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.
Wi(l)der West? A Transatlantic Perspective on the European Periphery from the Balkans and Turkey to Russia
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Between Moscow and Brussels: Emerging States, East or West?
The workshop is premised on the view that we are now entering a new phase in the development of post-Soviet Europe. Clearly, further NATO enlargement and EU expansion are unlikely to take place in the next few years, creating a zone of insecurity and potential instability dividing those countries which succeeded in winning integration into the EU and into NATO in recent years from those countries that have sought membership without any immediate prospects of achieving it. Moreover, even among countries that have been successful in achieving membership in recent years there remains continuing anxiety about the degree to which their new European partners are prepared to support their economic viability and guarantee their security, particularly in light of increased assertiveness from Moscow.
The central purpose of this workshop series is to analyze the new dynamics emerging within this region, focusing on the external influences exerted by Moscow and Brussels and how they interact with the internal dynamics of the “corridor” countries, and to explore possible scenarios for future stabilization and development.
This workshop will be held November 5 and 6, 2009 at Stanford. The primary focus will be the “corridor” of countries consisting of the Baltic and Central European members of the EU and NATO, together with Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Moscow and Brussels will enter as driving outside influences. The participants will include analysts and policymakers from the region itself as well as scholars from the relevant scholarly communities.
CISAC Conference Room
Workshops
2009-10 CISAC fellows and visiting scholars
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CISAC is pleased to announce fellows and visitors in residence at the Center during the 2009-10 academic year.
- Max Abrahms
University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Political Science
Strategic Logic of Terrorism - Undraa Agvaanluvsan
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Nuclear Experimental Group
Energy, Security, and Economic Implications of Nuclear Industry Development in Mongolia - Chaim Braun
CISAC
Nuclear Power Growth and its Nonproliferation Implications in India, the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula, and South America - Sarah Zukerman Daly
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science
Guns, Politics or Bankruptcy: Disentangling the Determinants of Armed Organizations Post-war Trajectories - Matthias Englert
Darmstadt University of Technology, Interdisciplinary Research Group in Science Technology and Security
Managing the Proliferation Risks of Gas Centrifuges - Technical and Political Measures - Andrea Everett
Princeton University, Department of Politics
Responding to Catastrophe: Democratic Society and the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention - Kelly Greenhill
Tufts University and Research Fellow, Harvard University
Fear Factor: Understanding the Origins and Consequences of Beliefs about National Security and the Threats We Face - Tom Isaacs
Director, Office of Planning and Special Studies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and the Role of the U.S. - Joseph Martz
Los Alamos National Laboratory - Katherine Marvel
University of Cambridge, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
Nuclear Energy in Africa: Utility, Feasibility, and Security - Emily Meierding
University of Chicago, Department of Political Science
Fueling Conflict, Facilitating Peace: Oil & International Territorial Disputes - Eric Morris
Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies
Civilian Capacity for Peace Operations - Charles Perrow
Yale University, Department of Sociology - Brenna Powell
Harvard University, Department of Government and Social Policy
Normalizing Security After Conflict: Jobs for the Boys and Justice for the Hoods - Arian Pregenzer
Sandia National Laboratories, Department of Cooperative International Programs
International Technical Cooperation to Support Arms Control and Nonproliferation: Review of Past Approaches, Identification of Lessons Learned, and Recommendations for the Future - William Reckmeyer
San Jose State University, Department of Anthropology
Systemic Connections: Developing an Integrated National Strategy to Promote International Security and Cooperation - Jefferey Richardson,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Science as a Tool for International Engagement - Robert Rosner
University of Chicago, Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, and Laboratory Director, Argonne National Laboratory - Jan Stupl
University of Hamburg, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy
Missile Technology Control Regime - Michael Sulmeyer
Stanford Law School - Phil Taubman
Former Associate Editor and Reporter, The New York Times - Jianqun Teng
China Arms Control and Disarmament Association
Nuclear Free World Initiative in the Context of Sino-U.S. Relations - John Vitacca
United States Air Force
Nuclear Policy Issues - Gang Zhao
Chinese Academy of S & T for Development (CASTED)
Deepening the China-U.S. Relationship through Collaboration in Science and Technology with Particular Attention to Alternative Energy Solutions - Yunhua Zou
General Armaments Department, People's Liberation Army, China
Space Arms Control; Security Cooperation with China; U.S.-China Relations
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Martha Crenshaw awarded $500,000 to study terrorist patterns
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Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has been awarded $500,000 by the National Science Foundation to identify patterns in the evolution of terrorist organizations and to analyze their comparative development.
The three-year grant is part of the Department of Defense's Minerva Initiative launched in 2008, which focuses on "supporting research related to basic social and behavioral science of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy."
Crenshaw's interdisciplinary project, "Mapping Terrorist Organizations," will analyze terrorist groups and trace their relationships over time. It will be the first worldwide, comprehensive study of its kind-extending back to the Russian revolutionary movement up to Al Qaeda today.
"We want to understand how groups affiliate with Al Qaeda and analyze their relationships," Crenshaw said. "Evolutionary mapping can enhance our understanding of how terrorist groups develop and interact with each other and with the government, how strategies of violence and non-violence are related, why groups persist or disappear, and how opportunities and constraints in the environment change organizational behavior over time."
According to Crenshaw, it is critical to understand the organization and evolution of terrorism in multiple contexts. "To craft effective counter-terrorism strategies, governments need to know not only what type of adversary they are confronting but its stage of organizational development and relationship to other groups," Crenshaw wrote in the project summary. "The timing of a government policy initiative may be as important as its substance."
