On Saturday October 7, 2023, two Iranian-backed terrorist organizations based in the Gaza Strip — Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) — inflicted the most lethal attack suffered by the State of Israel since its founding in May 1948. 

Over 1200 Israelis, overwhelmingly civilians, were murdered, 3000 wounded, and approximately 150 kidnapped into Gaza, to be used as human shields and bargaining chips. The attacks also involved unspeakable acts of sexual violence and infanticide. Retaliatory Israeli air strikes have killed over 800 Gazans so far. 

The conflict risks escalating to an all-out regional confrontation, involving several other Iranian proxies (most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon) and even a direct Iran-Israel war. This could have devastating and transformative implications for the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, and the entire international system. What led to the events of October 7? How was Israel caught so completely off guard? Did Iran order the attack? What are the possible scenarios for the conflict? And what can the Biden Administration do?

SPEAKERS

MODERATOR

About the Speaker: Colin Kahl is the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), an interdisciplinary research hub in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the faculty director of CISAC’s Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, and a professor of political science (by courtesy).

Current research projects include: an examination of the role of emerging technologies (including cyber, space, and artificial intelligence and autonomy) in “integrated deterrence” vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China (PRC); an assessment of the role of U.S.-Russia nuclear deterrence and Russian nuclear coercion in the Ukraine war; and an analysis of the utility of the concept of the “Free World” for U.S. foreign policy.

From April 2021-July 2023, Dr. Kahl served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense. In that role, he was the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense for all matters related to national security and defense policy and represented the Department as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. He oversaw the writing of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which focused the Pentagon’s efforts on the “pacing challenge” posed by the PRC, and he led the Department’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and numerous other international crises. He also led several other major defense diplomacy initiatives, including: an unprecedented strengthening of the NATO alliance; the negotiation of the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom; historic defense force posture enhancements in Australia, Japan, and the Philippines; and deepening defense and strategic ties with India. In June 2023, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III awarded Dr. Kahl the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian award presented by the Secretary of Defense.

During the Obama Administration, Dr. Kahl served as Deputy Assistant to President Obama and National Security Advisor to the Vice President Biden from October 2014 to January 2017. He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East from February 2009 to December 2011, for which he received the Outstanding Public Service Medal in July 2011.

Dr. Kahl is the co-author (along with Thomas Wright) of Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2021) and the author States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). He has also published numerous article on U.S. national security and defense policy in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Policy, the National Interest, the New Republic, the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, and the Washington Quarterly, as well as several reports for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a non-partisan think tank in Washington, DC.

Dr. Kahl previously taught at Georgetown University and the University of Minnesota, and he has held fellowship positions at Harvard University, the Council on Foreign Relations, CNAS, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and International Engagement.

He received his B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan (1993) and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University (2000).

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

South Korea transformed its economy within three decades to emerge as an industrial powerhouse. Its influence has expanded into culture, with K-pop a global phenomenon. However, long before the pandemic and the current stagflation concern worldwide, the country's economy was sputtering and socioeconomic fractures were widening. Today Korea is facing challenges on multiple fronts that are radically different from those seen in the past. If the country pushes forward with bold structural reforms, it could regain its erstwhile momentum. The alternative, more likely by the day, is something more akin to "Eurosclerosis," or worse, Japanification. This talk addresses key current issues and foreseeable challenges of the economy in hopes of finding constructive ways forward.

About the Speaker:

Jaejoon Woo is an Associate Professor of Economics (with tenure) at DePaul University, Chicago and the author of Confronting South Korea's Next Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2022). Previously, Professor Woo served as Chief Korea Economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (2015-2017), Senior Economist at the IMF, Washington DC (2009-2014), and Economist at the OECD, Paris (2000-2002, 2009). Research areas are growth and productivity, public debt and fiscal policy, political economy, inequality, Korea and EM Asia. He has published 4 books and 37 articles (in addition to 145 market-oriented research notes published at BAML). His papers have been published in major economics journals such as Review of Economics and Statistics, European Economic Review, Economica, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Economic Inquiry, and IMF Economic Review. Some were featured in The Economist (London-based weekly magazine) and Financial Times. He also taught at Harvard, Helsinki School of Economics (Finland), and Sciences Po (France). He received his B.A. in Economics from Yonsei University, Seoul, and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.

Directions and Parking

Despite its small population, South Korea has been consistently the third largest sender of international students to the American higher education sector for the last two decades. Previous work explaining this phenomenon often focuses on students’ desires for a global education alongside universities’ student recruitment efforts. Less understood is the role of other actors who broker the relationship between universities and students. Drawing from her recently published book Constructing Student Mobility (The MIT Press, 2023), higher education scholar Stephanie Kim illustrates how an expansive ecosystem of ancillary people and organizations funnel students to specific universities according to market demands, from education agents in South Korea to community college recruiters in California. Kim ultimately shows how these diverse stakeholders constitute a much broader industry of global higher education and reinforce the global student supply chain from South Korea to the United States.

