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.
European Neighborhood Policy
In its communication on Wider Europe in 2003, the Commission launched a new program to structure its relations with its neighbors, the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP). With the 2004 EU enlargement in mind the EU wanted to start forging closer bonds with its new neighbors in the East. The objectives of the ENP would be to provide political stability and economic prosperity to its neighbors. The ENP would thus prevent that the new EU borders would become stark political and economic dividing lines. In exchange for reforms the EU would offer its neighbors further economic integration. The integration would fall short of EU membership, however. Prospects for membership would not be provided in the medium term, even though the approach is reminiscent of the path taken in the enlargement process. In the two years that have transpired since its launch, the EU has set out strategies and action plans for different countries as part of the ENP.
The workshop intends to study a variety of aspects of the ENP: legal, institutional, economic and political issues. It will analyze the specific characteristics of the policy and its expected political and economic impact on the neighbors, the EU's border regions and the rest of the EU. In studying these various issues a wide range of points of view will be considered: views from within the EU and from within the EU institutions, as well as perspectives from Eastern Europe, North-Africa, the Middle East and North-America.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Alfred Tovias
Speaker
Hebrew University of Jerusalem and CEPII Paris
Lior Herman
Speaker
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Paul Kubicek
Speaker
Oakland University
Timothy E. Josling
Speaker
Stanford University
Hassan Abouyoub
Former Moroccan Minister of Trade and Agriculture
Speaker
Christophe Crombez
Encina Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
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christophe.crombez@stanford.edu
Senior Research Scholar at The Europe Center
Christophe Crombez is a political economist who specializes in European Union (EU) politics and business-government relations in Europe. His research focuses on EU institutions and their impact on policies, EU institutional reform, lobbying, party politics, and parliamentary government.
Crombez is Senior Research Scholar at The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University (since 1999). He teaches Introduction to European Studies and The Future of the EU in Stanford’s International Relations Program, and is responsible for the Minor in European Studies and the Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe.
Furthermore, Crombez is Professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics and Business at KU Leuven in Belgium (since 1994). His teaching responsibilities in Leuven include Political Business Strategy and Applied Game Theory. He is Vice-Chair for Research at the Department for Managerial Economics, Strategy and Innovation.
Crombez has also held visiting positions at the following universities and research institutes: the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, in Florence, Italy, in Spring 2008; the Department of Political Science at the University of Florence, Italy, in Spring 2004; the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan, in Winter 2003; the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, Illinois, in Spring 1998; the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Summer 1998; the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, in Spring 1997; the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in Spring 1996; and Leti University in St. Petersburg, Russia, in Fall 1995.
Crombez obtained a B.A. in Applied Economics, Finance, from KU Leuven in 1989, and a Ph.D. in Business, Political Economics, from Stanford University in 1994.
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Stanford Launches International Initiative with $94 Million in Gifts
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Stanford University President John Hennessy launched a wide-ranging International Initiative on Thursday and announced corresponding gifts of nearly $100 million to provide resources and expertise in the quest to help solve some of the most daunting global issues of the century.
Stanford alumni Bradford Freeman and Ronald Spogli, business partners and friends for more than 25 years, have committed a lead gift of $50 million to the new initiative.
"The world's problems-international peace and security, global health, poverty-present themselves in the form of challenges that defy traditional rubrics," Hennessy said. "By unifying and strengthening our efforts in the area of international affairs, we affirm that Stanford has a special role to play in addressing these issues and providing real-world solutions."
Hennessy praised the leadership of Spogli and Freeman for jump-starting the initiative with their gift.
"Brad and Ron are true friends of the university," Hennessy said. "Their philanthropy stands for much more, however, than loyalty to their alma mater. It recognizes the magnitude of what is at stake and acknowledges the responsibility Stanford must assume to advance knowledge in the area of international affairs."
Freeman ('64) and Spogli ('70) are founding partners of the Los Angeles-based investment firm Freeman Spogli & Co. Freeman is a member of the Stanford Board of Trustees; Spogli is a member of the board of visitors of the Stanford Institute for International Studies (SIIS).
"We are very pleased to support the International Initiative and enable the Stanford Institute for International Studies to enhance its focus on key issues and challenges of our times," said Freeman and Spogli.
The lead gift will create up to 10 interdisciplinary professorships and endow the directorship of the Stanford Institute for International Studies. Together with an allocation from the Office of the President, it also will create a $3 million intellectual venture-capital fund to support innovative, interdisciplinary research and teaching in international studies at Stanford. In addition, the gift will support the work of the institute's centers and programs and stimulate collaborations between and among the institute, Stanford's seven schools and the Hoover Institution.