"Mapping Terrorist Organizations" will incorporate research in economics, sociology, business, biology, political science and history. It will include existing research to build a new database using original language sources rather than secondary analyses. The goal is to produce an online database and series of interactive maps that will generate new observations and research questions, Crenshaw said.
The results, for example, could reveal the structure of violent and non-violent opposition groups within the same movements or conflicts, and identify patterns that explain how these groups evolve over time. Such findings could be used to analyze the development of Al Qaeda and its Islamist or jihadist affiliates, including the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, she said.
The findings may also shed light on what happens when a group splits due to leadership quarrels or when a government is overturned, Crenshaw said. "Analysis that links levels of terrorist violence to changes in organizational structures and explains the complex relationships among actors in protracted conflicts will break new ground," the summary noted.
Extensive information on terrorist groups already exists, but it has been difficult to compile and analyze. Despite such obstacles, Crenshaw said, violent organizations can be understood in the same terms as other political or economic groups. "Terrorist groups are not anomalous or unique," she wrote. "In fact, they can be compared to transnational activist networks."
Crenshaw should know. Widely respected as a pioneer in terrorism studies, the political scientist was one of a handful of scholars who followed the subject decades before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She joined CISAC in 2007, following a long career at Wesleyan University, where she was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought. In addition to her research at Stanford, Crenshaw is a lead investigator at START, the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.
End goal
Crenshaw wants to use the findings to better analyze how threats to U.S. security evolve over time. "Terrorist attacks on the United States and its allies abroad often appear to come without warning, but they are the result of a long process of organizational development," she wrote. "Terrorist organizations do not operate in isolation from a wider social environment. Without understanding processes of development and interaction, governments may miss signals along the way and be vulnerable to surprise attack. They may also respond ineffectively because they cannot anticipate the consequences of their actions." The project seeks to find patterns in the evolution of terrorism and to explain their causes and consequences. This, in turn, should contribute to developing more effective counter-terrorism policy, Crenshaw said.
Conflicts to be mapped
- Russian revolutionary organizations, 1860s-1914.
- Anarchist groups in Europe and the United States, 1880s-1914. (Note: although the anarchist movement is typically regarded as completely unstructured, there was more organization than an initial survey might suppose, and the transnational dispersion of the movement is frequently cited as a precedent for Al Qaeda.)
- Ireland and Northern Ireland, 1860s-present.
- Algeria, 1945-1962 and 1992-present
- Palestinian resistance groups, 1967-present.
- Colombia, 1960s-present.
- El Salvador, 1970s-1990s
- Argentina, 1960s-1980s
- Chile, 1973-1990
- Peru, 1970-1990s
- Brazil, 1967-1971
- Sri Lanka, 1980s-present
- India (Punjab), 1980-present
- Philippines, 1960s-present
- Indonesia, 1998-present
- Italy, 1970s-1990s
- Germany, 1970s-1990s
- France/Belgium, 1980-1990s
- Kashmir, 1988-present
- Pakistan, 1980-present
- United States, 1960s-present (especially far right movement)
- Spain, 1960s-present
- Egypt, 1950s-present
- Turkey, 1960s-present
- Lebanon, 1975-present
- Al Qaeda, 1987-present
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Human Rights Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law
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The Center for the Study of the Novel is pleased to present a discussion of Professor Joseph Slaughter's new book, Human Rights Inc: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law. Prof. Slaughter (Columbia) will be in conversation with Prof. Saikat Majumdar (Stanford) and Prof. Michael Rubenstein (UC Berkeley) in the Terrace Room of the English Department (Building 460, Room 426) on Friday, November 20th, at 3:30 pm. A reading selection from this book is available as a pdf by email request and in hard copy on the second floor of the English Department, under the grad mailboxes.
Human Rights Inc is, in Simon Gikandi's words, "one of the most intense and intelligent reflections on the relation between the novel and human rights....a model of how students and scholars of literature can respond to the great humanitarian crisis of our time and transform the culture of human rights itself."
Joseph Slaughter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He teaches and publishes in the fields of postcolonial literature and theory, African, Caribbean, and Latin American literatures, postcolonialism, narrative theory, human rights, and 20th-century ethnic and third world literatures. His many publications include articles on the narrative foundations of human rights in Human Rights Quarterly, "Humanitarian Reading" in Humanitarianism and Suffering, torture and Latin American literature in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, ethnopsychiatry, Nigerian literature, and globalization in African Writers and Their Readers, colonial narratives of invoice in Emerging Perspectives on Chinua Achebe, city space and the national allegory in Research in African Literatures, human rights, multiculturalism, and the contemporary Bildungsroman in Politics and Culture, a short story translation of Argentine Elvira Orphée's "Descomedido" in The Southwest Review, as well as a co-authored article on contemporary epistolary fiction and women's rights in Women, Gender, and Human Rights. His essay, "Enabling Fictions and Novel Subjects: The Bildungsroman and International Human Rights Law," appeared in a special issue on human rights of PMLA (October 2006) and was honored as one of the two best articles published in the journal in 2006-7; another, "The Textuality of Human Rights: Founding Narratives of Human Personality," was named a winner in the Interdisciplinary Law and Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop held at UCLA in 2004. He has co-edited a special issue on "Human Rights and Literary Form" of Comparative Literature Studies.
Terrace Room
Margaret Jacks Hall / Building 460
Department of English
Stanford University
Joseph Slaughter
Author, "Human Rights Inc: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law"
Speaker
Saikat Majumdar
Speaker
Stanford University
Michael Rubenstein
Speaker
University of California at Berkeley
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