Sanctions will remain part of the US toolkit for dealing with Russia under the incoming Biden administration. Certain principles should guide their use and could increase the chances that they will achieve US policy goals: sanctions should be embedded in an overall Russia policy, linked to a specific policy goal, understood by the Kremlin, clearly reversible if Russia ceases the offending action, and coordinated with US allies.

As Joe Biden prepares to become the 46^th president of the United States, speculation has begun on what a Biden administration will mean for US policy toward Russia and sanctions on Russia. Sanctions will remain part of the US toolkit for responding to egregious Russian misbehavior. It would be useful if the new administration set down principles early on for their application.

As relations between Washington and Moscow—and, more broadly, between the West and Russia—deteriorated over the past decade, the United States and Europe applied an increasing number of sanctions in response to Russian actions. The United States has now sanctioned Russia for its aggression against Ukraine, cyber and disinformation activities aimed at affecting US domestic politics, and support for Syria and Venezuela, among other things. The United States has long applied sanctions on the Soviet Union and Russia due to human rights concerns.  The 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment denied permanent normal trade relations status to the Soviet Union until Moscow allowed religious minorities to emigrate. The 2012 Magnitsky Act sanctioned Russian officials involved in serious human rights violations such as torture or extrajudicial killings (it was later amended to apply to other countries as well).

The sanctions result from both executive orders and legislation. Some target individuals with visa denials and asset freezes. Other sanctions hit specific companies. Still others aim at key elements of the Russian economy, particularly the financial, energy, and high-tech sectors.

The sanctions have had an impact on Russia’s economic growth, though the exact amount is difficult to measure and a subject of debate. Some sanctions may not be felt for some time. For example, sanctions that deny Russian companies access to American technology and financing for developing new and technically challenging oil fields do not constrain Russian oil production now. They will, however, limit Russia’s ability to develop new oil fields requiring high-tech extraction techniques as current wells are depleted.

The Kremlin regularly pooh-poohs sanctions, but Russian officials miss no opportunity to call for their lifting. Lifting sanctions was a key point during Vladimir Putin’s intervention in the virtual G-20 summit in November. True, in most cases, sanctions have not achieved their desired goal. Russia has not, for example, ended its conflict against Ukraine in Donbas. Sanctions, however, may well have deterred the Kremlin from other steps. Russian and Russian proxy forces have not tried to seize Mariupol, as many feared they might in 2015, and Putin dropped the claims to vast amounts of Ukrainian territory he made in  2014 (so-called “Novorossiya”).

When the Biden administration takes office, sanctions will undoubtedly remain an element of US policy toward Russia. To enhance its effectiveness, the administration should base its sanctions policy on certain principles.

First, the Biden administration should embed sanctions in a broader US policy toward Russia.  If the Trump administration had an overall Russia policy, it never articulated it. Absent a broader framework, sanctions seemed to take on a life of their own.

An overall policy should include strong measures to deter and push back against Russian misbehavior. These measures include enhancing the NATO military posture in the Baltic region, support—including lethal military assistance—for Ukraine, and sanctions. The overall policy should also include dialogue, both to apply guardrails, such as arms control, on what has become an increasingly adversarial relationship and to professionalize discussion of hard issues that might (or might not) chip away at some problems over time. The Reagan administration successfully used this combination in the 1980s.

Second, sanctions are not an end in themselves and should not be treated as such. They offer a means to achieve a policy goal and, thus, should be clearly linked to that goal, as in “this sanction will apply until Moscow does X” or “if Moscow does X, Washington will respond with this sanction.” The aim of sanctions should be to affect Kremlin calculations of the benefits and costs of its actions, hopefully tipping the balance against those actions that threaten key Western interests.

The Kremlin should also have clarity on what it must do to get the sanctions lifted. Thus, the sanctions should be tied to a single policy goal. Sanctions that seek to get Russia to correct two different kinds of misbehavior—for example, a ban on the export of dual-use technologies stemming from Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the attempted poisoning of Sergey Skripal in Britain—likely will achieve neither objective.

