FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.
Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.
Karen Alter's current research investigates how the proliferation of international legal mechanisms is changing international relations. Her book in progress, The New Terrain of International Law: International Courts in International Politics provides a new framework for comparing and understanding the influence of the twenty-four existing international courts, and for thinking about how different domains of domestic and international politics are transformed through the creation of international courts.
Alter is author of The European Court's Political Power (Oxford University Press, 2009), and Establishing the Supremacy of European Law: The Making of an International Rule of Law in Europe. (Oxford University Press, 2001) and more than forty articles and book chapters on the politics of international law and courts. Recent publications investigate the politics of international regime complexity, how delegation of authority to international courts reshapes domestic and international relations, and politics in the Andean Community's legal system.
Professor Alter teaches courses on international law, international organizations, ethics in international affairs, and the international politics of human rights at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Alter has been a German Marshall Fund Fellow, a Howard Foundation research fellow and an Emile Noel scholar at Harvard Law School. Her research has also been supported by the DAAD and France's Chateaubriand fellowship. She has been a visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation where she is an associate scholar of the Center on Law and Globalization, Northwestern University's School of Law, Harvard University's Center for European Studies, Institute d'Etudes Politiques, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Auswartiges Politik, Universität Bremen, and Seikei University. Fluent in Italian, French and German, Alter serves on the editorial board of European Union Politics and Law and Social Inquiry and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
In March 2000, the release of Sony's new PlayStation2 hit a snag. The Japanese government classified the game console as a "general purpose product related to conventional weapons" on the grounds that it was powerful enough to be used as an actual missile guidance system. Accordingly, the government applied export controls on PlayStation2 requiring that distributors obtain a special license. Illustrating the coinage of such terms as "military-industrial-entertainment complex," the incident marked one of numerous collusions between military and commercial uses of video games in Japan and elsewhere.
It is against this backdrop that Frühstück traces the rules and conventions of war games from the fields of rural Japan in the nineteenth century to cyberspace in the twenty-first century. Her examination of the varying configurations of militarism and infantilism, the production of "child soldiers," and the competing roles of state agencies and entertainment industries suggest that war has been leaving its mark on the social body, and on children in particular, not only in the form of injury or death. Rather, through military institutions, pedagogy, technology, popular culture, and other intermediaries, war continues to have general effects on Japanese society and the global order as a whole.
Sabine Frühstück is a professor of modern Japanese cultural studies and chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Employing historical and sociocultural methodologies, Frühstück's research focuses on militarization and war, gender and sexuality, and Japan in a global context from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Her book Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army (2007) was translated into Japanese as Fuan na heishitachi: Nippon Jieitai Kenkyû (2008). She is also the author of Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan (2003) and Die Politik der Sexualwissenschaft, 1908-1941 (1997), and co-editor of the volumes The Culture of Japan as Seen through Its Leisure (1998), Neue Geschichten der Sexualität in Zentraleuropa und Ostasien (1999), and Recreating Japanese Men (in press, 2011). Committed to engaging the humanities and the social sciences, she has written essays in English, Japanese and German that have been published in the Journal of Japanese Studies, the Journal of Asian Studies, the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, American Ethnologist, Jinbun Gakuho, and Zeitschrift für angewandte Sozialforschung, among other scholarly journals.
Since joining the faculty at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Frühstück has been serving as the executive board director of the UC-wide Pacific Rim Research Program and as a member of the editorial boards of the University of California Press and the Journal of Japanese Studies. She also has been a member of the American Advisory Committee for Japanese Studies of the Japan Foundation, the executive board of the German Association for Social Science Research on Japan, and the Board of Trustees of the Society for Japanese Studies. At UCSB, she has dry appointments with the departments of history, anthropology, and feminist studies, and the Cold War Center.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Moderator: Sheldon Himefarb, United States Institute of Peace
From WikFileaks revelations to claims of "Twitter revolutions," the role of new media in shaping global political action is one of the most discussed but least understood phenomena confronting scholars, policymakers, advocates, and the private sector. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made "digital democracy" a cornerstone of U.S. diplomacy; grassroots organizations like Ushahidi are crowdsourcing everything from protest to disaster relief; and corporations like Cisco and Google are increasingly making news for their role in international development and commerce.
Everyone seems to agree new and social media matter. Less clear is how, when, and why.
In a continuing effort to find answers to these questions, George Washington University, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Liberation Technology Program of Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law present a panel to discuss the latest approaches to understanding the role of new media in fostering peace, conflict, and political change. The panel will consider research work in progress, stories from the front lines of diplomacy 2.0, and private sector approaches to facilitating new social media.
Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).
During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.
Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
Jenni Williams, a Zimbabwean activist, spoke Tuesday as part of the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Human Rights Speaker Series. Williams is national coordinator of Women of Zimbabwe, Arise!, or WOZA, a nonviolent organization that protests against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.
“We are human-rights defenders to the nation, mothers to the nation…we defy unjust laws and take our issues to the streets to find a nonviolent way of protesting,” Williams said after showing her audience a slideshow titled “Zimbabwe’s Elections: 30 Years of Torment, Torture & Death,” which depicted images of torture under Robert Mugabe’s regime in her homeland.
Following the slideshow and a video showing members of WOZA protesting for proper electricity, Williams started her speech on a somber note.
“2011 is going to be a year of hell in Zimbabwe, so excuse me for not saying, ‘Happy New Year,’” she said.
“If my grandchildren cannot get a better Zimbabwe, they will think of me
badly. We have to correct the past wrongs and re-establish
the social dignity of our people.”
-Jenni Williams
In a country where the average life expectancy for women is 37 years, the unemployment rate is 94 percent and Mugabe has been in charge for 30 years, leading a regime accused of corruption, nepotism, bribery and human rights abuse, WOZA seeks to bring democracy and justice to Zimbabwe, she said.
“We aim to mobilize through civic education,” she said. “We capacitate ordinary people with skills for community leadership…we’re creating a society where no new Robert Mugabe can flourish.”
WOZA has carried out 35 street demonstrations in the last 18 months. The grassroots organization relies on ordinary Zimbabweans. Both women and men have swelled its ranks to 75,000 members.
“Our activists are not the employed or the ones who go to university,” Williams said. “They are ordinary people struggling for ordinary everyday things that the politicians needs to be focused on.”
After choosing to remain in Zimbabwe despite mass exodus and the migration of her husband and children to the UK, she has been arrested 33 times, including after the electricity protest. She was held in prison for six days, then returned to her activism once she was freed.
Williams also moves between safe houses in Zimbabwe every six months and was at one time under risk of assassination, she said.
Nonetheless, Williams said, she believes fully in nonviolence, quoting Gandhi and saying, “We love anyone, even our enemies.”
“She’s a pioneer for protecting human rights,” said Davis Albohm, a graduate student in African studies. “She’s doing incredible work that I think a lot of people would not be brave enough to undertake.”
Williams credited her fellow WOZA members for their achievements.
“A shared burden is a burden lightened,” she said. “Our organization has empowered people. We’ve trained them to be human-rights defenders…we see the Zimbabwe we want in our mind’s eye, and we feel it in our hearts.”
Williams said Zimbabwe’s political environment “remains highly violent, uncertain and tense,” speaking of the very real possibility that President Mugabe, now 86, will die in power before opposition defeats him.
Williams said her group’s goals went beyond simply deposing Mugabe.
“Robert Mugabe is only the face of a political system…we want to put the democratic yeast within the society so the loaf will rise,” she said.
Victoria Alvarado ’14 said the talk was “very, very emotionally striking.”
“I found myself in tears at points. She came here to show us that we can help,” Alvarado said.
Williams’ suggestion to the audience was to “appreciate what you have and protect your own rights and freedoms. We need a model to copy.”
And on why she continued to fight a dangerous struggle, Williams cited the future, not only of her nation but of her family.
“If my grandchildren cannot get a better Zimbabwe, they will think of me badly,” she said. “We have to correct the past wrongs and re-establish the social dignity of our people.”
Abstract
Consider three different worlds of poor network connectivity:
In this talk, I will describe a range of techniques we have developed to enhance information access in these three scenarios of poor connectivity. In Scenario 1, we have built an entire SMS-based protocol stack for mobile applications being used in India, Mexico and Ghana as well as a live SMS search engine in Kenya. We are also rolling out a data-over-GSM voice stack to support data connectivity over cellular voice.
In Scenario 2, I will describe why some of the fundamentals of network protocols break down in these regimes and why we need a completely new Web architecture for these types of networks. We have deployed early versions of our system in a few schools and universities in India, Kenya.
In Scenario 3, I will describe how we can use vertical search engines to deliver a vertical slice of the Web in a hard-disk and provide an offline searchable and browse-able Internet. This system has been used in schools in India and Kenya as an educational tool for students and teachers.
This is joint work with several others with Jay Chen being a primary leader for many of these projects.
Lakshminarayanan Subramanian is an Assistant Professor in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU.
His research interests are in the areas of networks, distributed systems and computing for development. He co-leads the Networks and Wide-Area Systems(NeWS) group (which investigates software solutions for distributed systems, wireline and wireless networking, operating system, security and privacy, technologies and applications for the developing world) and the CATER Lab at NYU ( which focuses on developing and deploying low-cost, innovative technology solutions to some of the problems in developing regions in terms of communication, healthcare and microfinance).
