Stanford University

What we have Learned about Iraq from the Ba`th Party Archives

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Abstract:

Determining the specificities of everyday political life in one of the 20th century's most notorious dictatorships – Iraq under Saddam Hussein – is possible as a result of the availability of more than ten million internal security force and Ba`th party documents recovered after the overthrow of the Iraqi regime in 2003. The documents associated with this collection, which is currently housed at Stanford's University's Hoover Institution, provide a rich picture of the everyday practices of Iraq's highly repressive autocracy.  Using data from these captured documents, I provide empirical evidence about the political practices of citizens living under highly difficult political circumstances.

 

Speaker Bio:

blaydes logo

Lisa Blaydes is an Associate Professor of Political Science and a faculty affiliate of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.  She is the author of Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt(Cambridge University Press, 2011).  Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review,International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.

Encina Hall 

Philippines conference room - 3rd floor Central 

Room C330

616 Serra St.

Stanford, CA

Lisa Blaydes Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty Affiliate Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University
Seminars

Climate Change, Sustainability and International Security

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Abstract:  The industrial and agricultural revolutions have profoundly transformed the world. However, an unintended consequence of these revolutions is that we are affecting the climate of Earth. I will describe the rapidly changing energy landscape, an “epidemiological” approach to assessing the risks of climate change, and its impact to international security. I will then give a perspective on mitigating these risks with science, technology and policy with emphasis on developing the lowest cost solution.

About the Speaker: Steven Chu is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Physics and Molecular & Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. His research spans atomic and polymer physics, biophysics, biology, biomedicine and batteries. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for the laser cooling and trapping of atoms.

From January 2009 until April 2013, Dr. Chu was the 12th U.S. Secretary of Energy and the first scientist to hold a cabinet position since Ben Franklin. During his tenure, he began ARPA-E, the Energy Innovation Hubs, the Clean Energy Ministerial meetings, and was tasked by President Obama to assist BP in stopping the Deepwater Horizon oil leak. Prior to his cabinet post, he was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Professor of Physics and Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, the Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University, and head of the Quantum Electronics Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Dr. Chu is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Sinica, and is a foreign member of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Korean Academy of Sciences and Technology. He has been awarded 24 honorary degrees, published more than 250 scientific papers, and holds 10 patents.

Steven Chu William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Physics and Molecular & Cellular Physiology Speaker Stanford University
Seminars

All Our Relations: Indigenous Rights Movements and the Bureaucratization of Indigeneity in Taiwan

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Abstract

Taiwan’s indigenous social movement, active since the 1980s, has successfully lobbied to get indigenous rights included in the Republic of China Constitution, to create a cabinet level Council of Indigenous Peoples, and to pass the 2005 Basic Law on Indigenous Peoples. Taiwan’s indigenous social activists have also become regular participants in United Nations indigenous events. Especially during the Chen Shui-bian presidency, foreign observers often suspected that the state instrumentalized “indigeneity” to claim a distinct identity from China. Events since 2008, however, demonstrate that the indigenous rights movement has maintained its own momentum and that the indigenous peoples have interests that cannot be reduced to issues of national identity or party politics. In fact, the indigenous people overwhelmingly support the KMT, and indigenous movements are involved in both “pro-unification” and “pro-independence” political networks.  Most indigenous social movement leaders, as well as ordinary indigenous people, hope that their movement can make progress in indigenous rights in ways that transcend the “blue” and “green” division between Han Taiwanese. This talk will explore the diversity of the indigenous movements, their mobilization strategies, and values since Ma Ying-jeou was elected President of the ROC in 2008.


Speaker Bio

Scott Simon holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from McGill University, and began his career working in the anthropology of development. Two separate research projects led to his books Tanners of Taiwan: Life Strategies and National Cultures (2005), as well as Sweet and Sour: Life-Worlds of Taipei Women Entrepreneurs (2003). He has worked extensively on ethnographic research with Truku and Sediq groups in both Hualien and Nantou counties of Taiwan since 2004. His third book - entitled Sadyaq Balae! L’autochtonie formosane dans tous ses états – was published in French by the Laval University Press. This book is an exploration of state-indigenous relations, including the social movements that often contest state projects on indigenous territory. He has in recent years, in annual trips to Taiwan, been working more closely with Truku-speaking trappers and hunters, who have been teaching him about ethno-biology and human-animal relations in addition to sharing their discontent about Taiwan’s legal regime that criminalizes most hunting activities. 

