In this analysis of the region, Hicham Ben Abdallah points out that, while political issues are important to understanding the authoritarian political structures of the Arab world, it is also important to understand the dynamics of culture.  Ben Abdallah demonstrates the proliferation of cultural practices through which societies and individuals learn to live in a complex mix of parallel and conflicting ideological tendencies -- with the increasing Islamicization of everyday ideology developing alongside the proliferation of secular forms of cultural production, while both negotiate for breathing room under the aegis of an authoritarian state. 

He describes how the state takes advantage of a segmented cultural scene by posing as a restraint against the extremes of the salafist norm, while channeling modernist cultural expression into safe institutional and patronage reward systems  and into a commercialized process of "festivalization," all of which celebrate a depoliticized "Arab" identity. 

Hicham Ben Abdallah refers us to the deep history of Islam, which protected divergent cultural and intellectual influences as the patrimony of mankind.  He suggests a new cultural paradigm, inspired by this history while understanding the necessity for political democratization and cultural modernism.  We must, he argues, be unafraid to face the challenges implied in the tension between the growing influence of a salafist norm and the widespread embrace of implicitly secular cultural practices throughout the Arab world.   

Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui received a B.A. in Politics from Princeton University, and an M.A in Politics from Stanford University. He recently founded the Moulay Hicham Foundation for Social Science Research on North Africa and the Middle East, and serves as its Director.   

Through this Foundation he has established the Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World, at The Freeman Spogli Institute's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.  Hicham Ben Abdallah is a member of the Advisory Board of the Freeman Spogli Institute. 

He has also recently founded a program in Global Climate Change, Democracy and Human Security (known as the "Climate Change and Democracy Project), in the Division of Social Sciences, Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.   

In 1994, at Princeton University, Hicham Ben Abdallah endowed the Institute for the Trans-regional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.  This Institute has become an important venue for study and debate on the region. 

Hicham Ben Abdallah is also active in global humanitarian and social issues. He serves on the Human Rights Watch Board of Directors for the Middle East and North Africa.   He has worked with the Carter Center on a number of initiatives, including serving as an international observer with the Carter Center delegations during elections in Palestine in 1996 and 2006, and in Nigeria in 2000.  In 2000, he served as Principal Officer for Community Affairs with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo . 

Hicham Ben Abdallah is also an entrepreneur in the domain of renewable energy.  His company, Al Tayyar Energy, develops projects that produce clean energy at competitive prices.  He has implemented several of these projects in Asia, Europe and North America.

China and the World: The Stanford China Program, in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies, will host a special series of seminars to examine China as a major political and economic actor on the world stage. Over the course of the autumn and winter terms, leading scholars will examine China's actions and policies in the new global political economy. What is China's role in global governance? What is the state of China's relations with its Asian neighbors? Is China being more assertive both diplomatically as well as militarily? Are economic interests shaping its foreign policies? What role does China play amidst international conflicts?

M. Taylor Fravel is the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Associate Professor of Political Science and member of the Security Studies Program at MIT. He studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China, and East Asia.  His current projects examine the evolution of China's military strategy since 1949 and the relationship between material capabilities and political influence in China's rise as a great power.

This event is part of the China and the World series.

China and the World: The Stanford China Program, in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies, will host a special series of seminars to examine China as a major political and economic actor on the world stage. Over the course of the autumn and winter terms, leading scholars will examine China's actions and policies in the new global political economy. What is China's role in global governance? What is the state of China's relations with its Asian neighbors? Is China being more assertive both diplomatically as well as militarily? Are economic interests shaping its foreign policies? What role does China play amidst international conflicts?

Susan Shirk is director of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and  Ho Miu Lam Professor of China and Pacific Affairs in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego.

This event is part of the China and the World series.

Despite growing evidence that China's success in taking advantage of the global system is a function of its willingness to accede to existing norms, pundits, and many academics, continue to predict that China's rise will transform the international system, usually for the worse.  Indeed, one can make a stronger case that China's participation in the US-led global system has transformed China far more than it has changed the institutions and norms that support globalization and facilitate China's rise.

Dr. Thomas Fingar is the Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow. In 2009, he was the Payne Distinguished Lecturer in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. From May 2005 through December 2008, he served as the first Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and, concurrently, as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

This event is part of the China and the World series.

The 21st century has been branded the century of the worldwide return of ethnonationalisms. Conflicts based on cultural differences are boiling up in many regions, leading to civil wars and to the breakup of states. Many of these conflicts are direct and indirect consequences of modernization and transnationalization; and they are usually as complex as they are enduring and difficult to settle, because rooted in the "deep“ dimensions of culture and religion. The result is in many cases a conflict pattern where political solutions are often only of temporary value, because the far deeper rooted ethnic and cultural dimensions sooner or later undermine them and spiral the conflict up again. As a consequence, there is a new debate today about the advantages of partition and separation, and an increasing number of scholars and politicians seems to believe that the still most humane lasting solution for ethno-cultural conflicts is to institutionally divide ethnic groups once and for all, accepting to a certain extent (non-recurring) ethnic cleansing and new flows of refugees. Answering such approaches (like the one of Jerry Z. Muller propagated paradigmatically in Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008), Roland Benedikter presents a functioning and long-term proven model from Central Europe, where different ethnic groups have managed it to find a unique institutional arrangement that permits them to live together without territorial and political partition. In presenting core features of the model of autonomy of the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, a border region between Northern Italy and Austria where three ethnic groups coexist and have made the area formerly ridden by civil wars (until 1972) now one of the wealthiest regions of Europe, Roland Benedikter shows how cornerstones of this model may be successfully applied also to other ethnic conflict regions.

Roland Benedikter, Dott. Dr. Dr. Dr., is European Foundation Fellow 2009-2013, in residence at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara, with duties as the European Foundations Research Professor of Political Sociology. His main field of interest is the multidimensional analysis of what he calls the current "Global Systemic Shift", which he tries to understand by bringing together the six typological discourses (and systemic order patterns) of Politics, Economy, Culture, Religion, Technology and Demography. Roland is currently working on two major book projects: One about the "Global Systemic Shift", and one about the "Contemporary Cultural Psychology of the West", the latter comparing culturo-political trends in the European and American hemispheres. With both projects he is also involved in European Policy Advice.

Demographic changes are profoundly shaping the political, economic, and social landscape of the Asia-Pacific region. How have individuals, families, communities, and policymakers responded? How should they? For example, how will national and social identities transform as population ageing strains traditions of filial piety and immigration disrupts ethnic homogeneity? Will the economies of East Asia languish, or will a "second demographic dividend" spur renewed economic growth? Demographic change can have important psychological and political effects. For example, can one seriously imagine a resurgent, militaristic Japan with a declining and aging population? The responses to demographic change in Japan, South Korea, China, and their neighbors will have great potential long-term effects in the Asia-Pacific region.

This panel discussion, the opening and public portion of a 1-1/2 day workshop that will define a research agenda for the next three years, will bring together selected outside experts and faculty within the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center for an interdisciplinary and comparative discussion of the policy responses to rapid demographic change in East Asia.

• 3:00p.m. – 3:10p.m.
  Gi-Wook Shin, Director, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University: Introduction and welcome
• 3:10p.m. – 3:25p.m.
  Brian Nichiporuk, RAND Corporation: The Security Implications of Demographic Trends in East Asia
• 3:25p.m. – 3:40p.m.
  Michael Sutton, East-West Center, Washington, DC: Political & Security Implications of Population Aging in Japan
• 3:40p.m. – 3:55p.m.
  John Skrentny, Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, Professor of Sociology, University of California, San Diego: An East Asian Model to Managing Immigration? Durability & Change in the 2000s.
• 3:55p.m. – 4:10p.m.
  Chong-En Bai, Chair, Department of Economics, Freeman Chair Professor of Economics, Tsinghua University: Policy Responses to Demographic Change in China
• 4:10p.m. – 4:25p.m.
  David Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography Chair, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard University: Demographic Change in East Asia: Challenges, Options and Evidence
• 4:25p.m. – 4:40p.m.
  Naohiro Ogawa, Director, Population Research Institute, Nihon University: Population Aging & Changing Human Capital in Japan & other East Asian Countries
• 4:40p.m. – 4:55p.m.
  Andrew Mason, Professor of Economics, University of Hawaii, Manoa & Senior Fellow, East-West Center, Hawaii: Population Aging and the Generational Economy: Key Findings
• 4:55p.m. – 5:10p.m.
  James Raymo, Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison The “Second Demographic Transition” and family change in Japan
• 5:10p.m. – 5:30p.m.
  Discussion/Conclusion