Stephanie K. Kim is a scholar, educator, author, and practitioner in higher education. A specialist in comparative and international higher education, she researches and writes about international students and higher education policy in the United States and countries in Asia. She is a faculty member at Georgetown University, where she is Associate Professor of the Practice in the School of Continuing Studies and Faculty Director of the Master's in Higher Education Administration. She also serves as Senior Editor of the Journal of International Students and has held fellowships with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), East-West Center, and Fulbright Program. Prior to arriving at Georgetown, she held academic and administrative positions at UC Berkeley and received her Ph.D. in Education from UCLA.

Directions and Parking

This spring, we saw the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse, etc., and now we are observing collapses of Chinese real estate giants: Evergrande, and Country Garden. Would be there another financial crisis? 
Now, it is highly worthy to review the ‘lessons' of historically recent financial crises with significant seriousness, which happened in the two largest economies, the United States and Japan.

During the 1990s-2000s, Japan and the United States each experienced the same type of financial crisis, notably triggered by the collapse of major financial institutions, stemming from the real estate bubble burst. Namely, the Heisei Financial Crisis and the Lehman Brothers Collapse.

Both were under the political-economic conditions of one of the largest economies in the world, as well as of an advanced democracy. Enormous shock happened politically, economically, and historically, due to these two financial crises.

Then, as the research question, what were the ‘lessons’ of the United States and Japan's financial crises, concerning crisis response through public money injection, from the viewpoint of political economy? Where is the ‘learning’ between Japan and the United States?
Also, as the related research ‘puzzle’, why the difference in speed between these countries to respond and recover?

Based on his Ph.D. thesis, Senator Takinami, an alumnus of Stanford APARC, will elaborate on these issues by covering up and amending Hoshi & Kashyap(2010), thus establishing ‘7 lessons’ throughout the Japan and the United States financial crises on government bailout from the political economy viewpoint.

Speaker

Hirofumi Takinami (Ph.D.) is an Upper House Member of the Japanese Parliament, corresponding to a Senator in the U.S. He is a former Vice-Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, and also a former Vising Scholar, APARC, Stanford University. 

Dr. Takinami covers a wide range of policies, including not only energy, environment, and finance, but also innovation, infrastructure, welfare for the disabled, etc. He has been the Director of the Fisheries Division of LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) from last year.

Before starting his political career 10 years ago, he was a Director of the Ministry of Finance. During his about 20 years of service as a Japanese government official, he held management positions including Public Relations Director, and Deputy Budget Examiner at the Ministry of Finance. He also worked internationally, in charge of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) etc. 

He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1994, earning a Bachelor of Law. He received a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the University of Chicago in 1998. While in office as an upper house member, he obtained a Ph.D. in 2021 from Waseda University for the study on financial crises, which he started when he held research positions at Stanford University as a Visiting Fellow in 2009-2011 and as a Visiting Scholar in 2016. 

About the Event: Scholars are debating whether China’s rise will transform the current unipolar distribution of power. Although China clearly has the aggregate size to match (indeed, overtake) the United States, observers debate whether China can catch up technologically. Skeptics typically make two arguments: that 1) a large gap exists between the technological capabilities of China and the United States, and 2) that China will be unable to bridge this gap because its authoritarian institutions inhibit its innovative potential.

Jennifer Lind argues against both of these points. First, she shows empirically that China is defying pessimistic expectations by emerging as a global technological leader. China has already caught up to (and in some cases overtaken) other cutting-edge economies such as France, Israel, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, China and the United States are engaged in a rivalry with respect to the emerging technologies of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Second, institutions arguments fail to explain the Chinese case because they neglect significant heterogeneity among authoritarian regimes: namely that while some fail to foster growth and innovation, “smart authoritarians” provide public goods, constrain leaders, allow limited civil society, and pursue other policies that encourage growth. These findings have profound implications for the future balance of power (suggesting a shift to bipolarity), and add to an authoritarian politics literature that has demonstrated the increasing adaptability and resilience of authoritarian regimes. 

About the Speaker: Professor Lind holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a Master’s from the School of Global Policy & Strategy from the University of California, San Diego; and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Lind is the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, a book that examines the effect of war memory on international reconciliation (Cornell University Press, 2008). She has  authored scholarly articles in International Security and International Studies Quarterly, and writes for wider audiences in outlets such as Foreign Affairs and National Interest. She has been quoted and interviewed by PBS Newshour, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Professor Lind is affiliated with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard, as well as Chatham House, London. In recent years she has been a visiting scholar at Waseda University, Japan, and at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Lind has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense. She has recently authored a book (under review) about China’s rise to great power, adaptation by authoritarian regimes, and the future of great-power politics.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.