Stanford University

Security

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. 

Bassam Haddad

George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

(703 703) 887 887-5257 5257
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Visiting Scholar Economic and Political Reform in the Arab World Project
Bassam_Haddad.jpg PhD

Bassam Haddad is Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George-Mason University and teaches in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, and is Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal, a peer-reviewed research publication and is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of a critically acclaimed film series on Arabs and Terrorism, based on extensive field research/interviews.

He is the author of The Political Economy of Regime Security: State-Business Networks in Syria (Forthcoming, 2011, Stanford University Press). Bassam recently directed a film on Arab/Muslim immigrants in Europe, titled The "Other" Threat. He also serves on the Editorial Committee of Middle East Report and is Co-Founder of Jadaliyya Ezine.

The Shadows of Bombs: A soldier and pilot read from their work

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Oak Lounge

Brian Turner Award-winning poet and author of Here, Bullet Speaker
Jason R. Armagost Visiting scholar at CISAC and a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Speaker
Richard Rhodes Pulitzer Prize winning author and affiliate, CISAC Moderator
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

Editors of 'Hope Deferred' recount stories of Zimbabwean tragedy

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The Program on Human Rights at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) in partnership with the Stanford Humanities Center, kicked off the first public event of the Human Well-Being and Human Rights Collaboratory series on November 30th to mark the debut of the book, Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives.  Director of the CDDRL Human Rights Program, Helen Stacy, introduced this event as part of a larger interdisciplinary research effort at Stanford University to examine the condition of human-well being and universal values from the bottom-up. Stacy explained that the language of human rights is often dominated by government actors and lawyers, who rarely hear the voices of victims and grassroots leaders in the policymaking environment.  This event focused on the human rights crisis in Zimbabwe, providing a platform for stories of human tragedy that put a face to victims who are often grouped together in anonymity. 

Stanford was the first venue for editors Peter Orner, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco University and Annie Holmes, Zimbabwean writer, editor, and filmmaker, to introduce their book to the public. Hope Deferred is the culmination of over 50 interviews the editors conducted in Zimbabwe and neighboring countries to capture the individual testimonies and document the lives of a diverse group of Zimbabweans devastated by the reign of terror that engulfed their country in 2000. Zimbabwe is one of the most well documented human rights crises in the world, but personal accounts of murder, rape, economic ruin, and human tragedy are missing from the mainstream dialogue. Orner and Holmes conveyed the magnitude of these events by providing first-person accounts of victims, culminating in an oral history of a crisis that has engulfed a nation of over 12 million people in economic and social ruin.

The editors read passages from their book and engaged in dialogue with Dr. Stacy, recounting the heartbreaking tales of opposition activists whose families were brutalized by the ZANU-PF, young women raped by soldiers, farmers evicted from their land, and soldiers who perpetuated these crimes at the hands of the government.  All of these individuals shared the common language of pain but sought to provide their personal testimony to begin the healing process.  The editors' hope that the emotional narratives of Hope Deferred will stir the attention of the international community and open up dialogue around the current crisis in Zimbabwe. The audience was clearly moved by these stories, directing poignant questions to Orner and Holmes about the Zimbabwean crisis, Mugabe's grip on power, and the impact of the refugee population on South Africa. 

While, the situation in Zimbabwe remains unsolved, this event and the series supporting it seeks to elevate the human narratives at the core of human-well being, and to place deeper humanistic understandings at the heart of the policy and legal responses to human rights crises.

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China and the Global System

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Despite growing evidence that China's success in taking advantage of the global system is a function of its willingness to accede to existing norms, pundits, and many academics, continue to predict that China's rise will transform the international system, usually for the worse.  Indeed, one can make a stronger case that China's participation in the US-led global system has transformed China far more than it has changed the institutions and norms that support globalization and facilitate China's rise.

Dr. Thomas Fingar is the Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow. In 2009, he was the Payne Distinguished Lecturer in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. From May 2005 through December 2008, he served as the first Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and, concurrently, as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

This event is part of the China and the World series.

Philippines Conference Room

Thomas Fingar

Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C-327
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-9149 (650) 723-6530
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Affiliated Scholar at The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC)
tom_fingar_vert.jpg PhD

Thomas Fingar is an affiliate at the The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.

