About the event: What are the prospects for arms control agreements between the United States and China? Conventional wisdom is pessimistic, pointing to recent tensions between great powers. Yet we still lack a comprehensive review of the history of arms control negotiations, placing the current context in perspective. This presentation presents some initial findings of a data collection effort, conducted jointly with Matthew Fuhrmann (Texas A&M). We identify close to 200 arms control agreements from 1816 to 2017. We conclude that arms control agreements have served very different purposes. Some have been symmetric, imposing restrictions on all parties involved, while others have been asymmetric, cementing a balance of power after a global shock or excluding third parties from a technology. These agreements follow different logics and symmetric agreements, which the United States would be pursuing with China, have been rare. Even setting aside recent tensions, arms control agreements would be challenging.

About the speaker: Alexandre Debs is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University, where he is also the Faculty Director of the Nuclear Security Program at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.

Alexandre’s research focuses on the causes of war and nuclear politics. His work has appeared in top political science and international relations journals. He is the author of the book Nuclear Politics: The Strategic Causes of Proliferation (with Nuno Monteiro), published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Since June 2024, Alexandre has been serving as Associate Editor of the American Political Science Review.

Alexandre received a Ph.D. degree in Economics from M.I.T., an M.Phil. in Economic and Social History from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and a B.Sc. in Economics and Mathematics from Universite de Montreal.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Harmful content on social media is a growing challenge with global consequences. Despite ongoing efforts to regulate major platforms, extremist groups continue to exploit gaps in content moderation to incite violence, recruit followers, and coordinate attacks.

In this talk, Tamar Mitts will present insights from her forthcoming book, Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism, which examines how militant and hate groups adapt their strategies in response to platform policies. Drawing on multi-platform data from over a hundred extremist organizations, Mitts reveals how inconsistent moderation across platforms creates safe havens where these actors evade detection, rebrand, and sustain their movements.

Mitts will argue that effectively addressing these challenges requires a paradigm shift -- moving beyond single "fixes" to recognize content moderation as a public policy challenge rather than a series of isolated platform decisions. Join us to explore how current efforts to combat harmful content often fall short, why extremist and hate groups remain so resilient online, and the questions we need to ask as we strive to better protect the digital public sphere from hate and violence.

About the speaker: Tamar Mitts is an Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a Faculty Member at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, the Institute of Global Politics, and the Data Science Institute. Her research examines how digital platforms and emerging technologies shape conflict, security, and democracy. Her forthcoming book, Safe Havens for Hate (Princeton University Press), explores how gaps in content moderation allow extremist and hate groups to evade enforcement, adapt, and mobilize across platforms. Her work has been published in leading journals, including American Political Science Review, International Organization, and Journal of Politics.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

The scholarly and popular commonsense about corruption in the Philippines is that the country has always been corrupt. Seventy-eight years of corruption as an independent state (1946-2024) may as well have been a thousand. Lay and scholarly accounts explain this continuity with respect to traditional values and premature democratization. In both accounts, corruption is all but genetic to Philippine culture or politics. To be sure, continuity is self-evident if we are looking only at corruption scandals—but scandals have been accompanied by anticorruption movements, broadly speaking. The two have gone hand-in-hand historically, suggesting that we need to understand them together. Taking them together, that is, focusing on their dialectic, produces, as I will show, a history of change. Specifically, how Filipinos relate to corruption has changed. They have become less tolerant of it in general and learned to embrace an anticorruption model of politics. How scholars and policymakers conceive of corruption has changed. They have come to adopt a view of corruption as a generic social problem, effectively disembedding it from society. These developments have enabled a more intolerant approach such that, today, the greater danger lies in an anticorruption “fundamentalism” leading to the rejection of politics altogether. Viewed as a whole, the history of corruption/anticorruption has been a popular struggle over what politics should look like, and thus we might read their dialectic as driving the progress of political modernization from below.

Marco Garrido is the author of The Patchwork City: Class, Space, and Politics in Metro Manila, which received multiple awards, including for best book in political and urban sociology. He is working on a second book, tentatively titled Bad Words, on the imbrication of corruption, politics, and the politics of knowledge in postcolonial Philippines.

In The Silent Withdrawal, Dian Zhong reveals a striking reversal in China’s once-celebrated gender equality, as women increasingly withdraw from the workforce despite higher education levels. Highlighting the policy missteps and the unintended consequences of pro-natalist measures, alongside the transformation of feminism from state collaboration to a force of resistance, Zhong calls for bold reforms to reconcile women’s economic empowerment with demographic challenges, steering China toward a more inclusive future.

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About the Author
 

Dian Zhong is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Hoover History Lab, focusing on the comparative histories of developing countries during the twentieth century. In addition to her Hoover appointment, Zhong also teaches the course 'Comparative Development of Latin America and East Asia' at Stanford University. Previously, Zhong was a lecturer in Portuguese at Beijing Foreign Studies University and a teaching and research assistant at the School of Government, Peking University.

Zhong is an experienced translator and interpreter proficient in Mandarin, Portuguese, and English, providing services for major international organizations such as the G20 and BRICS (the economic group of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). She has published extensively on topics such as the political economy of development, comparative political institutions, regime change, geopolitics, and China’s foreign policies toward Latin America. Her current research explores how rising feminism in China impacts existing challenges such as demographic shrinkage, risks of brain drain, labor market imbalances, and the transition from a low-skill, labor-intensive economy to a knowledge-based economy.