Recently, he has co-established a new Center for Technology and Economic Development (CTED) at NYU Abu Dhabi which brings together students from several disciplines (CS, economics, healthcare, education, policy). He is the recipient of several awards including the NSF CAREER Award (2009), IBM Faculty Award (2009, 2010) and C.V. Ramamoorthy Award. He has been at the forefront of several technological innovations for development that have been used in several countries around the world.
Wallenberg Theater
Why are some governments better able to reform public service delivery than others? The increased availability of information and communication technologies marks an important opportunity for politicians to improve the quality of public services. However, state-level experiences with eGovernment in India display significant variations in the ability of governments to successfully adopt these technologies to provide benefits to citizens. Based on her studies of one-stop, computerized public service centers in sixteen Indian states, Jennifer will discuss the characteristics of states associated with differences in policy outcomes and present original survey evidence on the effects of technology-based reforms on the quality of public services.
Jennifer Bussell is an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research concerns the political economy of development and governance with an emphasis on the role of formal and informal institutions--such as federalism, coalition politics, and corruption--in shaping policy outcomes. She is particularly concerned with the politics of government technology adoption for the benefit of poor citizens in developing countries, with an emphasis on India.
Wallenberg Theater
Despite all of
the rhetoric, it is clear from the numbers that China's ascendency has not been
at the expense of the United States.
-Thomas Fingar
China unquestionably occupies a significant place in the world's U.S.-led economic and political system. Will it continue to participate in the system that it has benefited from and contributed to, adapting its policies and practices in order to do so? Or, will it attempt to overturn the current system at some point in an effort to gain global dominance? Thomas Fingar, the Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, will address these core questions in a new research project, arguing that the situation is neither so polarized, nor so simplistic. Former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Fingar takes an empirical approach to his research, examining whether there have been recurring patterns to China's involvement in the global order; what drives, shapes, and constrains Chinese initiatives; and how others have responded to Chinese actions.
Fingar asserts that there have been patterns to China's participation in international economics and politics over the past 30 years, including a pendular quality to the U.S.-China relationship. According to him, relations between the two countries were largely instrumental during the Cold War era when the United States was at odds with the Soviet Union and China was undergoing a period of self strengthening. U.S.-China relations cooled following the Tiananmen Square incident, the timing of which coincided roughly with the fall of the Soviet Union. Trust between the two countries deteriorated as China displayed its more authoritarian side, and the United States responded with sanctions that did not significantly impede China's economic growth, but did change the relationship in ways that still shape perceptions of one another.
Economics are now the primary focal point of discussions about U.S.-China
relations, with a negative light frequently cast on China. "Despite all of
the rhetoric, it is clear from the numbers that China's ascendency has not been
at the expense of the United States," states Fingar. Trade with China, in
fact, creates jobs in the United States, but trade-related jobs are dispersed
and therefore not clearly visible. "They are not concentrated in a place where
a factory closed, often for reasons that that have nothing to do with China,"
says Fingar, "but the pain and the political impact is local. I would
predict that when our economy turns around, the pendulum will swing further
back in a less-worried, less-critical direction."
While China has a legal system and has adopted many international standards,
Fingar asserts that "it is still not a society governed by law," and
that it in fact does not always measure up to global or even to its own
standards. He cites China's record of undesirable practices and issues, such as
currency manipulation, government corruption, and intellectual property
violation, which complicate and confuse understanding of its involvement in the
global system.
Fingar does not believe that the U.S.-China relationship will ever return to
the "honeymoon" era of the Cold War, but he says, "The swings of the
pendulum and the perturbations in the relationship are less intense and of
shorter duration; that is the pattern." Quoting Anne-Marie Slaughter, director
of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State, Fingar suggests that the
best vision for the global order is "a world in which there are more
partnerships and fewer alliances." He cautions against disregarding important,
long-time alliances, such as the U.S.-Korea relationship. He notes, however,
the crucial fact that alliances assume that there is an adversary, which can
marginalize and threaten regional neighbors, such as China, or put allies in
the uncomfortable position of having to choose between siding with a neighbor
or a distant ally. "We must find a way so that no one has to choose," says
Fingar.
On January 6, Fingar outlined the primary points of his new research project at a public lecture co-sponsored by the Stanford China Program and the Center for East Asian Studies, part of the China in the World series. He will also lead Stanford students through an examination of related key issues and questions in "China on the World Stage" (IPS 246), a course that he is teaching during the current winter quarter.