 

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Scott Simon Professor School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, Research Chair in Taiwan Studies, University of Ottawa
Seminars

Progress towards Ignition on the National Ignition Facility

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Abstract: Ignition has been a long sought-after goal needed to make fusion energy a viable alternative energy source, but ignition has yet to be achieved.  For an inertially confined fusion (ICF) [1] plasma to ignite, the plasma must be very well confined and very hot, to generate extremely high pressures needed for self-heating – achieving this state is not easy!  

In this talk, we will discuss the progress towards ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Northern California.  We will cover the some of the setbacks encountered during the progress of the research at NIF [2], but also cover the great advances that have been made. 
 

About the Speaker: Dr. Omar Hurricane is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and lead scientist for the High-foot Implosion Campaign on the NIF.  His research focuses on weapons physics, high energy density physics science, and plasma instability.  Dr. Hurricane has authored 60 journal publications and 60 conference papers, largely in the area of plasma physics and high-energy density physics (HEDP). He has received several awards and honors, including the U.S. Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for National Security and Nonproliferation (2009), five U.S. Department of Energy Defense Programs Recognition of Excellence Awards (2002, 2004, 2009 x 2, 2010), and three LLNL Directors Science & Technology awards (2010, 2011, and 2013).  Dr. Hurricane received his B.S. in Physics and Applied Mathematics from Metropolitan State University of Denver, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he was also a post-doc for four years.  Dr. Hurricane was also a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University (CISAC) in the 2010-2011 academic year. 

 


Progress towards ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF)
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Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Omar Hurricane Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, AX-Division Speaker Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Seminars

Japan's Development Cooperation: 60 Years History and its Prospects

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60 years have passed since Japan started its development cooperation in 1954.  Japan has undergone the process of a defeated country of World War II becoming an economic superpower in the 1970s-1980s to be stagnant in the succeeding two decades.  During these periods, Japan's financial contribution to development cooperation once reached the highest among the OECD countries in the 1990s. But recently Japan's financial contribution stays at 4th or 5th. How has the Japanese development cooperation evolved over the past six decades? What have been its characteristics? What are the current debates of future direction of Japan's development cooperation? What role does it play in overall Japan's diplomacy and international relations?

 

Mr. Ak

ihiko Tanaka is President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Before assuming the present post, he was Professor of International Politics at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies and at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo. Most recently he was Vice President of the University of Tokyo (2011-2012), Executive Vice President of the University of Tokyo (2009-2011), and Director of the Division of International Affairs of the University of Tokyo (2008-2010).

He obtained his B.A. in International Relations at the University of Tokyo in 1977 and his Ph.D. in Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981.

Mr. Tanaka’s specialties include theories of international politics, contemporary international relations in East Asia, and Japan’s foreign policy. He has numerous books and articles in Japanese and English including the New Middle Ages: The World System in the 21st Century (Tokyo: The International House of Japan, 2002).

He received the Medal with Purple Ribbon for his academic achievements in 2012.

 

 

Akihiko Tanaka President Speaker President, Japan International Cooperation Agency
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

Rethinking the First World War from the Perspective of International Law

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About the Topic: Re-establishing and strengthening the rule of international law in 
international affairs was a central Allied aim in the First World War. Revisionism in its many 
forms has erased this from our memory, and with it the meaning of the war. Imperial 
Germany’s actions and justifications for its war conduct amounted to proposing an entirely 
different set of international-legal principles from those that other European states recognized 
as public law. This talk examines what those principles were and what implications they had 
for the legal world order.
 
About the Speaker: Isabel V. Hull received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1978 and 
has since then been teaching at Cornell University, where she is the John Stambaugh 
Professor of History. A German historian, her work has reached backward to 1600 and 
forward to 1918 and has focused on the history of sexuality, the development of civil society, 
military culture, and imperial politics and governance. She has recently completed a book 
comparing Imperial Germany, Great Britain, and France during World War I and the impact 
of international law on their respective conduct of the war. It will appear in Spring 2014 
under the title, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law in the First World 
War. Her talk is based on this latest research.

Central Conference Room, Encina Hall (2nd Floor)

Isabel Hull John Stambaugh Professor of History Speaker Cornell University
Seminars

The Cold War, Human Rights and Self-Determination

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About the Topic: During the Cold War countless peoples and movements in both the decolonizing world and the advanced industrial states mobilized under the banner of self-determination, and sought to institutionalize its status as a human right in international law. This talk, focusing on the end of European empire in the 1970s will explore why self-determination came to have such expansive and potentially disruptive meaning in the post-WWII era, serving as a short-hand for a wide range of claims to sovereignty.
 
