Stanford University

WAR: Ethical Challenges on the Horizon

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Stanford's two-year Ethics and War series will come to a close on May 16 with "WAR: Ethical Challenges on the Horizon."


What upcoming challenges will force leaders to rethink the balance between morality and war?
What will this ethical debate look like?
How do these paradigm shifts impact national security?

 

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website. 

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Charles Dunlap Maj. General, USAF (Ret.), Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, Duke Panelist

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Scott D. Sagan Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Political Science, Stanford Panelist
Debra Satz Philosophy, and Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford Panelist
Scotty McLennan Dean for Religious Life, Stanford Moderator
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Stanford Ethics & War Series

Performance of "Reykjavik" and post-performance panel

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In October 1986, a historic summit meeting was held at Reykjavik, Iceland, between the United States, under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet Union, under the leadership of President Mikhail Gorbachev. What began as a summit with an agenda of limited reduction of nuclear weapons and human rights quickly transformed into a discussion by the two leaders advocating for elimination of all nuclear weapons. The prospect of a world without nuclear weapons had never before been held at such a high level and has never been held since. These negotiations were truly historic and in many ways groundbreaking in helping to end the Cold War.

Reykjavik, a one-act play, written by Richard Rhodes, is a dialogue taken from the actual transcripts of the negotiations between the two presidents. Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-four works of history, memoir, and fiction, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. A past visiting scholar at MIT and Harvard University, he is presently an associate of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. 

The play runs for seventy-five minutes and will be followed by a question-and-answer session on May 8 with Richard Rhodes and on May 9 with a panel of nuclear security experts led by Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists.

This program is co-sponsored by the Federation of American Scientists, the Fund for Peace Initiatives, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, and Stanford Continuing Studies.

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website. 

CEMEX Auditorium, Zambrano Hall
Knight Management Center
Stanford, CA 94305, USA

Charles Ferguson President, Federation of American Scientists Host
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series

Performance of "Reykjavik" and post-performance Q&A

-

In October 1986, a historic summit meeting was held at Reykjavik, Iceland, between the United States, under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet Union, under the leadership of President Mikhail Gorbachev. What began as a summit with an agenda of limited reduction of nuclear weapons and human rights quickly transformed into a discussion by the two leaders advocating for elimination of all nuclear weapons. The prospect of a world without nuclear weapons had never before been held at such a high level and has never been held since. These negotiations were truly historic and in many ways groundbreaking in helping to end the Cold War.

Reykjavik, a one-act play, written by Richard Rhodes, is a dialogue taken from the actual transcripts of the negotiations between the two presidents. Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-four works of history, memoir, and fiction, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. A past visiting scholar at MIT and Harvard University, he is presently an associate of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. 

The play runs for seventy-five minutes and will be followed by a question-and-answer session on May 8 with Richard Rhodes and on May 9 with a panel of nuclear security experts led by Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists.

This program is co-sponsored by the Federation of American Scientists, the Fund for Peace Initiatives, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, and Stanford Continuing Studies.

 

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website. 

 

CEMEX Auditorium, Zambrano Hall
Knight Management Center
Stanford, CA 94305, USA

Richard Rhodes Playwright, Author and Affiliate at CISAC Speaker
Seminars

Politics by Other Means: International Law in the Political Contest over Taiwan’s Status and Cross-Strait Relations

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Abstract:

On both sides of the Taiwan Strait and on both sides of Taiwan’s partisan divide, international legal concepts—the criteria for statehood, other factors that matter for international status (including democratic politics and human rights), standards for and rights of self-determination and secession—have been key weapons in the political struggle over Taiwan’s international stature and security and the nature and trajectory of cross-Strait relations.  Rooted in steps taken during the early days of China’s Reform Era, this pattern of politics developed dramatically during the Lee Tenghui and Chen Shui-bian presidencies on Taiwan and has taken new turns since Hu Jintao shifted Beijing’s cross-Strait policies and Ma Ying-jeou came to power in Taiwan.  The prospect of Ma’s second term and a leadership transition on the Mainland raise new questions about future trends in this unusually international law-focused politics.

 

Speaker Bio:

Jacques deLisle is the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law, professor of political science, and associate director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.  His writings on Taiwan’s politics and international status, cross-Strait relations, China’s approach to international law, and domestic legal reform and its challenges in China appear in law reviews, international affairs journals, policy commentaries, and other media.

CISAC Conference Room

Jacques deLisle Professor of Law and Political Science Speaker the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute
Seminars

Insider Activists: Personal Connections and Political Action in China

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Abstract:

"Insider Activists: Personal Connections and Political Action in China", co-authored by Lily Tsai and Yiqing Xu, PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at MIT.

This project finds that in both rural and urban China, political "insiders" are actually more likely to make complaints about the government to local officials, including complaints about public goods provision, than political outsiders. We argue that personal connections to government officials may constitute an important resource for political action in nondemocratic systems such as China by providing information about how to participate effectively and protection against reprisal for making complaints.

 

About the speaker:

Lily L. Tsai is an Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT. Her research focuses on issues of accountability, governance, and political participation in developing countries with a particular emphasis on Chinese politics. Her book, Accountability Without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China, was published in Cambridge University's Studies on Comparative Politics and received the 2007-08 Dogan Award from the Society of Comparative Research for the best book published in the field of comparative research. Tsai has also published articles in The American Political Science Review, Studies in Comparative International Development, The China Quarterly, and The China Journal. Tsai is a graduate of Stanford University, where she graduated with honors and distinction in English literature and international relations. She received a M.A. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University in 2004. 