From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (A.B. in Government and History, 1968), and Stanford University (M.A., 1969 and Ph.D., 1977 both in political science). His most recent books are From Mandate to Blueprint: Lessons from Intelligence Reform (Stanford University Press, 2021), Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011), The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, editor (Stanford University Press, 2016), Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017), and Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Jean Oi (Stanford, 2020). His most recent article is, "The Role of Intelligence in Countering Illicit Nuclear-Related Procurement,” in Matthew Bunn, Martin B. Malin, William C. Potter, and Leonard S Spector, eds., Preventing Black Market Trade in Nuclear Technology (Cambridge, 2018)."

China and the World

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Thomas Fingar Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow Speaker FSI
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China and the World

Ethnic Conflict Resolution in the 21st Century: A Functioning Model from Europe

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The 21st century has been branded the century of the worldwide return of ethnonationalisms. Conflicts based on cultural differences are boiling up in many regions, leading to civil wars and to the breakup of states. Many of these conflicts are direct and indirect consequences of modernization and transnationalization; and they are usually as complex as they are enduring and difficult to settle, because rooted in the "deep“ dimensions of culture and religion. The result is in many cases a conflict pattern where political solutions are often only of temporary value, because the far deeper rooted ethnic and cultural dimensions sooner or later undermine them and spiral the conflict up again. As a consequence, there is a new debate today about the advantages of partition and separation, and an increasing number of scholars and politicians seems to believe that the still most humane lasting solution for ethno-cultural conflicts is to institutionally divide ethnic groups once and for all, accepting to a certain extent (non-recurring) ethnic cleansing and new flows of refugees. Answering such approaches (like the one of Jerry Z. Muller propagated paradigmatically in Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008), Roland Benedikter presents a functioning and long-term proven model from Central Europe, where different ethnic groups have managed it to find a unique institutional arrangement that permits them to live together without territorial and political partition. In presenting core features of the model of autonomy of the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, a border region between Northern Italy and Austria where three ethnic groups coexist and have made the area formerly ridden by civil wars (until 1972) now one of the wealthiest regions of Europe, Roland Benedikter shows how cornerstones of this model may be successfully applied also to other ethnic conflict regions.

Roland Benedikter, Dott. Dr. Dr. Dr., is European Foundation Fellow 2009-2013, in residence at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara, with duties as the European Foundations Research Professor of Political Sociology. His main field of interest is the multidimensional analysis of what he calls the current "Global Systemic Shift", which he tries to understand by bringing together the six typological discourses (and systemic order patterns) of Politics, Economy, Culture, Religion, Technology and Demography. Roland is currently working on two major book projects: One about the "Global Systemic Shift", and one about the "Contemporary Cultural Psychology of the West", the latter comparing culturo-political trends in the European and American hemispheres. With both projects he is also involved in European Policy Advice.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Roland Benedikter Speaker
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Comparative Policy Responses to Demographic Change in East Asia: Defining a Research Agenda

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Demographic changes are profoundly shaping the political, economic, and social landscape of the Asia-Pacific region. How have individuals, families, communities, and policymakers responded? How should they? For example, how will national and social identities transform as population ageing strains traditions of filial piety and immigration disrupts ethnic homogeneity? Will the economies of East Asia languish, or will a "second demographic dividend" spur renewed economic growth? Demographic change can have important psychological and political effects. For example, can one seriously imagine a resurgent, militaristic Japan with a declining and aging population? The responses to demographic change in Japan, South Korea, China, and their neighbors will have great potential long-term effects in the Asia-Pacific region.

This panel discussion, the opening and public portion of a 1-1/2 day workshop that will define a research agenda for the next three years, will bring together selected outside experts and faculty within the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center for an interdisciplinary and comparative discussion of the policy responses to rapid demographic change in East Asia.

  • 3:00p.m. – 3:10p.m.
    Gi-Wook Shin, Director, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University: Introduction and welcome
  • 3:10p.m. – 3:25p.m.
    Brian Nichiporuk, RAND Corporation: The Security Implications of Demographic Trends in East Asia
  • 3:25p.m. – 3:40p.m.
    Michael Sutton, East-West Center, Washington, DC: Political & Security Implications of Population Aging in Japan
  • 3:40p.m. – 3:55p.m.
    John Skrentny, Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, Professor of Sociology, University of California, San Diego: An East Asian Model to Managing Immigration? Durability & Change in the 2000s.
  • 3:55p.m. – 4:10p.m.
    Chong-En Bai, Chair, Department of Economics, Freeman Chair Professor of Economics, Tsinghua University: Policy Responses to Demographic Change in China
  • 4:10p.m. – 4:25p.m.
    David Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography Chair, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard University: Demographic Change in East Asia: Challenges, Options and Evidence
  • 4:25p.m. – 4:40p.m.
    Naohiro Ogawa, Director, Population Research Institute, Nihon University: Population Aging & Changing Human Capital in Japan & other East Asian Countries
  • 4:40p.m. – 4:55p.m.
    Andrew Mason, Professor of Economics, University of Hawaii, Manoa & Senior Fellow, East-West Center, Hawaii: Population Aging and the Generational Economy: Key Findings
  • 4:55p.m. – 5:10p.m.
    James Raymo, Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison The “Second Demographic Transition” and family change in Japan
  • 5:10p.m. – 5:30p.m.
    Discussion/Conclusion
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Bechtel Conference Center

