About the Topic: Four decades of Soviet nuclear testing left behind a legacy of radioactive contamination in a sizable area of contemporary Kazakhstan. My research examines the social consequences and lasting implications of this on local populations living in a village of Koyan. Taking the 1949-1989 Soviet atomic weapons program and the secretive Cold War context as my starting point, I investigate local understandings of health and livelihood on a landscape marred by atomic testing and one continuously inhabited by rural Kazakhs for generations. I demonstrate that since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the advent of free market reforms in Kazakhstan a new kind of post-socialist identity has appeared. Furthermore, in order to navigate this post-Soviet social order and cultural marginalization, people in Koyan have “embraced” nuclear pollution as something natural in their environment. Specifically, they see their own survival as proof that they have evolved to fit a radioactive ecosystem. My Kazakh colleagues say “clean air is our death,” meaning that moving away from these damaged ecosystems will kill them. Emerging strategies for survival reflect a new social order in Kazakhstan: that order embraces a nuclear future by agreeing to accept funding to become a Global Nuclear Fuel Bank and a dumping ground for much of the West’s toxic waste, while at the same time publicly lamenting its Soviet nuclear past. I address how people in Koyan have learned to engage with the nuclear test site’s past, present state practices, scientific expertise and authority, and how health, suffering, and notions of well-being constitute a new post-socialist identity.

About the Speaker: Magdalena Stawkowski received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her dissertation, “Radioactive Knowledge: State Control of Scientific Information in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan,” is based on sixteen months of field work in the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site region and is an ethnographic account of the local understandings of health, livelihood, and suffering among rural ethnic Kazakh communities. In it, Magdalena traces the lesser-known history of the Soviet nuclear program from the perspective of people who were most affected by its military-industrial complex, exploring how they cope with their own present-day toxic environments. She is a recipient of an award for outstanding contribution to the anti-nuclear movement by Olzhas Suleimenov, the Ambassador of Kazakhstan to UNESCO, Kazakh poet, and the founder of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Anti-Nuclear Movement in Kazakhstan. Magdalena’s recent co-authored article appeared in the Journal of the History of Biology and is titled “James V. Neel and Yuri E. Dubrova: Cold War Debates and the Genetic Effects of Low Dose Radiation.”

About the Topic: Foreign aid for health in low- and middle-income countries has increased five-fold over the past 25 years. Between 2005 and 2010, health aid made up more than 30% of all health spending in low-income countries.  Global health is also an increasingly important component of U.S. foreign aid, rising steadily from under 4% of all U.S. non-military aid in 1990 to 22.7% in 2011. There is growing evidence for the role of health aid in improving health among recipient countries, but is that it? In this talk I will address the arguments for and against health as a focus of aid efforts and present initial evidence on the role of health aid on human capital and economic development.

About the Speaker: Eran Bendavid is an infectious diseases physician and an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Medical Disciplines and a Stanford Health Policy affiliate. His research interests involve understanding the relationship between policies and health outcomes in developing countries. He explores how decisions about foreign assistance for health are made, and how those decisions affect the health of those whom assistance aims to serve.

He received a B.A. in chemistry and philosophy from Dartmouth College, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases at Stanford.

Abstract: Professor Philip Morrison once described SETI as the ‘archeology of the future’.  That characterization is both complex and immensely profound. We are a very young technology in a very old galaxy; detection of another technological civilization will validate the proposition that it is possible to become an old technology. 

SETI marked its semi-centennial as a scientific exploration in 2010. Now that exoplanets have been discovered in such abundance and diversity, and Earth 2.0 is a reasonable expectation, it seems more relevant than ever to ask the “Are we alone?” question.  What should we be doing to improve our capability to detect intelligent life beyond Earth? 

To date, technology has been our proxy for intelligence, and our searches have concentrated on electromagnetic radiation.  Should we be emphasizing artifacts? Perhaps collaborating with programs now systematically trying to explore our local solar neighborhood to find small bodies on collision courses with Earth?  Is there a case for genomic SETI?  Should we consider other information-carrying particles in addition to photons?  And if we do continue to emphasize EM signals, how do we improve our sensitivity to transient events, and what other portions of the spectrum can we explore?  Is it time to start transmitting instead of just listening?

There are lots of technical questions about how to move forward, but the most difficult question of all may be how do we integrate and support this vast, and potentially long-term endeavor into a world of short-term thinking?  How do we justify continued investment in SETI?  

About the Speaker: Dr. Jill Tarter holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.  Tarter received her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley.  She is a Fellow of the AAAS and of the California Academy of Sciences, where she also serves on the Board of Trustees.  She is passionate about science education and strives to secure funding for SETI research, particularly with the Allen Telescope Array.  Tarter’s work has brought her wide recognition, including two Public Service Medals from NASA.  In 2004 Time Magazine named her one of the Time 100 most influential people in the world.  Tarter was one of three TED prizewinners in 2009, and was a recipient of the Silicon Valley Women of Influence 2010 Award.  Many people are now familiar with her work as portrayed by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact.

Abstract: Biotechnology is diffusing globally. Efficient methods for reading, writing and editing genetic information, generating genetic diversity, and selecting for traits, are becoming widely available. Increasingly, the capacity to manipulate living systems is in the hands of individuals and small groups instead of only large institutions and states.

In this presentation I will explore key governance challenges coupled to the reorganization of practitioner communities and supply chains in biotechnology. In particular, I will examine the effectiveness of strategies proposed by new US federal policies for the oversight of so-called Life Sciences Dual-Use Research of Concern (DURC): experiments that while seeking to mitigate certain risks may pose new ones. More broadly, I will consider options and tradeoffs in building more centralized versus decentralized organizational structures for identifying and responding to emerging biotechnology opportunities and threats.

About the Speaker: Dr. Megan J. Palmer is a William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at CISAC for 2013-2015. She is also a research scientist UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, and serves on the advisory board for the synthetic biology program at the Joint Genomics Institute (JGI). Dr. Palmer is an investigator for the NSF Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (Synberc) and serves as its Deputy Director of Policy & Practices. She was previously a postdoctoral scholar in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford, where she first joined CISAC as an affiliate in 2012.

Dr. Palmer’s work seeks to develop and advise on best practices and policies for responsibly advancing biotechnology. She has directed projects in biological safety and security, property rights, and governance. She has also launched many programs on the societal aspects of biotechnology.

Dr. Palmer holds a Ph.D. in Biological Engineering from MIT. She received a B.Sc.E. in Engineering Chemistry from Queen’s University, Canada.

Speakers:

Timothy Garton Ash - Professor of European Studies at University of Oxford

Li Qiang (commentator) - Professor, School of Government at Peking University

Timothy Garton Ash is the author of In Europe’s Name, History of the Present, Facts are Subversive, and other books of political writing or ‘history of the present’ which have charted the transformation of Europe over the last thirty years. He is Professor of European Studies in the University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and he writes a weekly column in the Guardian.

Li Qiang is Professor of Political Science at the School of Government at Peking University, Director for Development Planning Department, and Director of Center for European Studies at Peking University.