Third, sanctions should seek to deter, if possible. It is easier to deter and dissuade an adversary from taking an unwanted action than  compel the adversary to reverse an action it has already taken. Specifying the sanction(s) that would result from a particular Russian action in advance could have a greater chance of affecting the Kremlin’s cost-benefit calculation.

Fourth, for sanctions to be effective in achieving their policy goal, Moscow has to believe that, if it takes the action desired by Washington, the sanction will be lifted. Unfortunately, US sanctions do not have the best history in this regard. The 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment applied to the successor states, including Russia, following the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse. Russia permitted open emigration, leading the Clinton administration in 1994 to determine that Russia had fully complied with Jackson-Vanik. Yet it was not until 2012 that Congress removed Russia from the amendment’s purview and granted the country permanent normal trade relations status—and then only in the Magnitsky Act, which applied new sanctions. If the Kremlin concludes that the sanction will remain in place regardless of what it does, it will have no      incentive to change its behavior.

Fifth, coordination with allies, particularly the European Union (EU), can dramatically enhance the impact of sanctions. Multilateral sanctions send a stronger political message. They also generate a greater economic impact. When the United States and European Union began consulting on sanctions against Russia after its seizure of Crimea, EU trade with Russia dwarfed US-Russia trade. Europe, thus, had more to withhold.

Currently, the fate of the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline could complicate sanctions coordination with Europe. The US government has good reasons to oppose Nordstream 2, which is hardly a commercial project. Renovating the Ukrainian pipelines would have been vastly cheaper, but Russia wants to circumvent Ukraine for geopolitical reasons. Nordstream 2, however, could pose a major problem between the Biden administration and Germany, the pipeline’s main European backer. Finding a solution to this issue will strengthen Washington’s ability to maintain a united sanctions front with Europe against Russia.

Sixth, the US government might consider pairing a carrot with sanctions to affect Kremlin thinking. For instance, to break the deadlock on a Donbas settlement, Washington could work with Berlin and Paris on a plan for a UN-mandated peacekeeping force and interim international administration. The peacekeeping force and interim administration would deploy to Donbas, providing a transition between the departure of Russian and Russian proxy forces and full restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty. When offering this as a face-saving way to help Russia leave Donbas, Washington and its partners could quietly add that failure to take up the offer would trigger additional sanctions.

Seventh, the Biden administration should consult with Congress as it shapes its sanctions policy. This coordination should prove easier than it has during the past four years, when both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill did not trust the White House’s management of sanctions. That mistrust led to an overwhelming vote for the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act, which gave Congress power to block the lifting of sanctions. The Biden administration will want to ensure that, if Moscow moves to correct offending misbehavior that justifies lifting sanctions, Congress does not block their lift. If the Kremlin adjusts its policy on a particular question and the linked sanction remains in force, that will undercut the power of all other and any future sanctions. Sanctions, in that case, would become just a means of punishment, not of attaining a policy objective.

Within these principles on sanctions, there is room for creative thinking. For example, would it make sense, when targeting individuals for visa sanctions and asset freezes, to sanction their families as well? It is one thing if a Russian businessman cannot travel to the United States or Europe; it would be quite another if his spouse could not make her annual shopping trip to London and his kids could not attend school in the United States or Britain.

Principles such as the above offer a structure for managing sanctions policy toward Russia. They also could increase the chances that sanctions succeed in achieving their desired policy outcomes.

. . .

Steven Pifer is a William Perry Research Fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. A retired Foreign Service officer, his 25+ years with the State Department included assignments as Deputy Assistant Secretary responsible for Russia and Ukraine, Ambassador to Ukraine, and Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council.

Originally for Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

This op-ed originally appeared in Nikkei Asia 

If his recent diplomatic contacts are any indication, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is off to an auspicious start in managing Japan's two most important relationships: the U.S. and China.

Last month, Suga got a pleasant surprise when he spoke to Joe Biden, with the President-elect explicitly stating that the Senkaku Islands, which China claims as the Diaoyu, fall under the protection of Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. A few weeks later, Suga received China's foreign minister Wang Yi, who was there largely to consolidate the warm economic relationships between the two countries -- except for a prickly comment about the Senkakus at the end. Clearly, the U.S. and China both see Japan as a critically important player in their competition for Asia-Pacific hegemony.

