Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Shifting U.S. focus in Northeast Asia

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In an era of intense focus on China's economic strength, Michael H. Armacost, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 1989 to 1993, speaks with Stanford Magazine about the U.S. preoccupation with Japan during the 1980s and 90s. He describes U.S. perceptions of and economic policy toward Japan, telling a cautionary tale about currency revaluation. Armacost also offers insight into the probability of the Six Party Talks convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program.
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Michael Armacost, Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow
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Max Preglau

The Europe Center
Encina Hall E103
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-8020 (650) 725-2592
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Professor of Sociology at University of Innsbruck, Austria
Distinguished Austrian Visiting Chair Professor, 2011
max_preglau.jpg PhD

Max Preglau is a professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, School of Political Science and Sociology of the University of Innsbruck in Austria. His work focuses on Critical Social Theory and on the comparative Study of Contemporary Societies, Social Inequalities, Welfare Regimes and Social Policies (Austria and EU-Memberstates).

In 2006-07 Preglau was a Joseph Schumpeter Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Until 1991 he was associate professor, until 1986 assistant professor at the Department of Sociology at the School of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Preglau received his doctoral degree in the Social and Economic Sciences from the Vienna Business School, a post-graduate Diploma in Sociology from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna and his qualification for university teaching (Habilitation) of Sociology from the University of Innsbruck.

Professor Preglau's current research projects include "Comparative Analysis of Social Structures: Austria, Europe and the USA," and "Comparative Analysis of Welfare States and Social Policies: Austria, Europe and the USA."

Courses:
SOC 252: Current Social Change: Austria, Europe and the US
Term: Winter, 3-5 units
Tue/Thur 3:15 - 5:05 PM, 160-127

SOC 253: Rise, Current Challenges and Transformations of the Welfare State
Term: Spring, 3-5 units
Tue/Thur: 3:15 - 5:05 PM, 160-127

Improving Food Security in the 21st Century: What are the Roles for Firms and Foundations

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Video clips (12 min)

February 10th marked the launch of FSE's new Global Food Policy and Food Security symposium series. The opening session featured Jeff Raikes (CEO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and Greg Page (CEO, Cargill), who presented their views on global food security and the roles of the private sector and foundation community. Stanford President John Hennessy provided the opening remarks. Click herefor a news summary of the event.


Speaker biographies

Greg Page, CEO Cargill Corporation

Greg Page serves as chairman and chief executive officer of Cargill. Cargill, a leader in agribusiness, is one of the largest privately held corporations in the world, with 131,000 employees in 66 countries, and with 2010 revenues of $108 billion. He was elected chairman of the board on Sept. 11, 2007, and CEO on June 1, 2007. He continues to hold the office of president, a position to which he was elected in June 2000. He was elected to the Cargill Board of Directors in August 2000.

Page joined Cargill in 1974 as a trainee assigned to the Feed Division. Over the years, he held a number of positions in the United States and Singapore. Page worked with the start-up of a poultry processing operation in Thailand, the beef and pork processing operations of Cargill's Excel subsidiary in Wichita, Kansas, and the Financial Markets Group in Minneapolis.

Page serves as a member of Eaton Corporation's board of directors. He serves as chair of the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Page received a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of North Dakota. He was born in Bottineau, N.D.

Corporate Responsibility at Cargill

Jeff Raikes, CEO Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Jeff Raikes, chief executive officer, leads the foundation's efforts to promote equity for all people around the world. He sets strategic priorities, monitors results, and facilitates relationships with key partners for all three of our program groups.

Before joining the foundation, Raikes was a member of Microsoft's senior leadership team, which sets overall strategy and direction for the company. Raikes was president of the Microsoft Business Division and oversaw the Information Worker, Server & Tools Business and Microsoft Business Solutions groups. He previously served as group vice president of the Worldwide Sales and Support Group, where he was responsible for providing strategic leadership for Microsoft's sales, marketing, and service initiatives. Before that, he served as senior vice president of Microsoft North America.

Raikes joined Microsoft in 1981 as a product manager and was instrumental in driving Microsoft's applications marketing strategy. Promoted to director of applications marketing in 1984, Raikes was the chief strategist behind the company's success in graphical applications for the Apple Macintosh and the Microsoft Windows operating system and the creation of the Microsoft Office suite of productivity applications. Before joining Microsoft, he was a software development manager at Apple Computer Inc.

