Burma (Myanmar) has been under military rule since 1962. It is the least free country in Southeast Asia by the latest Freedom House ranking of political rights and civil liberties. The current junta's leader, Senior General Than Shwe, has made Daw Aung San Suu Kyi arguably the best known political prisoner in the world. In August-September 2007, following steep hikes in fuel prices, scores of protesters marched in silence and were dispersed or arrested. The protests spread beyond the capital and included at least one by Buddhist monks--a significant development in a largely Buddhist country. Meanwhile, delegates to a national convention convened by the regime completed guidelines for a future constitution. This step on a supposed road map to democracy was criticized by some observers as a ploy to institutionalize army control. Others treated the guidelines less skeptically on the grounds that even regime-favoring rules might be used to nudge the country toward reform, and were thus better than no rules at all.

How should outsiders respond to these conditions? With policies of isolation? Or of engagement? Which of the two logics is more powerful: that isolation will deprive the junta of needed support and thus help spark democratization? Or that engagement will expose the country to liberalization and thus incrementally undermine the regime? Is there a mixed logic worth implementing between these extremes? Or have the mounting protests inside Burma opened a crucial window of opportunity that replaces these alternatives with a radical new logic of carpe diem:that outsiders should actively intervene in support of the opposition and in favor of regime change now? Not to mention the junta's own rationale for retaining power: that military rule is preferable to any alternative.

Maureen Aung-Thwin, while working on Burma at the Open Society Institute (founded by financier/philanthropist George Soros), is an active member of the Asia Committee of Human Rights Watch. She is a trustee of the Burma Studies Foundation, which oversees the Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University. She received a BA from Northwestern University and did graduate work at NYU.

Zarni, while researching democratic transition at Oxford, has been active in "Track II" negotiations with the Burmese junta. In 1995 he founded the Free Burma Coalition, which favored sanctions. Later his position evolved toward engagement. He edited Active Citizens under Political Wraps: Experiences from Myanmar/Burma and Vietnam (2006). He received a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Co-sponsored with the Asia Society Northern California and the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at UC-Berkeley.

Vietnam has become the newest "Asian tiger." The US played a leading role in negotiating Vietnam's January 2007 entry into the World Trade Organization and the 2001 US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement. Requirements in these treaties have accelerated the pace of economic and legal policy reforms in Vietnam. Combined with other initiatives, the reforms are giving rise to the domestic institutions, economic policies, governing procedures, and rule of law needed to grow a market economy, facilitate the fledgling private sector, and rationalize the state sector. US foreign assistance has been intensively involved in this effort. The effects of these changes have been felt in faster growth, increased trade, more foreign and domestic investment, and continued poverty alleviation. Within this context, the seminar can address an especially difficult and complex question: How might these reforms, and the changes they have foster, affect the political development of the country?

Steve Parker recently returned from nearly six years in Vietnam, where he served as the project manager for the STAR-Vietnam Project--the first major USAID-funded technical assistance program in post-war Vietnam. In that context he worked with the prime minister's office in Hanoi to help more than forty government agencies make the changes needed for Vietnam to implement the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) and accede to the World Trade Organization. His latest writing is a "Report on the 5-Year Impact of the BTA on Vietnam's Trade, Investment and Economic Structure." Previously he worked as an economic specialist for the US government and the Asia Foundation, and was posted to Vietnam, Indonesia, and Japan with USAID, the Asian Development Bank, and the Harvard Institute for International Development.

Co-sponsored with the Stanford Center for International Development.

In recent years the largest Muslim-majority country, Indonesia, has seen the growth of contrary trends: a peaceful movement for democracy led and supported mostly by Muslims but also incidents of terrorism and signs of paramilitarism linked mainly to radical Islamists. Prof. Hefner will examine the role of Indonesia's Islamic madrasas in both cases, assess the likely future of Indonesian Muslim politics, and explore the implications of Indonesia's experience for the wider Muslim world.