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This is a far cry from the precarious position Japan found itself in at the beginning of Shinzo Abe's first and second terms. In 2007, the young Prime Minister Abe elevated a spontaneous joint response by the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami into a quadrilateral working-level group involving regular meetings and maritime exercises. Dubbed the Quad, Abe sought to make the group a counter to China's increasingly expansionist threats in the Indo-Pacific region.

When Abe's first term was cut short, he was succeeded by the more China-friendly Yasuo Fukuda, who prioritized relations with China and stepped back from the Quad. Combined with a leadership change in Australia that saw the pro-China Kevin Rudd become Prime Minister, the Quad fizzled out.

After Abe returned to the prime ministership in 2012, lingering suspicion over his hawkish nationalism and anti-China sentiment was exacerbated by his 2013 visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. That provoked rebuke not only from Japan's East Asian neighbors but from then U.S. Vice President Biden.

With U.S. policymakers still hoping that China's surging middle-class wealth would transform the country into a peace-loving democracy, the Quad seemed like a misguided attempt by Japan's China-hawks best left forgotten. Some in Tokyo were even starting to worry about a "grand bargain" between the U.S. and China that would relegate Japan to a small supporting role in the Asia-Pacific.

How times have changed. Few in Washington believe China will ever metamorphose into a moderate democracy, while in 2017, Abe harnessed Donald Trump's anti-China agenda to revive the Quad, as all four countries realized the need for a viable strategy to contain China. The new Quad has quickly gathered momentum, with India allowing Australia to join the Malabar naval exercises in November for the first time in 13 years so that all Quad members could participate.

As the Quad's main architect, Abe played a central role in bringing the group to this point, pairing it with the Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision, another influential framework for the region for which he can claim authorship. By Abe's side throughout these developments, and now in charge of Japan's foreign policy, how will Suga handle the Quad, and what are its pros and cons?

The highest aspiration for the Quad is that it becomes an Asian version of NATO that can contain China. The combined military capabilities of the four countries are formidable, with the U.S. obviously leading the way and India possibly needing some catching up. The geostrategic impact of a formal alliance to pressure China would be tremendous.

Such an alliance would be even more effective if it included other countries in the region. Some, such as South Korea, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, have begun to participate in multilateral forums headlined by the Quad, possibly foreshadowing the development of a Quad Plus grouping that could exert significant pressure on China to moderate its expansionist approaches.

While Suga will likely tread carefully in expanding the Quad's activities to avoid damaging important economic relations with China, he has a clear understanding that China will only respond to power, and the game-changing power of the Quad alliance would surely appeal to him.

For all its potential, the Quad is not there yet. Fundamentally, it remains a coalition of like-minded countries discussing their concerns about China. At their most recent meeting in Tokyo in October, the four countries could not even muster a joint statement -- instead releasing separate readouts in each country's capital. Becoming an alliance with reciprocal obligations is clearly much further down the line.

Unless greater institutionalization becomes reality, China's divide and conquer approach will remain a threat, as it will try to target one or another country to break the Quad. China has already successfully done so before, pushing Australia to break from the Quad in 2008.

Today, the Quad's greatest utility for Suga is the threat it poses to China. The potential for this loose coalition to coalesce into a formidable alliance would increase if China continues to engage in provocative actions and further alienate the four countries. This threat could be effective in deterring China's aggressive behavior in the Indo-Pacific.

At this point, Suga will likely use the Quad as a card, gradually deepening its engagements but also preparing to develop it into a stronger alliance if China keeps poking at the Senkakus. The fact that Suga has that leverage today speaks to Japan's improved position relative to the early days of the first Abe administration.

This op-ed by Oriana Skylar Mastro and Zack Cooper originally appeared in Australian Financial Review.

Australia’s trials are not the first time Beijing has used economic coercion against another country.

It has become so common that we are becoming desensitised to it. Some notable examples include Beijing’s limitations on rare earth exports to Japan in 2010, Norwegian fish exports in 2010, Philippine tropic fruit exports in 2012, Vietnam’s tourist industry in 2014, Mongolian commodities trade in 2016, and South Korean businesses in 2017. In each case, Beijing sought to achieve a political objective by imposing economic penalties.

