Stanford Hume Writing Center
Building 460, Room 020
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, C331
Stanford, CA 94305-6060
Dr. Gary Mukai is Director of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). Prior to joining SPICE in 1988, he was a teacher in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, and in California public schools for ten years.
Gary’s academic interests include curriculum and instruction, educational equity, and teacher professional development. He received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from U.C. Berkeley; a multiple subjects teaching credential from the Black, Asian, Chicano Urban Program, U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education; a master of arts in international comparative education from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education; and a doctorate of education from the Leadership in Educational Equity Program, U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education.
In addition to curricular publications for SPICE, Gary has also written for other publishers, including Newsweek, Calliope Magazine, Media & Methods: Education Products, Technologies & Programs for Schools and Universities, Social Studies Review, Asia Alive, Education About Asia, ACCESS Journal: Information on Global, International, and Foreign Language Education, San Jose Mercury News, and ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies; and organizations, including NBC New York, the Silk Road Project at Harvard University, the Japanese American National Memorial to Patriotism in Washington, DC, the Center for Asian American Media in San Francisco, the Laurasian Institution in Seattle, the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and the Asia Society in New York.
He has developed teacher guides for films such as The Road to Beijing (a film on the Beijing Olympics narrated by Yo-Yo Ma and co-produced by SPICE and the Silk Road Project), Nuclear Tipping Point (a film developed by the Nuclear Security Project featuring former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, former Senator Sam Nunn, and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell), Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo (an Academy Award-winning film about Japanese-American internment by Steven Okazaki), Doubles: Japan and America’s Intercultural Children (a film by Regge Life), A State of Mind (a film on North Korea by Daniel Gordon), Wings of Defeat (a film about kamikaze pilots by Risa Morimoto), Makiko’s New World (a film on life in Meiji Japan by David W. Plath), Diamonds in the Rough: Baseball and Japanese-American Internment (a film by Kerry Y. Nakagawa), Uncommon Courage: Patriotism and Civil Liberties (a film about Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II by Gayle Yamada), Citizen Tanouye (a film about a Medal of Honor recipient during World War II by Robert Horsting), Mrs. Judo (a film about 10th degree black belt Keiko Fukuda by Yuriko Gamo Romer), and Live Your Dream: The Taylor Anderson Story (a film by Regge Life about a woman who lost her life in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami).
He has conducted numerous professional development seminars nationally (including extensive work with the Chicago Public Schools, Hawaii Department of Education, New York City Department of Education, and school districts in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County) and internationally (including in China, France, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, and Turkey).
In 1997, Gary was the first regular recipient of the Franklin Buchanan Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, awarded annually to honor an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia at any educational level, elementary through university. In 2004, SPICE received the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for its promotion of Japanese studies in schools; and Gary received recognition from the Fresno County Office of Education, California, for his work with students of Fresno County. In 2007, he was the recipient of the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for the promotion of mutual understanding between Japan and the United States, especially in the field of education. At the invitation of the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea, San Francisco, Gary participated in the Republic of Korea-sponsored 2010 Revisit Korea Program, which commemorated the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. At the invitation of the Nanjing Foreign Languages School, China, he participated in an international educational forum in 2013 that commemorated the 50th anniversary of NFLS’s founding. In 2015 he received the Stanford Alumni Award from the Asian American Activities Center Advisory Board, and in 2017 he was awarded the Alumni Excellence in Education Award by the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Most recently, the government of Japan named him a recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays.
He is an editorial board member of the journal, Education About Asia; advisory board member for Asian Educational Media Services, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; board member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Alumni Association of Northern California; and selection committee member of the Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award, U.S.–Japan Foundation.
Edward Miguel received his PhD at Harvard in 2000, the same year he joined UC Berkeley as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2005. He recently received the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Best Paper in Health Economics for "Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities" (with Michael Kremer), which appeared in Econometrica. He also was the recipient of the 2005 Sloan Fellowship. At Berkeley he has received the Best Graduate Adviser Award and the Distinguished Teaching Award.
Professor Miguel is co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources, associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics and Review of Economics and Statistics, director of the U.C. Berkeley Scientific Evaluation for Global Action program, co-organizer for Working Group in African Political Economy, associate director at CIDER, an NBER faculty research associate, a CEPR research fellow, a senior fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and a research affiliate at the MIT Poverty Action Lab. He also has worked as a consultant for non-governmental organizations on projects in Delhi, Kenya, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone.
CISAC Conference Room
Greg Domber received his A.B in History and Philosophy from Lafayette College in 1997 and recently completed his Ph.D. in History at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. His dissertation, "Supporting the Revolution: America, Democracy, and the End of the Cold War in Poland, 1981-1989,"utilized a multi-archival, international history research approach combined with numerous oral history interviews to take a sober accounting of American and Western influences on Poland's democratic transformation from the declaration of martial law in December 1981 through the creation of the Mazowiecki government in August 1989.
