical professionals, scientists, and journalists. From their efforts, two ways of justifying a prohibition on a weapon emerged. The first repurposed the old legal concept of unnecessary suffering to newly weigh wounding against the abilities of military surgeons. The second was based on the specter of injury to global systems like shipping lines or the obliteration of major cities.

To revisit the early history of weapons prohibitions under international law is to uncover an expansive vocabulary that might animate future efforts at prohibition or control. This history also reveals the limits of outlawing weapons under international law. Law and technology changed at different velocities, leading to persistent distortions between moral-legal expectations and technical realities. In addition, the project of weapons prohibitions remained fragile, contested by techno-optimist, militarist, and pacifist critics.

About the speaker: Elena Kempf is the Old Dominion Career Development Assistant Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on the legal regulation of modern weapons of war. She is currently completing a manuscript on the history of weapons prohibitions in international law from the 1860s to the 1970s. She is also drafting a paper on the history of the concept of unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury. Prior to joining MIT, she was a postdoctoral fellow with the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law at UC Berkeley Law School, and a lecturer with the Department of History at Stanford University. Professor Kempf earned her PhD in History from UC Berkeley in 2021.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

With the collapse of the Japanese Empire in August 1945, the Korean peninsula erupted with hopes and dreams that had been bottled up for nearly forty years. Kornel Chang's new book, A Fractured Liberation: Korea under U.S. Occupation (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2025), tells the story of how Koreans—from political leaders and activists to ordinary peasants, workers, and women—experienced the shock of liberation, what they thought it might bring, the great expectations, and the opportunities and challenges they faced as a newly emancipated people. The book also looks at how the entry of American forces complicated, and ultimately, narrowed possibilities for liberation. U.S. officials fought over how to best fulfill Korean aspirations and how they should be prioritized among competing objectives in Korea. An eclectic group of American and Korean reformers—New Deal liberals, Christian socialists, and trade unionists—proposed an agenda of democratization and reform as an alternative to the rigid anti-communism of the military high command. Their stories reveal the paths not taken. In telling them, A Fractured Liberation restores contingency to a narrative that looks ahead to war and division as an inevitable endpoint.
 

Kornel Chang is Associate Professor of History and American Studies and Chair of the History Department at Rutgers University-Newark. His first book Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands is a history of Asian migration to the Pacific Northwest, revealing how their movements sparked some of the first battles over the border in North America. It won the Association for Asian American Studies History Book Prize and was a finalist for the John Hope Franklin Book Prize. His second book, A Fractured Liberation: Korea under U.S. Occupation, recently published by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, is a narrative history of southern Korea in the aftermath of World War II, when the collapse of the Japanese Empire ushered in an extraordinary moment of promise and possibility that ultimately ended in political tragedy.

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