Zhong received her PhD in political science from Peking University.

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Please join us in-person in the Goldman Conference Room located within Encina Hall (616 Jane Stanford Way) on the 4th floor of the East wing. For more detailed information on venue location and parking instructions, please visit this webpage. 
 

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About the event: This January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock one second forward to 89 seconds to midnight - the closest it has been in its nearly 80-year history. The experts that set the Doomsday Clock each year look at a variety issues such as climate change, the misuse of biological science, and a variety of emerging technologies. But central to the decision on how to set the Clock is nuclear risk, where the threats continue to grow.

Arms control structures and measures, built over the course of the last half-century, are crumbling and major powers have refused to engage in sustained, substantive dialogue on reducing nuclear risk. Proliferation risks are on the rise and it seems as if the world is poised at the starting line of a full-fledged multi-state nuclear arms race. Adding to the complication, emerging and disruptive technologies threaten to upend longstanding theories on deterrence and stability.

The outlook seems bleak, but with signals from President Trump and others about the need to talk or even "denuclearize," is there hope for a new era of arms control?

Join four leading experts from the Bulletin to discuss the panoply of current nuclear risks, as well as the methods and tools for reducing them.

About the speakers: 

Jerry Brown was sworn in as governor of California on January 3, 2011, and was reelected in 2014. Brown previously was elected governor in 1974 and served two terms, during which time he established the first agricultural labor relations law in the country, started the California Conservation Corp and promoted renewable energy. In 1970, he was elected California secretary of state. Brown began his career as a clerk at the California Supreme Court. In 1998, he reentered politics and was elected mayor of Oakland, serving two terms from 1999 to 2007. Brown founded the Oakland School for the Arts and the Oakland Military Institute, which serve students from the 6th grade through the 12th grade. He was also elected California attorney general in 2006. Brown graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his bachelor’s degree in classics and earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1964.

Alexandra Bell is the president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. A noted policy expert and former diplomat, she oversees the Bulletin's publishing programs, management of the Doomsday Clock, and a growing set of activities around nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive technologies.  Before joining the Bulletin, Alexandra Bell served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Affairs in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability (ADS) at the U.S. Department of State. Previously, she has worked at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and the Council for a Livable World, Ploughshares Fund, and the Center for American Progress. Bell received a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the New School and a Bachelor’s degree in Peace, War and Defense from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 2001-2003, she was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica. Bell is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University.  His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in the use of offensive operations in cyberspace as instruments of national policy and in the security dimensions of information warfare and influence operations on national security.  In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; and a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In 2016, he served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.  Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

Rose Gottemoeller is the William J. Perry Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute. Before joining Stanford Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO’s adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism.  Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation. Prior to her government service, she was a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with joint appointments to the Nonproliferation and Russia programs. She served as the Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from 2006 to 2008, and is currently a nonresident fellow in Carnegie's Nuclear Policy Program. At Stanford, Gottemoeller teaches and mentors students in the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program and the CISAC Honors program; contributes to policy research and outreach activities; and convenes workshops, seminars and other events relating to her areas of expertise, including nuclear security, Russian relations, the NATO alliance, EU cooperation and non-proliferation. 

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

The world is changing rapidly and becoming increasingly polarized, complex, and uncertain. These changes affect many aspects of academia, particularly international collaboration and attitudes toward academia, as observed in the past decade. In addition, several global challenges of varying kinds deeply affect societies worldwide, including academia. Geopolitical and economic developments have reshaped global dynamics previously dominated by the USA. These include the rise of China in several fields, such as its establishment as a strong research nation and the formation of a multipolar world order. The logic of international collaboration as providing a way to solve common challenges more effectively has, to some extent, been replaced by a zero-sum rationale. Many governments increasingly view internationalization efforts through the lens of national and economic security. However, allowing national security concerns to overshadow the positive aspects of international collaboration may restrict researchers’ access to the research front, jeopardize the viability of the innovation ecosystem, and diminish the role of academia in public diplomacy efforts.

This event is part of APARC's Contemporary Asia Seminar Series.

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Andreas Göthenberg is the Executive Director of STINT (The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education) since 2009 and a Board Member of Karolinska Institute. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden). Dr Gothenberg was a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Tokyo Institute of Technology between 2003-2004 and is currently an Adjunct Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was a Science & Technology Attaché at the Embassy of Sweden in Tokyo from 2006 to 2009, where he also covered Science & Technology (S&T) development in South Korea. During 2004-2006, he worked as a Center Manager and Senior Researcher in China, setting up joint research & education centers for KTH Royal Institute of Technology at Zhejiang University and Fudan University.

Moderator:

Gi-Wook Shin

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in Sociology and a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He has served as director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center since 2005, and as founding director of the Korea Program since 2001. His research concentrates on social movements, nationalism, and international relations, focusing on Korea and Asia. He is the author/editor of numerous books and articles, including South Korea’s Democracy in Crisis: The Threats of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization and The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security. His new book, Talent Giants in the Asia-Pacific Century, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India, will be published by Stanford University Press in 2025.

In 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), an initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. In May 2024, he launched the new Taiwan Program at APARC and currently serves as the program director.

Shin previously taught at the University of Iowa and the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a B.A. from Yonsei University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington.