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.

Ronald P. Spogli elected to Stanford University Board of Trustees

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FSI benefactor Ronald P. Spogli, former U.S. ambassador to Italy and San Marino (2005-09), has been elected by the Stanford University Board of Trustees to a five-year term beginning in October 2009. Spogli will take his seat at the next meeting, scheduled for Oct. 12-13. Spogli has had a highly distinguished career in business as well as public service as a founding partner of Freeman Spogli & Co, a private equity investment firm he established in 1983 with fellow Stanford alumnus Bradford M. Freeman. Both Freeman and Spogli have offered exemplary leadership to Stanford in many capacities. Freeman served on the Stanford Board of Trustees from 1995 to 2005 and both Freeman and Spogli currently serve on the FSI Advisory Board.

The Stanford University Board of Trustees recently elected Ronald P. Spogli, former U.S. ambassador to Italy and San Marino, to a five-year term beginning in October.

The board, which last met in June, used electronic ballots to conduct the election, which took place in July. Spogli will take his seat at the next meeting, scheduled for Oct. 12-13.

Including Spogli, the board will have 31 members, four fewer than its limit of 35.

"Ron Spogli has a long track record of commitment to and support for Stanford, and we are fortunate to have him join the board," said Leslie Hume, chair of the Board of Trustees. "With a distinguished career in both business and in public service, he brings a global perspective to the board that will serve the university well."

Spogli, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush as U.S. ambassador to Italy, was sworn in as ambassador in August 2005. In 2006, Spogli also became the American ambassador to San Marino—the first person to hold the title in the small mountainous country, which is completely surrounded by Italy. Both terms ended last February.

Spogli is a founding partner of Freeman Spogli & Co., a private equity investment firm he established in 1983 with Bradford M. Freeman in Los Angeles. In 2005, the longtime business partners and friends donated $50 million to Stanford's International Initiative. The initiative was launched to promote collaboration on campus on three themes: pursuing peace and security; improving governance locally, nationally and internationally; and advancing human well-being.

In recognition of their generous gift, the university changed the name of the Stanford Institute for International Studies to the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Currently, Spogli is a member of the institute's advisory board.

When he became an ambassador in 2005, Spogli was required to sever all ties with Freeman Spogli & Co. He rejoined the firm in June 2009.

Spogli, who was born in Los Angeles in 1948, earned a bachelor's degree in history from Stanford in 1970. During his junior year, Spogli was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the nation's oldest academic honor society.

As an undergraduate, Spogli traveled to Italy to study at Stanford's Florence campus. After graduating, he spent a year working as an assistant to the directors of the Florence program. Later, he spent more than a year living in Milan, where he was the lead researcher for a project studying the social impact of labor migration from southern Italy to the Italian industrial north.

In 1975, Spogli earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.

In 2002, President Bush appointed Spogli to a three-year term with the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, which establishes worldwide policies and procedures for the Fulbright Program and issues an annual report.

From 2002 to 2005, Spogli also served on the Overseas Studies Program Council, an advisory panel to what is now known as Stanford's Bing Overseas Studies Program.

Spogli has endowed two positions at Stanford: The Gesue and Helen Spogli Professorship in Italian Studies, which was named in honor of his Italian immigrant grandfather, who arrived in America in 1912, settled in Pennsylvania and moved to California in 1941, and his mother; and The Spogli Family Overseas Studies Director position in Florence, Italy.

Spogli served as regional chair of the major gifts committee of the Campaign for Undergraduate Education from 2000 to 2004. The campaign, which ended in 2005, raised more than $1 billion.

Spogli also has served as an active volunteer at many Stanford events. He served as co-chair of the "Think Again" event in Los Angeles and as a member of the steering committee for the "Think Again" event in San Diego. The 12-city tour – a component of the Campaign for Undergraduate Education – was designed to reacquaint alumni with the university and the strides it had made in undergraduate education over the past decade. He also served as co-chair of the Special Gifts Committee for his 35th class reunion.