This case is different. Beijing has typically been ambiguous about the purpose or nature of its coercive economic statecraft. Despite evidence otherwise, it blamed the Japanese ban on meeting a yearly quota, the Philippine ban on pesticide exposure, the tourism drop to Vietnam on changing Chinese preferences, and the closure of South Korean stores on fire code violations. In Australia’s case, though, Beijing is doing away with these pretenses.

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China has not been shy this time about connecting its punitive actions to its unhappiness with Australian policies. The Chinese foreign ministry has listed a “series of wrong moves” by Australia for the disruption in relations. Beijing’s embassy in Canberra then gave a list of 14 “mistakes” to the Australian press.

These grievances include Australia’s foreign interference legislation, foreign investment reviews, funding for Australian think tanks, and unfriendly media reporting. Some of these criticisms are particularly ironic coming from Beijing, which often objects to foreign interference in other countries’ domestic affairs.

A core component of China’s strategy is a disinformation and propaganda effort designed to paint its moves as merely defensive, a proportionate and legitimate response to actions taken by the other side.

Australia has done nothing ‘wrong’

Let’s be clear: Australia has done nothing “wrong” in promoting and protecting its democratic institutions at home. It should not censor its media, obstruct analysis by outside experts, or shy away from safeguarding its democratic processes.

This time, the current trade restrictions are about more than making an example of Australia or showing smaller powers that they’ll pay if they have something to say about how the Chinese Communist Party governs at home. Beijing’s aims have taken on new proportions. Party leaders are now willing to punish democracies simply for upholding basic democratic principles within their own countries.

The message is clear: curtail some of your democratic principles or pay the price.

The US needs to work with like-minded states around the world to address this new threat. Free countries need to speak out together in Australia’s defence. If democracies do not hang together, they will hang separately. We should articulate that China’s actions are more than a violation of international law; they threaten the health of our democracies at home. Such a reframing would show Beijing that economic coercion will no longer be treated as a low-stakes tactic.

But words are not enough. We need coordinated action. US alliances are designed primarily to deter and defend against military attacks. Chinese actions make clear, however, that there are alternative methods for undermining peace, prosperity and freedom that our alliances do not adequately address. New alliance consultations to protect against economic attack would enhance our deterrence against China.

Washington should also launch a series of discussions with its allies to determine what new institutional mechanisms, commitments, and structures are needed to defend against economic attacks, not just military ones.

We should ensure the ability to take joint reciprocal action against Beijing in the economic realm, particularly to defend smaller countries. China engages in economic coercion because it is effective and relatively risk-free. But if instead like-minded countries responded together when one was attacked economically, this would go a long way in discouraging Beijing from employing such tactics.

Using all the tools of power

A critical first step is mapping dependencies on China and investigating how to limit over-dependence that open democracies to unacceptable economic vulnerability. As in the military realm, we need to enhance our resiliency against attack by avoiding over-dependence on any single import, export, or supply chain decency. This is a task that the so-called D10 (G7 plus Australia, India, and South Korea) should take up early next year.

The good news is a collective response to Chinese economic coercion will be more feasible under a Biden administration. President-elect Joe Biden and his senior advisers have articulated a preference for multilateral responses to Chinese aggression.

And while President Donald Trump relied mainly on military moves to warn and punish Beijing, Biden’s team prefers to make use of all tools of power. For these reasons, there has even been talk of rejuvenating past efforts like TPP. US allies and partners are also likely to see Biden as more reliable, making them more willing to undertake the risky venture of joining forces against Beijing.

The United States, Australia, and other allies and partners tried to welcome China into the international community. This was the right move. It has been good economically for many advanced economies, including Australia and the United States. But there is a flip side to every coin.

Australia has become too vulnerable to the whims of Beijing. And the US has few options to protect against such economic pressure. The incoming Biden administration needs to fundamentally rethink the nature of alliances so that countries like Australia have a third option the next time Beijing forces a choice between freedom and prosperity.

In September 1964, at the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cairo, Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike proposed that the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) be turned into a Zone of Peace (IOZP).  Specifically, she called for the eradication of military bases from the area and the Ocean’s denuclearization. India, a neighboring littoral state, immediately supported the initiative and became one of its greatest champions through the end of the 1970s. Scholars have claimed that India’s enthusiasm stemmed from its non-aligned foreign policy and enduring commitment to Prime Minister’s Jawaharlal Nehru’s moralpolitik (27-28).  But as Yogesh Joshi argues in his exemplary article, such interpretations miss the mark.

Read the rest at  H-Diplo

This op-ed by Donald K. Emmerson originally appeared in The Diplomat.

On November 20, 8,300 people in 83 countries attended a virtual Global Town Hall to watch and hear 66 speakers in multiple countries discuss “Rebuilding from the Covid-19 World.” Organized in Jakarta by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI), the event ran 15 consecutive hours.

Few would choose virtual diplomacy over the in-person kind, other things being equal. When speakers are confined to flat boxes on small screens watched by strangers, the disincentives to candor and creativity are too high—not to mention the necessarily disadvantageous clashing of time zones. Gone are the clues and nuances of physical proximity, the creative chats in coffee breaks, the security from digitally prying eyes and ears afforded by a conversational stroll outdoors. But the technology of virtual discourse is here to stay, at least until such time as direct brain-to-brain or bot-to-bot communication is innovated and programmed on a planetary scale.

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Viewed in this cautionary light, the November town hall was distinctive and promising. It was organized not in the world of industrialized democracies where the ubiquity of electronic gatherings has already prompted webinar fatigue.  Nor was it sponsored by the United Front Department of the Communist Party of China or by Russia’s Internet Research Agency to propagandize for Beijing or Moscow. Indonesia’s virtual Global Town Hall was the brainchild of Dr. Dino Patti Djalal, a public figure well known in and outside his country for having founded and led the FPCI. (Although I know him, I played no role in the event or its preparation.)

The Community’s mission is to encourage “healthy internationalism” in Indonesia; “resist xenophobia”; “bring foreign policy to the grassroots”; and serve as “a dynamic meeting point” where Indonesians can interact on foreign affairs with each other and with foreigners “as equals.”

The Global Town Hall lived up to these promises in the size of its audience, the length and scope of its program, and the diversity of its many panels and speakers. Topics discussed during the marathon ranged from narrow to vast—from vaccines against Covid-19 to broad concepts and challenges such as the Indo-Pacific and climate change; development and democracy; nationalism and populism; emerging leaders and world order.

The conference was designed to call for new beginnings in a post-pandemic world.  One session debated the need for a “great social reset.” Another considered the contours of a no less urgent “geo-political reset.”  A third looked for “the light at the end of [a] tunnel” of global contagion and conflict, while a fourth pictured “the worst economic recession of our time” as “the edge of a cliff.” Just as Djalal and his team had intended, the sense of a global turning point calling for creative responses was palpable throughout.

The pandemic is not only planet-wide.  It is an all-of-society problem that cannot be reduced to adjustments in foreign policy. Accordingly, the town hall’s speakers were not only from different countries but from different walks of life as well.  Impressively, they included, alongside the foreign ministers of Australia, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa, influencers and analysts from think tanks, international organizations, and universities around the world.

The absence of someone from the Trump administration did not create a vacuum filled by China. On the contrary, the five speakers from the PRC were outnumbered three-to-one by the 15 Americans who spoke.  Yet the program was not stacked against Beijing.  Brainstorming in public is not China’s forte. In any conference that invites originality, creativity, and diversity, China is structurally disadvantaged by its authoritarian system, which limits what people are willing to say. Why invite speakers who are limited to thinking and speaking inside the box traced by a one-party line?

Only one Chinese think tank was among the town hall’s 44 sponsors and partners—the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), an adjunct of China’s foreign ministry. Beijing actively promotes Chinese centers of research and opinion as no less deserving of praise and influence than their counterparts in democratic countries. But that campaign for global legitimacy is not helped by the oxymoronic status of free thinking and speaking in an unfree society.

A case in point is the Pangoal Institution, an ostensibly non-governmental think tank in Beijing. On its website, it upholds “objectiveness, openness, inclusiveness,”  and “innovation.” Yet in 2018, its president warned China’s think tanks to shun “the Western model” of what a think tank should be; eschew “so-called ‘independence’”; and adhere instead “to the leadership of the [Chinese Communist Party] and socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The risk of not channeling the groupthink required by the CPC was implied, as was the need to think “Xi Jinping Thought,” a guideline added to the CPC’s constitution in 2017.

China’s handicap in free speech and candor was also implicitly displayed at the very end of the conference, in its 12th and final panel. Harvard’s Joseph Nye and a balanced set of Washington-based analysts freely and critically discussed a range of sensitive issues in foreign and domestic policy including the jeopardized transition to a Joe Biden presidency. The event was coordinated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of three American think tanks chosen by FPCI to partner in holding the town hall.

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Even more telling than the remarks the Americans made at that final panel, however, was its title, chosen by Djalal and the FPCI, which amounted to a collective sigh of relief after Donald Trump: “Welcome Back, America!”  The welcome suggested that the challenge of “Rebuilding from the Covid-19 World” posed by the Global Town Hall could not be met without the United States fully on board, as if, once on board, Joe Biden would do the right thing.

In November 2019, by a two-to-one margin, elite respondents in Southeast Asia named China over the U.S. as the outside power with the most “political and strategic influence” in their region. But of those who picked China, merely 15 percent welcomed Chinese influence, a fraction of the 53 percent of U.S.-choosers who welcomed American influence.

Soft power is perishable. Goodwill can be transient. But the pop-up Global Town Hall put together so creatively by Djalal and his colleagues in Indonesia, apart from its value as an experiment in worldwide policy discourse, delivered an encouraging reminder: America is welcome. The anti-multilateral jingoism of Donald Trump has failed to destroy the willingness of Djalal, his colleagues, and policy influentials elsewhere in Southeast Asia to work with a United States that can once again, openly and self-critically, interact with others to achieve common goals.

STANFORD, CA, December 3, 2020 — The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University’s hub for interdisciplinary research, education, and engagement on contemporary Asia, invites nominations for the 2021 Shorenstein Journalism Award. The award recognizes outstanding journalists who have spent their careers helping audiences around the world understand the complexities of the Asia-Pacific region. The 2021 award will honor a journalist whose work has mostly been conveyed through Asian news media. The deadline for nomination submissions is Monday, February 15, 2021.

An annual tradition since 2002, the Shorenstein Journalism Award is sponsored by APARC and carries a cash prize of US $10,000. It honors the legacy of APARC benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. Over the course of its history, the award has recognized world-class journalists who push the boundaries of coverage of the Asia-Pacific region and help advance mutual understanding between audiences in the United States and their Asian counterparts. Recent honorees include Tom Wright, Maria Ressa, Anna Fifield, Siddharth Varadarajan, Ian Johnson, and Caixin Media.

The award alternates between recipients whose work has mostly been published through Asian news media and those whose work has mostly been conveyed through American news media. The 2021 award will recognize a recipient from the former category. “Media freedom has increasingly been under attack throughout Asia, and many countries in the region are becoming dangerous places for journalists to work in,” said APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin. “It is now more crucial than ever to stand against these assaults on press freedom and support independent journalism without fear or favor.”

For the award, the Asia-Pacific region is defined broadly to include Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Australasia. Both individual journalists with a considerable body of work and journalism organizations are eligible for the award. Nominees’ work may be in traditional forms of print or broadcast journalism and/or in new forms of multimedia journalism. The Award Selection Committee, whose members are experts in journalism and Asia research and policy, presides over the judging of nominees and is responsible for the selection of honorees.

APARC is inviting 2021 award nomination submissions from news editors, publishers, scholars, journalism associations, and entities focused on researching and interpreting the Asia-Pacific region. The Center will announce the winner by April 2021 and present the award at a public ceremony at Stanford in the autumn quarter of 2021.

Nominations are accepted electronically through Monday, February 15, 2021, at 11:59 PM PST. For information about the nomination procedures and to submit nominations please visit the award nomination entry page.

Please direct all inquiries to aparc-communications@stanford.edu.