About the Speaker: Brad Simpson is an assistant professor of history and international studies at Princeton University. His research and teaching interests are twentieth-century U.S. foreign relations and international history. His first book, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 (Stanford 2008) explores the intersection of anti-Communism and development thinking in shaping U.S. Indonesian relations. 
 
He is currently researching a global history of self-determination, exploring its political, cultural and legal descent through post 1945 US foreign relations and international politics. Simpson is also a founder and director of a project at the non-profit National Security Archive to declassify U.S. government documents concerning Indonesia and East Timor during the reign of General Suharto (1966-1998). He has recently published in International History Review, Cold War History, Reviews in American History, Diplomatic History, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Critical Asian Studies, and Peace and Change.

Encina Hall Basement, Room E008

Brad Simpson Assistant Professor of History and International Studies Speaker Princeton University
Seminars

Demystifying Postcolonial International History: Revelations from the Algerian Front of the Third World's Cold War

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Abstract: Despite growing interest in the phenomenon of Third World internationalism, the post-colonial world’s contribution to modern international history is still greatly under-appreciated. Important South-South dynamics are neglected in order to privilege a North-South framework of analysis, while excessive preoccupation with the discourse of the 1955 Bandung Conference obscures the substantive and changing nature of the Third World project. However, new evidence from countries like Algeria and the former Yugoslavia now make it possible to re-examine “Third Wordlism” as a geopolitical project and diffuse ideology. This paper argues that Third Worldism evolved from a subversive transnational phenomenon into a conservative and state-centric international one. By determining the nature of decolonization—that is, the universalization of the sovereign state model—Third Worldist forces helped to reshape the entire contemporary international system. Moreover, by stoking international tensions for their own advantage (contrary to the public rhetoric of the Non-Alignment Movement), countries like Algeria played an under-appreciated role in prolonging and globalizing the Cold War.

About the Speaker: Jeffrey James Byrne studied at Yale University and the London School of Economics, and is now Assistant Professor of history at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He writes on the international history of the twentieth century, with a particular interest in Africa, the Middle East, decolonization, and the connections between developing countries. His work has been published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Diplomatic History, and numerous essay collections. His first book, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria and the Third World’s Cold War, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2015.

Africa's Cold War
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Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Jeffrey Byrne Assistant Professor, Department of History Speaker University of Britsh Columbia
Seminars

Healthcare Entrepreneurs in East Asia – Innovations in Primary Care and Beyond

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AHPP and CEAS joint event

Three distinguished healthcare entrepreneurs will share their experiences in adding value within health systems of East Asia. Mr. Zhang, founder of iKang Healthcare Group, Inc., will share his experience with merging traditional healthcare with a versatile online platform to build a preventative healthcare service network in China. Dr. Yang will share his experience in Taiwan and China to analyze opportunities in China, and use a case study of MissionCare to exemplify Value-driven Business Transformation. Dr. Wei will share his vision for Borderless Healthcare Group.

Mr. Lee Ligang Zhang has been a successful entrepreneur and business executive since 1998, bringing his knowledge and acumen to a number of companies in his professional career that range from healthcare to the Internet. Mr. Zhang founded iKang Healthcare Group, Inc. (“iKang”) in December 2003, successfully merging traditional healthcare with a versatile online platform to build a preventative healthcare service network that spanned the entire country. This “anytime, anywhere” network was to become the blueprint for the industry that transformed how customers accessed healthcare services in China. Since its inception, Mr. Zhang has been serving as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and has overseen many important milestones in its lifetime. iKang was listed on the NASDAQ on April 9, 2014 and is currently the largest provider in China's fast growing private preventive healthcare services market, accounting for approximately 12.3% of market share in terms of revenue in 2013.

Prior to iKang, Mr. Zhang was a co-founder of eLong.com, a NASDAQ-listed online travel service company, and served as CEO of its China operation from 1999 to 2003. From 1998 to 1999, Mr. Zhang served as head of product development at Sohu.com, a leading NASDAQ-listed Chinese Internet company. Mr. Zhang founded the Harvard China Review in 1997 and co-founded the Harvard China Forum in 1998 while studying at Harvard University.

Mr. Zhang studied biology as an undergraduate student at Fudan University in China, and went on to receive a bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry from Concordia College in the US before obtaining a master's degree in genetics from Harvard University. Mr. Zhang has been a member of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Science Alumni Association Council since 2005, and also serves as Vice President of the Harvard Club of Beijing and the Shanghai Alumni Association at Fudan University.