Key Stanford donors have contributed an additional $44 million to meet important objectives of the International Initiative:
Craig ('73) and Susan ('84) McCaw will provide critically important need-based scholarship support for international undergraduate students, which President Hennessy recently articulated as a high university priority.
An anonymous donor has pledged a gift to the Graduate School of Business (GSB) to support its Center for Global Business and the Economy and the institute. The gift will strengthen campus-wide collaborations for the initiative, particularly involving the GSB.
Susan Ford Dorsey has made a gift that will permit a substantial enhancement of the International Policy Studies master's program, to be operated jointly by SIIS and the School of Humanities and Sciences.
Longtime supporter Walter Shorenstein will endow the institute's Asia Pacific Research Center, to be named the Walter Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center.
"Thanks to this most generous gift from Brad Freeman and Ron Spogli as well as the contributions from several other farsighted friends of Stanford, the university stands ready to embark on a fundamentally new and very dynamic course in international research and education," said Coit D. Blacker, director of SIIS. "These gifts lay the groundwork for the transformation of international studies at Stanford. We are very excited about what Brad's and Ron's generosity will make possible at Stanford - and very grateful to them for this important vote of confidence in what we are seeking to accomplish."
Stanford's International Initiative will focus on three broad cross-cutting themes: pursuing peace and security in an insecure world; reforming and improving governance at all levels of society; and advancing human health and well being. The International Initiative follows recent multidisciplinary university initiatives in the biosciences and the environment.
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ITRI-SPRIE CONFERENCE: The Greater China Capital Market for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
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Among the different types of capital resources, venture capital as practiced in Silicon Valley is broadly acknowledged as being an important constituent of a high technology, entrepreneurial habitat. In the past two decades, policy makers from different regions have learned much from its experience.
The IT industry attributes its success partly to venture capital investments in early, risky, stages. Looking ahead, other industries will emerge in the knowledge economy. Within Taiwan and Mainland China, information related industries still dominate investment, yet in Silicon Valley emerging industries including biotechnology, medical instruments and nanotechnology have recently been attracting as much venture capital as the IT industry.
Today, venture capitalists from Silicon Valley and Taiwan are probing what they perceive as growing investment opportunities in Mainland China, On the other hand, the immaturity of its private equity market and the undeveloped state of exit mechanisms there is causing venture capitalists to hesitate to made large investments. Currently, Taiwan's venture capital faces low price-earnings ratios in its 1,400 publicly listed companies. This has contributed to a decline in VC investment. The Taiwan government expects to further liberalize the financing environment to bolster it as a regional center for domestic and international corporations.
This conference will address the influence of the system of capital on regional innovation and entrepreneurship in the United States, Taiwan, and Mainland China. The focus will be on the venture capital industry, corporate venturing and other institutions of capital related to regional industrial development.
Here are some questions to be addressed in this conference:
- What is the pattern of venture capital investing in high-tech start-ups in the Greater China Area?
- What are the trends in this industry?
- How, specifically, does venture capital promote innovation and entrepreneurship?
- What are the similarities among independent venture capital funds, corporate venture funds, angel funds, and commercial bank involvements?
Conference Organization
Conference Chairman
- Dr. Chintay Shih, Dean of College of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, and Special Advisor, Industrial Technology Research Institute
Co-chairmen
- Dr. Paul Wang, Chairman, Taiwan Venture Capital Association
- Dr. Henry Rowen, Co-director, SPRIE
- Dr. William Miller, Co-director, SPRIE
Executive Director
- Dr. Sean Wang, Director General of Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center in Industrial Technology Research Institute
Conference Secretariat
- Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center, Industrial Technology Research Institute (IEK/ITRI)
Conference Organizing Secretariat
- ITRI: Yi-Ling Wei, Peter Lai, Frank Lin, Shu-Chen Huang
- TVCA: Teresa Yang, Michael Chen, Riva Su
- SPRIE: Marguerite Gong Hancock (Stanford)/Martin Kenney (UC Davis)
Auditorium, The Grand Hotel,
1 Chung Shan N. Road, Sec. 4, Taipei, Taiwan
Conferences
SPRIE selects inaugural postdoctoral fellows for 2005-2006 academic year
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As part of a new initiative on Greater China, SPRIE has selected two outstanding young scholars as the inaugural SPRIE Fellows at Stanford for research and writing on Greater China and its role in the global knowledge economy. Xiaohong (Iris) Quan and Doug Fuller, from the University of California, Berkeley and MIT, respectively, will join the SPRIE research team for the 2005-2006 academic year.
The primary focus of the program is the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurship and underlying contemporary political, economic, technological, and/or business factors in Greater China (including Taiwan, Mainland China, Singapore). Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, university-industry linkages, globalization of R&D, venture capital industry development, networks and flows of managerial and technical leaders, and leading high technology clusters in Greater China. Industries of ongoing research at SPRIE include semiconductors, wireless, and software.
SPRIE Fellows at Stanford will be in residence for at least three academic quarters, beginning in fall 2005. Fellows take part in Center activities, including research forums, seminars, and workshops throughout the academic year, and will present their research findings in SPRIE seminars. They will also participate as members of SPRIE's team in its public and invitation-only seminars and workshops with academic, business, and government leaders. Fellows will also participate in the publication programs of SPRIE and APARC.
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Studying Islam, Strengthening The Nation
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It remains painfully true, more than three years after Sept. 11, that even highly educated Americans know little about the Arab Middle East. And it is embarrassing how little our universities have changed to educate our nation and train experts on the wider Middle East.
For believers in a good liberal arts education, it has long been a source of consternation that faculties in political science, history, economics and sociology lack scholars who know Arabic or Persian and understand Islam. Since Sept. 11 it has become clear that this abdication of responsibility is more than an educational problem: It also poses a threat to our national security.
The case for bolstering faculty and curriculum resources devoted to the Muslim Middle East is, of course, obvious from an educational perspective. The region is vast. Islam represents one of the world's great religions and provides not only an intellectual feast for comparative study in the social sciences and humanities but also an indispensable comparison and contrast for more familiar religions and ways of life. Particularly in the era of globalization and the information revolution, there is little excuse for universities' continuing to betray the liberal ideal of educating students in the ways of all people.
Our national security interest in this area should also be obvious. As in the Cold War, the war against Islamic extremism will not be won in months or years but in decades. And as in the Cold War, the non-military components of the war will play a crucial role.
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Inside ASEAN: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and the Non-Interference Controversy
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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has long been based on the principle of national sovereignty, including a norm against interference by one member state in another's domestic affairs. But some members would like to set aside the prohibition in cases such as Myanmar, whose military junta continues to repress Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy to the detriment of ASEAN's image in the West. Opposed to this view are the group's newest, poorer, more continental, and politically more closed members: Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and of course Myanmar itself. They want ASEAN to uphold national sovereignty and reaffirm non-interference. The prospect of Myanmar assuming the chair of ASEAN in 2006-2007 makes this controversery even more acute. Is ASEAN splitting up? Will a compromise be reached? And with what implications for the nature and future of ASEAN and its conservative faction?
Carlyle A. Thayer is the 2004-2005 C. V. Starr Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC. He has written and lectured widely on Southeast Asian affairs. He has held positions at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (in Hawaii) and the Australian Defence College. His degrees are from the Australian National University (PhD), Yale University (MA), and Brown University (BA).
This is the 10th seminar of the 2004-2005 academic year hosted by the Southeast Asia Forum.
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Carlyle A. Thayer
Professor of Politics
Australian Defence Force Academy
Seminars
Gi-Wook Shin appointed to be new Center director for three-year term
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It is with great pleasure that I announce that Professor Gi-Wook Shin will assume the directorship of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center commencing September 1, 2005. Gi-Wook is well qualified to assume this role and to provide APARC with the same kind of leadership he has brought to the Korean Studies Program.
When Professor Shin left UCLA four years ago to come to Stanford, he left the largest Korean studies program in the nation. It must have been quite a gamble for him to come here since there was little by way of Korean studies at Stanford. With true entrepreneurial spirit, Professor Shin has built an impressive and dynamic Korean studies program at SIIS. It hosts luncheon seminars, workshops, and conferences, and has sponsored many Korean scholars, government officials, and business leaders who spend time at Stanford as visiting scholars. It also supports an active research program spearheaded by two postdoctoral research fellows and two Pantech professional fellows. Stanford is steadily becoming a world-class center for contemporary Korean studies.
I have great confidence that Gi-Wook will continue his outstanding work in his new role as the director of Shorenstein APARC. Gi-Wook's strong leadership will prove invaluable in the years to come as the Institute grows and as the International Initiative unfolds. Please join me in congratulating and supporting Gi-Wook in his new role.
Best regards,
Coit. D. Blacker, Director, Stanford Institute for International Studies
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