 

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Tingting Feng

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E-301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-6530
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Visiting Scholar, 2009-2010
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Ting Ting is currently at Beijing Technology and Business University where she teaches International Trade and Business Communication.  Prior to that, she worked at Siemens Ltd. China and Lenovo Computer Systems with expereince in international business.  She obtained her Master's Degree of Science in Finance from the University of Liverpool (UK, 2003) and her Bachelor of Economics from Southwestern University of Finance & Economics (China, 1988).

Brian Chen

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E-301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 736-0771 (650) 723-6530
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2011 AHPP/CEAS Visiting Scholar
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Dr. Brian Chen is currently a visiting scholar with the Asia Health Policy Program and Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. He was recently Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center's 2009-2010 postdoctoral fellow in Comparative Health Policy. As a visiting scholar, Dr. Chen will conduct collaborative research about health of the elderly and chronic disease in China.

As an applied economist, Chen’s research focuses on the impact of incentives in health care organizations on provider and patient behavior. For his dissertation, Chen empirically examined how vertical integration and prohibition against self-referrals affected physician prescribing behavior. His job market paper was selected for presentation at the American Law and Economics Association’s Annual Meeting, the Academy of Management, the Canadian Law and Economics Association, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and the First Annual Conference on Empirical Health Law and Policy at Georgetown Law Center in 2009.  The paper was also nominated for best paper based on a dissertation at the Academy of Management.

Chen comes to the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center not only with a multidisciplinary law and economics background, but also with an international perspective from having lived and worked in Taiwan, Japan, and France. He has a particularly intimate knowledge of the Taiwanese health care system from his experience as an assistant to the hospital administrator at a medical college in Taiwan.

During his past residence as a postdoctoral fellow with the Asia Health Policy Program, Chen conducted empirical research on cost containment policies in Taiwan and Japan and how those policies impacted provider behavior. His work also contributed to the program’s research activities on comparative health systems and health service delivery in the Asia-Pacific, a theme that encompasses the historical evolution of health policies; the role of the private sector and public-private partnerships; payment incentives and their impact on patients and providers; organizational innovation, contracting, and soft budget constraints; and chronic disease management and service coordination for aging populations.

Dr. Brian Chen recently completed his Ph.D. in Business Administration in the Business and Public Policy Group at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. He received a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School in 1997, and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1992.

Oddvar Kaarboe

117 Encina Commons
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 804-5398
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Currently Dr. Kaarboe is working as an associate professor in economics at Department of Economics, University of Bergen, Norway. He also serves as the research director of the research group Health Economics Bergen (HEB).

Dr. Kaarboe's research has mainly been focused on developing and implementing financing models in the health care sector. This includes i) theoretical work, ii) developing remuneration models at the nation level, and iii) developing and implementing remuneration models at the regional level in Norway. He has also been involved in a WHO-project on implementing decentralization in health care. Recently Dr. Kaarboe was the Principal Investigator (PI) for a project on evaluation of a Norwegian hospital reform. This reform concerns a major change in the governance structure of the hospital sector in Norway. Currently Dr. Kaarboe is the PI of a project on prioritization in the hospital sector. The main purpose of the project is to develop a surveillance system to monitor prioritization of hospital patients. One part of the project includes a comparative analysis of prioritization practices in Norway and Scotland. He is also involved in a project about the relationship between social capital and health.

The health economics group in Bergen is one of the larger health research groups in Europe. The research group is based within economics and business administration but emphasizes multidisciplinary research cooperation with medicine, health care institutions and other social sciences. It has a broad international (European) network. Well known health economics like Professors Andrew Jones, (York), Carol Propper (Imperial College/Bristol University), John Cairns (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), Matt Sutton (University of Manchester), Sherman Folland (Oakland University) and Maarten Lindeboom (Vrije University) are all affiliated with the health group.

Adjunct Affiliate at the Center for Health Policy and the Department of Health Policy
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Honorable Survivor: Mao's China, McCarthy's America and the Persecution of John S. Service

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Lynne Joiner, author of Honorable Survivor: Mao's China, McCarthy's America and the Persecution of John S. Service will discuss and read from her new book, available October 7, 2009.

John Stewart Service (3 August 1909 - 3 February 1999) was an American diplomat who served in the Foreign Service in China prior to and during World War II. Considered one of the State Department's "China Hands," he was an important member of the Dixie Mission to Yan'an. Service correctly predicted that the Communists would defeat the Nationalists in a civil war, but he and other diplomats were blamed for the "loss" of China in the domestic political turmoil following the 1949 Communist triumph in China. In the immediate postwar years, Service was indicted in the Amerasia Affair in 1945, of which a Grand Jury cleared him of wrongdoing.  In 1950 U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy launched an attack against Service, which led to investigations of the reports Service wrote while stationed in China. Secretary of State Dean Acheson fired Service, but in 1957 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered his reinstatement in a unanimous decision.

Notable reviews:

"Sometimes a writer can use one person's story to illuminate an entire piece of history, and that is what Lynne Joiner does in her engrossing and readable book. . . . This is both a solid addition to scholarship of the Cold War era and the moving, very personal story of the life of one man: brilliant, flawed, long suffering, and honorable indeed."

-Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa 

"Joiner ably tells the tragic story of a good American laid low by the basest kind of character assassination masquerading as anti-Communism. All one can say is: 'Read this book and weep!"

-Orville Schell, Director of the Center for US-China Relations, Asia Society.

"Jack Service's experiences in wartime China and postwar America are an exciting tale with important resonances for current foreign policy challenges in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Iran as well as U.S.-China relations. I can't wait to see the movie."

-Susan L. Shirk, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (1997-2000); currently Director, University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, U.C.-San Diego

‘This maelstrom of political intrigue, with Service at the center, is presented in well-documented and engaging detail. It is critical reading for anyone concerned with China policy and an instance of Congress and the FBI subverting justice."

-Richard H. Solomon, former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Relations; currently President of the U.S. Institute of Peace 

"Honorable Survivor is the gripping tale of one man's extraordinary life in wartime China and the Kafkaesque era of McCarthyism in America. Lynne Joiner does a masterful job of using new materials to illuminate how personal decisions, great historical forces, and the actions of vindictive and overzealous officials shaped developments in China, the United States, and U.S.-China relations in ways that have yet to be fully resolved."

-Thomas Fingar, former U.S. Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis; currently lecturer at Stanford University 

"Jack Service did not lose China.  On the contrary, he was a hero of the times. . . . This well-written and thoroughly researched book . . . helps us understand the machinations and failures of U.S.-China policy, on both the American and Chinese sides."

-Victor Hao Li, former President, East-West Center, Honolulu, and former Shelton Professor of International Law, Stanford Law School

Lynne Joiner is an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist, news anchor, and documentary filmmaker. Her work has included assignments for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, NPR, Christian Science Monitor Radio, Newsweek, and Los Angeles Times Magazine. She lives in San Francisco, California.

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Lynne Joiner Media Consultant Speaker Shanghi International TV Channel
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Burton Richter in Roll Call: US climate bill needs more support for energy R&D

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PESD affiliated faculty Burton Richter argues in Roll Call that the climate bill passed by the US House of Representatives misses the mark on several fronts, especially in its inadequate funding for long-term research. The Senate must do better.

Will climate change finally wake us from our energy lethargy? Three times in the past 36 years, our nation has suffered from oil shocks and done little to implement lasting policies that could avoid them in the future. We took some small steps in the 1970s and 1990s, but ultimately we failed to close the deal.

Today, we are more dependent than ever on imported oil - two-thirds of our total consumption in 2008 came from other nations compared to one-third in 1973. And today we face the recognized threat of climate change, which will affect the entire world dramatically in the coming decades - unless we and other nations reduce the production of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide.

For our oil dependence, we took half-measures. Will we do better on climate change? The House version of the climate bill, which passed by a narrow margin, offers some hope, but it misses the mark on several accounts. To satisfy various interests - some legitimate, others selfish - drafters of the legislation compromised away a number of crucial provisions. The big question now: Will the Senate make it better or worse?

The House gives away too many of the emission allowances that are central to cap-and-trade; places too much emphasis on renewables, which are not as ready for the big time as their advocates claim; gives too little emphasis to natural gas and nuclear power, both of which could play a large role in replacing coal; does not fund the necessary long-term research, development and demonstration program that President Barack Obama proposed; and places far too little emphasis on energy efficiency, which is easy to implement and saves money in the long run.

The Senate can do better. It should start by including in the legislation the president's Clean Energy Technology Fund, an investment of $15 billion per year over 10 years to develop affordable, low-emission energy technologies that could be used by the developing world as well as by rich countries. The provision wasn't included in the House bill, and I am one of 34 Nobel Laureates who recently wrote to the president, urging him to try to get Congress to include the fund in a final climate bill.

A stable funding mechanism for basic and applied research, development and demonstration is critical to developing the technologies we will need to greatly cut emissions in a cost-effective manner. The Senate should set aside at least 5 percent of all emission allowances for the Clean Energy Technology Fund, and for purposes of stability of funding, provide support for the full lifetime cost of a competitively selected project at the time the award is made.

Current technologies are a good start, but they are not up to doing the entire job. For example, we have no effective way to store energy from intermittent sources to smooth out the variations of wind and solar output that hugely complicate their use on a large scale.

Another challenge is the use of hydrogen fuel cells to store energy from intermittent sources and use it for transportation. The present cells use so much platinum as a catalyst that the entire yearly world supply of platinum is not enough to supply the fuel cells needed for U.S. auto production, much less the world's.

Our very expensive corn ethanol program is at best a marginal reducer of emissions, and if the effects of land-use changes are included, is positively harmful. There are more advanced biofuels that might actually do some good, but they, too, need more research and a lot more development and demonstration.

Nuclear power, a safe source available 24/7, is being slowed by concern about the lack of a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. There is no intermediate-term problem because spent fuel can be stored safely at reactor sites for many years. In the interim, we can do the research and development that might allow us to reduce the volume of waste in a way that is proliferation-resistant.

Energy efficiency is an easy, low-cost way to reduce emissions. There are many ways to improve efficiency in power generation, transportation and buildings that would benefit from the president's fund. Some things don't even need research and development, like an energy audit before the sale of any building that would tell the buyer how to save with simple upgrades that pay for themselves through reduced utility bills. Unfortunately, the House failed to include a provision for the audits, bowing to the National Association of Realtors, which seems to want buyers to know as little as possible.

Tackling climate change is not mission impossible. Deploying today's technologies and supporting the research and development for tomorrow's will put us on the right path toward achieving energy security and mitigating climate change.

Burton Richter is a Nobel Laureate (Physics, 1976), member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a past president of both the American Physical Society and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. He is the Paul Pigott professor emeritus at Stanford University and the former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, one of the Department of Energy's science laboratories.

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Democracy, Redistribution and Growth: Any Regularity at All?

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Boris Begovic is president at the Center for Liberal-Democratic studies (CLDS) and professor of economics at the School of Law, University of Belgrade. He received his education at the University in Belgrade, London School of Economic and JFK School of Government, Harvard University. His field of expertise includes industrial organization, economic analysis of law, economic growth, economics of competition policy, and urban economics. Begovic was a chief economic adviser of the Federal Government of Yugoslavia (Serbia & Montenegro) 2000-2002, mainly involved in negotiations with IFIs, WTO accession and foreign trade liberalization, price liberalization and foreign debt rescheduling. Recent publications include: Corruption: An Economic Analysis (2007), Greenfield FDIs in Serbia (2008), Economics for Lawyers (2008) and From Poverty to Prosperity: Free Market Based Solutions (2008).

As democracy is based on one person - one vote rule and freedom of expression and it can bring a strong political pressure for compulsory redistribution, contrary to authoritarian political environment. Is there a systematic difference in redistributive and other economic policies between democracies and other countries? What are the effects of incentives created by democratic political decisions to the most productive segments to the society and economic growth they create? To what extent compulsory redistribution is violating protection of property rights and undermining sustainable economic growth? Do we have a consistent theory that can explain these relations? Is there any consistent empirical evidence? Are the consequences of democracy to the economic growth the same if the country came from the left wing or right wing authoritarian societies. These issues will be reviewed on the seminar.  

