John D. Ciorciari was a Shorenstein Fellow at APARC in 2007-08 and an affiliate of APARC and SEAF in 2008-09 while a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution.   Upon leaving Stanford he took up a position as an assistant professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

A main purpose of the Shorenstein Fellowship is to enable post-docs to revise their dissertations for publication.  John did exactly that.  In 2010 Georgetown University Press will publish The Limits of Alignment in the Global South:  Southeast Asia since 1975.  Congratulations, John!

During his association with SEAF John also finished co-editing and co-authoring a monograph on the (in)famous Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia.  In 2009 the Documentation Center of Cambodia published the result:  On Trial: The Khmer Rouge Accountability Press.

On Trial is dedicated to “the victims of [Pol Pot’s grossly misnamed] Democratic Kampuchea and to promoting a legal accountability process that will honor their memories and provide their families with justice.”

Sophal Ear, an assistant professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey) and himself a survivor of Pol Pot’s regime praised On Trial as an “excellent,” “thoughtful,” “timely,” and “essential book.”

The renowned historian of Cambodia David Chandler—a professor emeritus at Monash University (Australia) and a former SEAF speaker—also lauded the book: 

“This invaluable collection of essays, sponsored by the Cambodian NGO that has pioneered research on the Khmer Rouge era, provides a wealth of information about the so-called Khmer Rouge Tribunal.  On Trial is accessible, well researched, and passionately engaged with the innumerable tragedies of the Khmer Rouge period.  Its authors argue that the ongoing trials may possibly lead toward deeper reconciliation and certainly a deeper knowledge of what happened throughout the country in those horrific years.”

Other publications stemming from John’s time at Stanford include these three wide-ranging titles, all published in January 2009: 

“The Balance of Great-power Influence in Contemporary Southeast Asia,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (9: 1), pp. 157-196; International Politics and the Mess in Myanmar, JPRI Working Paper No. 114, Japan Policy Research Institute; and An Asian Monetary Fund in the Making? SCID Working Paper No. 378, Stanford Center for International Development.

While at Stanford in 2008-09 John also gave off-campus presentations on topics including Asian security, Cambodian history, and alignment politics at Columbia, Princeton, and Chicago, among other universities, and the International Studies Association, among other professional-society venues.

Future Shorenstein Fellows take note:  John Ciorciari is a tough act to follow.  SEAF wishes him the best of success in his future endeavors.

Anticipating Opportunities: Using Intelligence to Shape the Future
"We spend $45 billion annually to reduce uncertainty, to help us combat threats to our nation, our people, and our security," said Payne Distinguished Lecturer Thomas Fingar in his third Payne lecture on October 21, devoted to anticipating the future -- "not for purposes of prediction but for purposes of shaping it."  Noting that strategic intelligence treats the future neither as "inevitable or immutable," Fingar employed real-life examples from his career in national intelligence (most recently as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and chairman of the National Intelligence Council) to explore concrete ways intelligence can be used to move developments in a more favorable direction.

Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World examined the trends which will "drive, shape and constrain" individuals, governments, and nations around the world. Among prominent trends, he cited globalization, which will provide unprecedented prosperity but greater inequality; the rise of the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China; the rise of new powers such as Indonesia, Turkey, and Iran; and the coming demographic boom, which will add 1.2 billion people to the world, with less than 3 percent of that occurring in the West.

The Geopolitical Implications of Climate Change.  Instructed by the Congress to provide an assessment of the impact of global climate change, given controversy about the imminence of the threat and man's role in it, the NIC studied which regions and countries would be most dramatically affected by climate change, with a focus on water, food production, and changes in weather patterns. The results remain classified, because of the potential impact on vulnerable countries. 

The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. This estimate, attacked from both the right and the left, concluded with a moderate to high degree of confidence that Iran had not obtained sufficient fissile material from external sources (to make a bomb) and that its fastest route to produce a nuclear weapon would be through domestic production of enriched uranium. The NIE also judged that Iran had halted the weaponization portions of its nuclear program in 2003, but had retained the option to pursue a weapon and whether to do so was a "political decision" which could be made at any time.