Jeffrey R. Cooper is an SAIC Technical Fellow, Vice President for Technology, and Chief Science Officer of SAIC Strategies, Simulation & Training Business Unit at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). He received his undergraduate and graduate education at The Johns Hopkins University, where he was later Professorial Lecturer in Arms Control and Defense Analysis at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). In addition to long-standing focus on strategic analysis and military transformation, his core interest is using information to improve intelligence analysis, decision making, C2, and operational effectiveness in order to enhance U.S. national security. Cooper served in a range of senior government positions, including White House Staff and Assistant to the Secretary of Energy.

For the past several years, Cooper's focus has been largely on intelligence matters, with particular emphasis on analytic failures and methods to improve all-source analysis capabilities. Most recently, he chaired the Panel on Unexpected Threats for the DNI's Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review (QICR). Cooper was a Professional Staff Member of the Presidential Commission on Future Intelligence Capabilities (Silberman-Robb Commission) and has been actively involved in work on the Revolution in Intelligence Affairs and Intelligence Transformation. His monograph on "Curing Analytic Pathologies" will be published shortly by CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence.

In the run-up to the Olympics, China is a country of contradictions. On one hand, market reforms since 1980 have radically improved living standards across the vast country and dramatically decreased the levels of absolute poverty. On the other hand, the distribution of income and wealth has become more unequal, hard-core urban poverty has returned, and there are new concentrations of enormous wealth among a small minority. Drawing on fieldwork and survey results collected since 1998, Professor Davis will discuss how the accelerated commodification of assets and the internationalization of capital have re-shaped accumulation of material and non-material rewards at individual and group levels. In concluding, she addresses competing hypotheses about class formation and consolidation of privilege.

Deborah S. Davis (Ph.D. Boston University, 1979) is a Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Her primary teaching interests are historical and comparative sociology, inequality and stratification, contemporary Chinese society, and methods of fieldwork. Davis is currently a member of the National Committee on US China Relations and serves on the editorial boards of The European Journal of East Asian Studies, Social Forces and the new Yale China Health Journal. Past publications have analyzed the politics of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese family life, social welfare, class cleavages and occupational mobility. She is currently completing two books: A Home of Their Own, a study of the social consequences of privatization of real estate in Shanghai and Wealth and Poverty in China Today, proceedings from conference held at Yale on how recent Chinese experiences challenge prevailing sociological analysis of inequality and stratification. She also is actively involved in research and advocacy work in response to the AIDS epidemic in China.

This series is co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University.

In recent years "Muslim democracy" has emerged as a new political reality in a number of Muslim countries with open politics to define the role of Islam in democracy. Muslim democracy evokes the legacy of Christian Democratic parties of Europe in that it is an electoral platform that seeks to dominate the middle by integrating Muslim values into broader socioeconomic demands. Muslim democracy is not a platform for religious reform nor a theoretical construct, but rather the product of politics on the ground and the give-and-take of electoral politics. Muslim democracy has taken shape in the political process by Islamist parties such as Turkey's AKP, and non-religious parties such as Pakistan's PML. It provides a point of departure for discussing democratization and pragmatic change across the Muslim world, and in particular contending with outcome of recent elections in Iran, Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

Vali Nasr is Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey.

In recent years, "anti-American" sentiments and protests - what some observers regard as the "wildcard" in the US-Korea alliance-- have created tensions in the management of the bilateral relationship. Analysts have pointed to nationalism, the South's newfound "love" for the North, and generational change among South Koreans as key explanations for the anti-Americanism. Katharine Moon offers a different kind of analysis, focusing on the rapid changes in democratization and decentralization of government that have fostered a new identity and activist role for local governments and citizens. Local autonomy, especially in the areas housing the U.S. military bases, has come to challenge the monopoly of the central government in managing the alliance relationship and a powerful force shaping the politics of anti-Americanism.

Katharine H.S. Moon, associate professor and chairperson, Department of Political Science, Wellesley College, and a non-resident scholar at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George Washington University.

She is the author of Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations (Columbia University, 1997; Korean edition by Sam-in Publishing Co., 2002) and other work on women and international relations, migrant workers, and social movements in East Asia. Currently, she is writing a book on "anti-Americanism" in Korea-U.S. relations from the perspective of Korea's democratization and the politics of social movements. Moon received a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship in 2002 to conduct research in Korea and was a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the George Washington University in 2002-03.

Katharine Moon has served in the Office of the Senior Coordinator for Women's Issues in the U.S. Department of State and as a trustee of Smith College. She serves on the editorial board of several journals of international relations and consults for NGOs in the U.S. and Korea. She also serves on policy task forces designed to examine current U.S. - Korea relations.

For almost 20 years the Energy Department has been investigating and developing Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the site for a deep underground repository to accept spent fuel from all the power reactors and high level waste left over from bomb programs. The future of US nuclear energy is widely thought to be tied to the success of the project. In 2002 Congress gave DOE the green light to take the next step to submit an NRC license application demonstrating compliance with applicable standards. DOE promised such an application in December 2004. It delayed and delayed and now DOE no longer has a date for submitting an NRC application, but it will be no earlier than 2008.

What's holding it up? What is the history of the project? What are its technical and managerial and legal problems? What has been the effect of Nevada's opposition? How will recent project changes and the administration's new nuclear policy (GNEP) affect Yucca Mountain? What are the prospects for project licensing and completion? Is Yucca Mountain the only option for dealing with the country's spent fuel?

Dr. Victor Gilinsky is a Washington, D.C.-based consultant on energy. He has been active on proliferation issues for many years, going back to his early work at RAND in Santa Monica, California. He joined RAND soon after receiving a PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1961. In 1971 he moved to the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C., where he was assistant director for policy and program review. From 1973 to 1975, he was head of the RAND Physical Sciences Department. From 1975 to 1984, he served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), having been appointed by President Gerald Ford and reappointed by President Jimmy Carter. During his NRC tenure, Dr Gilinsky was heavily involved in nuclear-export issues. In 1982 he received Caltech's Distinguished Alumnus Award.

This series is part of the Stanford course, "Earth System 105".

Co-sponsored with Stanford School of Earth Sciences, Woods Institute for the Environment, and Stanford Continuing Studies.

Taiwan/China Seminar Series

Cosponsored with Department for Anthropological Sciences and the Institute for Research in Social Sciences at Stanford University.