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Boris Begovic President, at the Center for Liberal-Democratic Studies (CLDS) & Professor of Economics Speaker the School of Law, University of Belgrade
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Korean Strategic Thoughts on Regional Security Cooperation

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This talk will examine the evolution of Korean strategic thought on regionalism, with particular focus on regional security cooperation:

  1. How does South Korean regional thinking differ from that of its neighbors, and how has it evolved over time?,
  2. Was there any discernable strategic thought to realize regional aspirations during the cold war era, and afterward how has it responded to the dynamics of regionalism in Northeast Asia?,
  3. Is South Korean strategic thought on regionalism long-term, goal-oriented, and consistent? Does it set priorities, recognize trade-offs, and change in response to actual results or new developments in the region? How do competing visions of domestic forces define its scope and direction?,
  4. Under what circumstances has Seoul given regional multilateral cooperation a prominent place in its strategic thinking and national security doctrine? Is it based on careful deliberations and a realistic understanding of costs and benefits?,
  5. Wither to the 6 Party Talks (given North Korea said the Talks are dead) and a five-party proposal by Profesident Lee Myung Bak, about which China seems reluctant?

The speaker will review Seoul’s strategic thought on regional multilateral cooperation in Northeast Asia during and after the cold war, followed by consideration of the challenges and opportunities for growing regionalism with Korean “centrality.”

Shin-wha Lee is currently a visiting professor at School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University and also serving as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Korean Permanent Mission to the United Nations.  She worked at the World Bank and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Sudan. She served as Special Advisor to the United Nations, 'Rwandan Independent Inquiry,' Chair's Advisor of East Asian Vision Group (EAVG), and Coordinator of UNESCO Chair on Peace, Democracy and Human Rights.  She has published numerous articles and books on global security, international  organizations, East Asian security cooperation, UN peacekeeping operations, and nontraditional security such as environmental and human security. Lee holds a Ph.D. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland at College Park.

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Shin-wha Lee Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University Speaker
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Korea Program
Korean Studies Colloquium Series

Audio for Charla Griffy-Brown seminar now available

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Now available on the SPRIE website: the audio recording of Professor Charla Griffy-Brown's seminar on "The Fortress and the Cloud: Women, technology and entrepreneurship in Japan." Professor Griffy-Brown explores how new business models are developing in Japan and how opportunities are being created for the rise of women entrepreneurs.
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Energy Developments and Geopolitics in the Caspian Region: Perspectives from Azerbaijan

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Fariz Ismailzade, Azerbaijan, is director of the Advanced Foreign Service Program at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy (ADA) within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Prior to joining ADA, Fariz worked for 10 years in the NGO sector of Azerbaijan, most recently as director of political programs at the International Republican Institute. Fariz has also conducted research at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.  His research mainly focuses on the geopolitics of the Caucasus region and CIS affairs. Fariz is a regular correspondent for Eurasianet.org, Transitions on Line, Jamestown Daily Monitor and Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst and has written on the politics and economics of Azerbaijan and the Caucasus region for Institute for War and Peace Report, East-West Institute, Analysis of Current Events, Freedom House, CaucasUS Context, Azerbaijan International and Collage. Fariz has also presented at international conferences, including the Middle Eastern Studies Association, NATO Advanced Research Workshop in Kiev, Ukraine, and the Association for Studies of Nationalities in New York.  Since 2006, he has been a recipient of the International Policy Fellowship Research Award.  Fariz earned his BA in political science from Western University in Baku and holds a Masters in social and economic development from Washington University in St. Louis.
 
Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan, is Azerbaijan’s first Consul General to Los Angeles, California with personal rank of Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. Prior to that he served as Senior Counselor at the Foreign Relations Department, Office of the President in Baku, Azerbaijan and as Press Officer of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Washington, DC. Before joining diplomatic service, Mr. Suleymanov worked with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Azerbaijan and with the Open Media Research Institute in Prague, Czech Republic. A graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Massachusetts, Mr. Suleymanov also holds graduate degrees from the Political Geography department of the Moscow State University, Russia, and from the University of Toledo, Ohio. Mr. Suleymanov speaks Azerbaijani, English, Russian and Czech languages.

CO-SPONSORED BY CREEES

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Fariz Ismailzade Director of the Diplomatic Academy Speaker Azerbaijan
Elin Suleymanov Consul General Speaker Azerbaijan to the U.S., and Los Angeles
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