Dr. Fred Hung-Jen Yang is a physician executive and is currently Chairman of MissionCare Inc,, and President of Healthcare Corporation of Asia, a company that owns and operates four community hospitals and seven long-term care facilities in northern Taiwan.

After graduating from National Taiwan University Medical School with an MD degree in 1994, Fred chose to pursue a career in healthcare management.  He earned a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from Harvard in 1995 and an MBA from the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, CA in 1997. Before going back to Taiwan in 1998, he worked as a financial analyst for Tenet Healthcare System, the second largest hospital chain in the US. He is currently a candidate in the doctorate program of Johns Hopkins Doctor of Public Health Part-time Program.

Since 1998, Dr. Yang has been actively serving  the MissionCare Group in many important capacities, such as Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operation Officer and, Chief Executive Officer.

Over the past ten years, Dr. Yang has made significant contributions not only to his company but also to the healthcare industry in Taiwan. Under his leadership, MissionCare became Taiwan’s first JCI accredited hospital, hence helping to elevate Taiwan’s healthcare quality to a higher level.

In addition to hospital management, Dr. Yang also excels at health economics, financial engineering and strategic management. In 2010, he received an Ernst & Young Taiwan Entrepreneur Award for conducting the successful listing of his company on the Taipei OTC, making it the only hospital group listed in Taiwan.

Dr. Wei Siang Yu is a globally renowned pioneer in healthcare TMT (Technology, Media and Telecommunication). He is the founder of Borderless Healthcare Group of companies which operates borderless healthcare initiatives around the world. Dr. Wei graduated as one of the top students at Monash Medical School in 1995 and went against the conventional career path of an honours student to become a medical inventor in the space of digital bio-communication. He gained worldwide recognition in his work on social application of digital bio-communication and became the youngest nominee of CNN People Choice Award in 2003. Dr. Wei’s work was featured by international media all around the world including Discovery Channel, CNN, BBC, Fox News, CNBC, ABC, Time, Wired, ZDF German TV, ARTE French TV, Japan TV, Yomiuri Shimbun, Korean SBS TV, Figaro, Asian Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Guardian UK, LA Times, Channel News Asia, Age, Sunday Times UK, Newsweek, Tatler, Bazaar, Marie Claire New York, Glamour Paris etc. Today, Dr. Wei chairs the Borderless Healthcare Group of companies with the key role of converging global healthcare practices with technology, media and telecommunication applications via strategic partnerships and merger & acquisition.

Philippines Conference Room

Encina Hall Central, 3rd Floor.

Stanford, CA 94305

 

 

Mr. Lee Ligang Zhang Chairman and CEO, Ikang Healthcare Croup, Inc.
Dr. Fred Hung-Jen Yang Chairman, MissionCare, Inc
Dr. Wei Siang Yu Founder, Borderless Healthcare Group
Seminars
Innovations in Primary Care

*NEW DATE* Does Judicial Independence Matter for Judicial Influence?

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Please note that this is a new date for this event.  It has been rescheduled from March 12th to May 7th, 2015.

 

Under what conditions is judicial independence from national governments necessary for judicial influence over national government action?  Some scholar argue that informal and sub constitutional factors matter more than "parchment protections", while others believe judicial independence is critical for judicial influence. Building off of a basic separation of powers argument, we demonstrate that formal institutional protections designed to ensure judicial independence should be critical only when elected officials are sufficiently unified, where "sufficiently unified" depends upon the design of the political system. That is, they are more than "parchment barriers" and less than necessary. To test the argument, we introduce a new cross-national database on high court constitutional review (CompLaw). The Complaw database is designed to systematically and consistently code data on high court constitutional decisions at a very fine-grained level across a large variety of political systems.

This talk is part of The Europe Center's "European Governance Seminar Series."

Professor Clifford Carrubba, Political Science, Emory University

 

Clifford J. Carrubba, B.A. (1991), Duke University; Ph.D (1998), Stanford University. Previous appointment at SUNY Stony Brook (Assistant Professor). Specialization: comparative legislative and judicial politics, comparative institutions, European politics, game theory. Current research projects include studies of legislative behavior and roll call vote analysis, the design and change of judicial institutions (with application to the European Court of Justice), and statistical tests of game theoretic models.

Carrubba is currently serving as the Director of The Institute for Quantitative Theory and Methods, developed and launched by Dr. Carrubba in December of 2011.

Does Judicial Independence Matter for Judicial Influence?
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Cliff Carrubba Professor of Political Science & Law by Courtesy Speaker Emory University
Seminars
European Governance
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