At CDDRL, Greg plans to continue this research on international influences on Poland's transformation during the 1980s, focusing further work on the role played by non-governmental actors, particularly labor unions, émigré groups, humanitarian organizations, and American business interests.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
N/A
Greg Domber received his A.B in History and Philosophy from Lafayette College in 1997 and recently completed his Ph.D. in History at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. His dissertation, "Supporting the Revolution: America, Democracy, and the End of the Cold War in Poland, 1981-1989,"utilized a multi-archival, international history research approach combined with numerous oral history interviews to take a sober accounting of American and Western influences on Poland's democratic transformation from the declaration of martial law in December 1981 through the creation of the Mazowiecki government in August 1989.
At CDDRL, Greg continued his research on international influences on Poland's transformation during the 1980s, focusing further work on the role played by non-governmental actors, particularly labor unions, émigré groups, humanitarian organizations, and American business interests.
Andrew Kuchins is a senior fellow and director of the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program. From 2000 to 2006, he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he was director of its Russian and Eurasian Program in Washington, D.C., from 2000 to 2003 and again in 2006, and director of the Carnegie Moscow Center in Russia from 2003 to 2005. Kuchins conducts research and writes widely on Russian foreign and security policy. He is working on a book titled China and Russia: Strategic Partners, Allies, or Competitors, and coedited, with Dmitri Trenin, Russia: The Next Ten Years (Carnegie, 2004).
Kuchins has taught at Georgetown University and Stanford University. From 1997 to 2000, he was associate director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also served as a senior program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1993 to 1997, where he developed and managed a grant-making program to support scientists and researchers in the former Soviet Union. From 1989 to 1993, he was executive director of the Berkeley-Stanford Program on Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies.
He is a member of the editorial boards of Pro et Contra and Demokratizatsia and was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1995 to 2000. He holds a B.A. from Amherst College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.
CISAC Conference Room
Few dispute that Russia has become more autocratic during the almost eight years during which Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia. Explanations for this political process differ, but agreement about the trend is now widespread. Real debate continues, however, over whether growing autocracy in Russia is good or bad for other valued outcomes, including economic growth, political stability, and the emergence of a capable state, effective at home and respected abroad. On the relationship between regime type and growth in Russia, there is a correlation between democracy and economic depression in the 1990s and then autocracy and growth in this decade. Under the administration of Vladimir Putin, popular perception has been that Russia is more stable and that Russians are happier and better governed than under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Often, Putin's high public opinion ratings are used as evidence of citizen content with the administration. Analysts in Russia and the West also credit Putin with ending anarchy and restoring Russia as a great power.
But this growing myth of authoritarian governing competence in Russia needs to be exposed. The Russian economy has grown in parallel to growing autocracy, but these two processes have little, if anything, to do with each other. Moreover, since Putin's ascendance to the Russian presidency, the country has been governed less well, not better. Across a variety of sources and measures, Russians have clearly become less secure as evidenced by a steady increase in murder rates, theft and burglary and terrorist attacks at the same time that the state has become more corrupt. When these negative governance trends are factored into predictions about long-term stability, Putin's governing legacy may not be as positive as assumed. If governance measures remain low under Putin's successor, and in the absence of Putin's personal prestige in the presidency, Russia may yet witness another period of political instability.
CISAC Conference Room
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and served as FSI Director from 2015 to 2025. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.
McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).
McFaul has authored ten books and edited several others, including, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, as well as From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, (a New York Times bestseller) Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.
He is a recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary PhD from Montana State University; the Order for Merits to Lithuania from President Gitanas Nausea of Lithuania; Order of Merit of Third Degree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. In 2015, he was the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University.
McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.
FSI
Stanford University
Encina Hall C140
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Satre Family Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and teaches in the Department of Political Science, the Program on International Relations, and the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.
Prior to coming to Stanford in 2004, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Princeton School for International and Public Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School). At Princeton, she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship, awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.
In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author or co-editor of six books: Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective, written and edited with Michael A. McFaul (Johns Hopkins 2013); Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World, co-edited with Valerie Bunce and Michael A. McFaul (Cambridge, 2010); Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 2006); After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge, 2004), coedited with Michael McFaul; and Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton, 1997); and Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2021).
She received a BA (1988) and MA (1989) in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (1995). In 2016, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Ilia State University in Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Jeffrey S. Kopstein is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto. He holds a BA, MA, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He has held fellowships at Harvard University, Princeton University, and has also been an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. He has written extensively in the fields of European politics, transatlantic relations, and political economy. His publications include various books and edited volumes, including Growing Apart? America and Europe in the 21st Century (Cambridge 2007) Comparative Politics: Interests, Identities, and Institutions in a Changing Global Order (Cambridge, 2000, 2005), and The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, (Chapel Hill, 1997). Recent scholarly articles have appeared in World Politics, Comparative Politics, Theory and Society, Political Theory, German Politics and Society, Slavic Review and The Washington Quarterly. Jeffrey Kopstein's research has been supported by grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, The National Science Foundation, and the National Council for European and Eurasian Research. In 2006 he was the recipient of the University of Torontos Faculty of Arts and Science Outstanding Teaching Award.
CISAC Conference Room