Gi-Wook Shin

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall E301
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 724-8480 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Sociology
William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea
Professor, by Courtesy, of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Gi-Wook Shin_0.jpg PhD

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.

In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.

Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-seven books and numerous articles. His books include The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India (2025); Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007);  and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of Sociology, World Development, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Comparative Education, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.

Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.

Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.

Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL)

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Director, Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)
Director, Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab at APARC
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Gi-Wook Shin Director Speaker Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University
Andrew Mason Professor of Economics, University of Hawaii, Manoa & Senior Fellow Panelist East-West Center, Hawaii
Naohiro Ogawa Director, Population Research Institute Panelist Nihon University
David Bloom Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography, Chair, Department of Global Health and Population Panelist Harvard University
Chong-En Bai Chair, Department of Economics, Freeman Chair Professor of Economics Panelist Tsinghua University
John Skrentny Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, Professor of Sociology Panelist University of California, San Diego
Michael Sutton Panelist East-West Center, Washington, DC
Brian Nichiporuk Panelist RAND Corporation
James Raymo Professor of Sociology Panelist University of Wisconsin, Madison
Panel Discussions
Comparative Policy Responses to Demographic Change in East Asia

Health-damaging and Climate-changing Air Pollution in Asia

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Kirk R. Smith will speak about his current research on health-damaging and climate-changing air pollution from household energy use in developing Asia, including field measurement and health-effects studies in India, China, and Nepal, compared to other countries such as Mexico and Guatemala. The work encompasses developing and deploying small, smart, and cheap microchip-based monitors as well as tools for international policy assessments.

Dr. Smith is Professor of Global Environmental Health and Director of the Global Health and Environment Program at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.  Previously, he was founder and head of the Energy Program of the East-West Center in Honolulu, where he still holds appointment as Adjunct Senior Fellow in Environment and Health after moving to Berkeley in 1995. He serves on a number of national and international scientific advisory committees including the Global Energy Assessment, National Research Council's Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate, the Executive Committee for WHO Air Quality Guidelines, and the International Comparative Risk Assessment. He participated along with many other scientists in the IPCC's 3rd and 4th assessments and thus shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He holds visiting professorships in India and China and bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees from UC Berkeley. In 1997, he was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 2009, he received the Heinz Prize in Environment.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Kirk R. Smith Professor of Global Environmental Health and Director of the Global Health and Environment Program at the School of Public Health Speaker University of California, Berkeley
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Declining Fertility and Investment in Children: The Quality-Quantity Trade-off in Japan and East Asia

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Professor Ogawa will present recent work on declining fertility and the rising cost of children in East Asian countries, using measures of investment per child from the National Transfer Accounts analysis of public and private investments in children's education and health. He and his co-authors also study whether the amount of resources allocated to children has been crowded out by the increasing amount of resources needed for support of the elderly in Japan and other aging societies.

Naohiro Ogawa is professor of population economics at the Nihon University College of Economics and Advanced Research Institute for Sciences and Humanities (ARISH), Tokyo. He is also Director of the Nihon University Population Research Institute (NUPRI). Over the past thirty years he has written extensively on population and development in Japan and other Asian countries. More specifically, his research has focused on issues such as socioeconomic impacts of low fertility and rapid aging, modeling demographics and social security-related variables, as well as policies related to fertility, employment, marriage, child care, retirement and care for the elderly. His recent work includes measuring intergenerational transfers. He has published numerous academic papers in internationally recognized journals. In collaboration with other scholars he has also edited several journals and books among which the most recent one is Population Aging, Intergenerational Transfers and the Macroeconomy (2007). Naohiro Ogawa has served on a number of councils, committees and advisory boards set up by the Japanese government and international organizations such as the Asian Population Association, the IUSSP and the WHO. He is currently an associate member of the Science Council of Japan.

Philippines Conference Room

Naohiro Ogawa Professor of Population Economics Speaker the Nihon University
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