Raikes, a Nebraska native, holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University. He and his wife, Tricia, have three children. They are founders of the Raikes Foundation and are active members of the United Way of King County, where they served as co-chairs of the 2006-2007 fundraising campaign. Raikes also serves on the board of directors for Costco Wholesale Corp. and the Microsoft Alumni Foundation, where he is chair of the board.

Adding special relevance to his participation today, Raikes is an active owner of a large farming and cattle-feeding operation in Nebraska.  For the last three years, he has also been a guest lecturer in Stanford's "World Food Economy" course, and he is slated to perform in that role again tomorrow.

Gates Foundation Agricultural Development Program

Mackenzie Conference Room
Room 300, Huang Building

Greg Page CEO Speaker Cargill Corporation
Jeff Raikes CEO Speaker Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Symposiums
Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series

Transforming Politics via Delegation to International Courts

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Karen Alter's current research investigates how the proliferation of international legal mechanisms is changing international relations.  Her book in progress, The New Terrain of International Law: International Courts in International Politics provides a new framework for comparing and understanding the influence of the twenty-four existing international courts, and for thinking about how different domains of domestic and international politics are transformed through the creation of international courts.     

Alter is author of The European Court's Political Power (Oxford University Press, 2009), and Establishing the Supremacy of European Law: The Making of an International Rule of Law in Europe. (Oxford University Press, 2001) and more than forty articles and book  chapters on the politics of international law and courts.  Recent publications investigate the politics of international regime complexity,  how delegation of authority to international courts reshapes domestic and international relations, and politics in the Andean Community's legal system.

Professor Alter teaches courses on international law, international organizations, ethics in international affairs, and the international politics of human rights at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Alter has been a German Marshall Fund Fellow, a Howard Foundation research fellow and an Emile Noel scholar at Harvard Law School. Her research has also been supported by the DAAD and France's Chateaubriand fellowship. She has been a visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation where she is an associate scholar of the Center on Law and Globalization, Northwestern University's School of Law, Harvard University's Center for European Studies, Institute d'Etudes Politiques, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Auswartiges Politik, Universität Bremen, and Seikei University. Fluent in Italian, French and German, Alter serves on the editorial board of European Union Politics and Law and Social Inquiry and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Karen Alter Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University; Northwestern Law School (courtesy appointment) Speaker
Workshops

Can ICT Improve Clean Water Delivery Systems in Slums? Lessons from Kibera

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Water is scarce, costly, and contaminated in Kibera, Nairobi -- one of Africa's largest urban slums. On good days, the women and children spend just under an hour finding clean water in their community. On bad days, the price of water increases tenfold and the search takes all day. Often, people ask jokingly whether it is water or cholera they are buying.

Many slums like Kibera lack access to clean drinking water, but they don't lack access to mobile phones. This is the insight behind M-Maji, a start-up non-profit project that uses mobile phones to empower communities with better information about water availability, price, and quality. This seminar will introduce the M-Maji system, and describe some of the challenges to designing for such a complex social environment.Background: M-Maji emerged from the Designing Liberation Technologies course in the Stanford d.school, which focused on using mobile phone technology for health improvement in Kibera. M-Maji has since received funding to run a pilot from the Program on Liberation Technologies and the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford

Sunny Jeon is the principal investigator to M-Maji research, and is currently making frequent trips to Kenya to prepare for a randomized impact evaluation of their water program. He is also a Ph.D. Candidate in the Stanford Department of Political Science, where he is working on a dissertation project that studies the economic and political returns to ethnic diversity.

Katherine Hoffman is a co-terminal student completing a B.A. in International Relations and Economics and an M.A. in International Policy Studies with a focus on Global Health. She has been involved with M-Maji since it began in Spring quarter, and has just returned from a trip to Kenya in December to begin laying the groundwork for the project implementation. 
Her primary interests include economic development and health improvement in low-resource settings. Past experience includes internships at the Bonn International Center for Conversion in Bonn, Germany and at the Institute for Financial Management in Chennai, India; she has also volunteered at the Center for the Working Girl in Quito, Ecuador and studied abroad for a quarter in Moscow.

Wallenberg Theater

Katherine Hoffman M.A. Candidate, International Policy Studies, Global Health Speaker Stanford University
Sunny Jeon Ph.D. Candidate,Political Science Speaker Stanford University
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series
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