Robert W. Hefner has directed the program on Islam and civil society at Boston University since 1991. He has conducted research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for over three decades, and has authored or edited a dozen books and several major policy reports. His most recent books include, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (edited with Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton University Press, 2007); ed., Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton, 2005); and Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, 2000). He is the invited editor of the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800, and is now writing a book for the Carnegie Corporation on Islamic education and democratization in Indonesia.

Glenn Kessler is a diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post, a position he has held since May 2002. He reports on the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy at the State Department, the White House, and other agencies.

He is also the author of the book, The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy, published in September, 2007, by St. Martin's Press.

Kessler, who is 48, joined the Post in January 1998 as national business editor. In that position, Kessler oversaw the reporting of a dozen reporters based in Washington and New York. Kessler switched from editing to reporting in February 2000, covering domestic economic policy and the Bush administration's push to pass a large tax cut, before moving to the national desk to become diplomatic correspondent.

Before joining the Post, Kessler spent nearly 11 years as a Washington correspondent and New York City-based reporter for Newsday. In Washington, Kessler served as White House correspondent, national political correspondent, and congressional correspondent. He led the newspaper's coverage of the 1996 election and the 1995 budget stalemate between Congress and the White House that resulted in two government shutdowns.

In New York, Kessler covered a variety of subjects for Newsday, including Wall Street (the insider trading scandals and 1987 stock market crash) and airline safety. Kessler's investigative articles on airline safety led to the indictments of airline executives and federal officials for fraud, prompted congressional hearings into safety issues, and led the federal government to impose new safety rules for DC-9 jets and begin regular inspections of foreign airlines.

Among other awards, Kessler has won the Page One Award of the Newspaper Guild (1989), the Atrium Award (1990), the investigative reporting award of the Society of the Silurians (1991) and the Premier Award of the Aviation/Space Writers Association (1992). He also was part of reporting teams that won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of a deadly subway crash and a 1996 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the TWA Flight 800 crash.

Before joining Newsdayin February 1987, Kessler was editor of Investment Dealers Digest and, before that, managing editor of Corporate Financing Week and Wall Street Letter.

Kessler is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received a Master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University in 1983 and a Bachelor's degree in European history from Brown University in 1981. He lives with his wife and three children in McLean, Va.

About The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy:

In his riveting glimpse into the life of one of the most powerful Secretaries of State in recent years, Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler provides not only a revealing look at Condoleezza Rice but a rich portrait of the Bush administration's controversial foreign policy regime. From her grievous errors in judgment as national security advisor to her notable influence over the president as Secretary of State, Rice has not gone unnoticed during her rise to power. But, as an intensely private person, she has despite endless media attention remained a mystery. As the first critical examination of Rice's skills as policy-maker, politician and manager, this definitive biography explains not only her rise to power, but the pivotal role she has played in our nation's history.

Full of candor as well as honesty, The Confidante shows unseen moments in Rice's life and of her frequently divisive performance during one of the most tumultuous foreign-policy periods in U.S. history. Drawing on personal interviews with Rice, an intimacy afforded to Kessler as one of the few reporters granted the opportunity to travel with her, Kessler takes readers inside the secret meetings Rice has held with foreign leaders and even her private conversations with President Bush. With access to all of Rice's top aides and sources in many overseas governments, Kessler also provides dramatic new information about one of the most secretive administrations in U.S. history. He shows how Rice molded herself into the image of a globe-trotting diplomatic super star, negating memories of her past failures. He exposes new details about her secret role in Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, her maneuvers around government bureaucracy to strike a pivotal nuclear-energy deal with India, her persuasion of Bush to support a dramatic gesture to Iran, her failure to prevent the North Korean nuclear test, and her struggle to contain the devastating war between Israel and Lebanon. This brilliantly written book reveals not only her public and private humiliation of foreign officials but also how her charm and grace have been successful assets in repairing fractured relations overseas. Condoleezza Rice remains today and in the future one of the most alluring, controversial, and ultimately influential decision makers in the United States. With this captivating work, Kessler shows what traits could solidify her shot at greatness or what cracks in her hard veneer could send her career hurtling to ruin.

This event is co-sponsored by the John S. Knight Fellowships Program.