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Lily Tsai Associate Professor of Political Science Speaker MIT

Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Francis Fukuyama Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Moderator FSI
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Bilbao-New York-Bilbao y otros vuelos low cost. Nuevas formas de novela en el ámbito ibérico

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Lecture to be delivered in Spanish

Kirmen Uribe (Ondarroa, Basque Country, 1970), Premio Nacional de Narrativa 2009 for his novel Bilbao-New York-Bilbao and Premio Nacional de la Crítica for his poetry collection Bitartean heldu eskutik (Meanwhile take my hand, Graywolf, 2007) will discuss the writing of his novel and methodological aspects such a self-fiction, the novel's network structure,  and the construction of a hybrid genre between reality and fiction, as well as what it means to write for the world from a Basque context.

Sponsored by the Europe Center and the Iberian Studies Program

Pigott Hall (Building 260), Room 252

Kirmen Uribe Writer and poet Speaker
Seminars

Colonial Melancholia and Critical Nostalgia. The Visuality of Empire in Portuguese Culture

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Seminar Synopsis:

The memory euphoria of the past half-century has, if anything, raised awareness of the constructed or invented nature of national memories and their complexity. Because the articulation between the normative rules of public memory and the at times politically incorrect claim to a right to private memory is representational and discursive, cultural artefacts, such as literary texts, films, photographs, videos or monuments have seismically materialized as go-betweens in the memory wars. The memories of empire in the Portuguese cultural tissue have been over the past 40 years after independence of the former colonies contentious sites, where a certain colonial melancholia clashes with a critical nostalgia that has been growing particularly amongst a generation of artists born after decolonization. Colonial melancholia is not simply a result of recent traumatic events, but spreads over two centuries in a pathological inheritance filled with resentment, humiliation, violence, denial, myth and mystification. This melancholic vision of the past has been mediated and disseminated by several media from texts to monuments, photos and films, which have either become accomplices in this regime of power, or have sought to subvert it and have finally created spaces of ambivalence and hybridity. A notorious example of the mediation of the colonial regime was of course photography.  Visibility was pivotal to the image world of the imperial regime, that not only needed to dominate the reality portrayed in the new medium, but which also made use of it for the sake of its own assertive self-representation. The talk inquires into this regime of visibility and seeks by means of a practice of interference to unravel the colonial discourse that used the perceived essentializing of reality supported by visual ‘objectivity’ to create a structure of feeling based on melancholy and nostalgia that would become the dominant  memory of empire in Portuguese culture.  Arguably, in this practice of interference resonates a practice of cultural literacy that allows for the reinterpretation and re-contextualization not only of what the images showed, but  what they meant. Then again, it is precisely a regained cultural literacy in the reading of the visual that lies at the root of the project of critical visual nostalgia enacted by contemporary video artists in the fragmented deconstruction of the imaginary wholeness of nostalgic thinking embedded in home movies.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Isabel Gil Professor of Cultural Theory Speaker Catholic University of Portugal
Seminars

The Unripe Fruits of Rapprochement: Greek-Turkish Relations and the Cyprus Question in the Post-Helsinki Era

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Ever since December 1999, when Greece lifted its longstanding veto and Turkey became an EU candidate state, Greece and Turkey have attempted to overcome animosity and mistrust and resolve their perennial disputes. I argue that despite significant improvements at the level of economic, energy cooperation and minority rights, no breakthrough has been achieved on high-politics issues. The intractable Cyprus question has remained the biggest burden to any reconciliation attempt. Positive spillover of functional cooperation cannot by itself overcome the legacy of decades of acrimonious relations and accumulated disputes. Greece’s mounting economic and social crisis and Turkey’s new foreign policy activism can pose additional obstacles to the resolution of longstanding disputes, absent determined leadership on both sides. Only strong, visionary leadership on both sides can help overcome the pending stalemate.

Ioannis Grigoriadis is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) and Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). He received his M.A. in International Affairs from the School of International & Public Affairs at Columbia University, and his Ph.D. in Politics from the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London. He specializes in European, Middle Eastern and comparative politics with a particular focus on energy politics, nationalism, and democratization. Among his publications are “Redefining the Nation: The Shifting Boundaries of the ‘Other’ in Greece and Turkey” (in Middle Eastern Studies, 2011), “Europe and the Impasse of Centre-Left Politics in Turkey: Lessons from the Greek Experience” ( in Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2010), Trials of Europeanization: Turkish Political Culture and the European Union (2009), “Friends No More?: The Rise of Anti-American Nationalism in Turkey” (in Middle East Journal, 2010),  “Islam and Democratization in Turkey: Secularism and Trust in a Divided Society” (in Democratization, 2009), and “On the Europeanization of Minority Rights Protection: Comparing the Cases of Greece and Turkey” (in Mediterranean Politics, 2008)

Part of the 2011-12 lecture series on Greece and Turkey, sponsored by The Mediterranean Studies Forum and the Europe Center

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Ioannis Grigoriadis Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) and Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) Speaker
Seminars

Afghanistan: The Road Ahead

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About the topic: This talk will provide a current affairs assessment of the situation in Afghanistan. It will present the trajectory of the counterinsurgency campaign highlighting the security and governance challenges--including the building up of the Afghan National Security Forces, the economic sustainability of the state and private sector, as well as issues pertaining to minority and women's rights. The talk will also offer a range of likely endgames in light of the 2014 withdrawal.

About the Speaker: Fotini Christia joined the MIT faculty in the fall of 2008. She received her PhD in Public Policy at Harvard University, and has been a recipient of research fellowships from the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs among others. Her research interests deal with issues of ethnicity, conflict and cooperation in the Muslim world. Fotini has written opinion pieces on her experiences from Afghanistan, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza and Uzbekistan for Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. She graduated magna cum laude with a joint BA in Economics-Operations Research from Columbia College and a Masters in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

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Fotini Christia Assistant Professor of Political Science, MIT Speaker
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