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.
New Dynamic Triangle-Taiwan, US, and China: A Conversation
In this conversation, Taiwan's Representative to the United States, Jason Yuan, and Director of CDDRL, Larry Diamond, will talk about a variety of issues associated with the triangular relationship among Taiwan, China, and the United States.
Mr. Jason Yuan took office as Republic of China’s (Taiwan) Representative to the United States in August, 2008. Representative Yuan is a career diplomat who began his government career in 1974 as an acting naval attaché for the Embassy of the Republic of China in the United States. After then, he has been Deputy Director and Director of Congressional Liaison Division for the Coordination Council for North American Affairs, Director General of Department of North American Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Representative of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada. He has also served as Ambassador to Panama, and Director General of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles. Prior to the current post, Representative Yuan was Representative of Kuomintang-People First Party (KMT-PFP Alliance) to the United States.
Representative Yuan obtained his MA in Business and Public Administration from Southeastern University and BA in Chinese Navy Academy (Taiwan).
This is special event within Democracy in Taiwan Program.
Bechtel Conference Center
Larry Diamond
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.
Political Animals: Critical Reflections on Sovereignty and Bare Life in Giorgio Agamben's Work
Antonis Balasopoulos, Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus, is one of the most important younger scholars working in literary criticism and theory today. He has co-edited Comparative Literature and Global Studies: Histories and Trajectories; Conformism, Non-Conformism and Anti-Conformism in the Culture of the United States; and States of Theory: History and Geography of Critical Narratives.
He has held a Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University and has been appointed Institute Faculty at the Dartmouth Institute of American Studies, Dartmouth College. His research interests include Utopian fiction and nonfiction, 16th-19th centuries; Literature and Culture of US Empire, 1800-1900; literature, geography and the production of space; nationalism, colonialism and postcoloniality; critical theory, especially Marxism, genre theory, and theories of the political; visual culture, especially cinema.
Sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages, the Department of Comparative Literature, the English Department, the Program in Modern Thought and Literature, German Studies, and the Forum on Contemporary Europe.
Building 260, Room 216
Pigott Hall, Main Quad
Stanford University
START Announces 2009-10 Terrorism Research Awards
Integrated Nuclear Security in the 21st Century: A Framework for Real Actions
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Book offers new roadmap for tackling transnational threats
As fallout from accelerating climate change and the economic meltdown reveals, today's gravest threats are transnational, demanding unprecedented cooperation among competing nations to find lasting solutions. The policies and strategies developed for the balance-of-power rivalries of the 20th century no longer apply in this one, according to the authors of Power & Responsibility, a book launched March 17 at Stanford.
"Transnational threats create security interdependence between the most powerful states and the weaker states," author Stephen J. Stedman said during the panel discussion hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "The United States can't defend itself against any threat without sustained international cooperation from others."
Stedman, a faculty member at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Bruce Jones of New York University and Carlos Pascual from the Brookings Institution, said their book seeks to promote the concept of "responsible sovereignty" to rebuild international order and strengthen international institutions such as the United Nations. In other words, the authors argue, their notion of sovereignty demands responsibility from states in addition to according privilege. Furthermore, nations should be held responsible for the harmful international effects of their domestic policies-whether it's producing massive amounts of carbon dioxide or failing to secure national borders and financial institutions, thus enabling terrorist groups to attack targets thousands of miles away.
The book's publication follows a policy oriented Plan for Action booklet released last November on the heels of the U.S. presidential election. Timed to coincide with the start of the Obama administration, the 360-page book, published by Brookings Institution Press, highlights seven issues that demand transnational solutions: nuclear proliferation, climate change, bio-security, civil violence and regional conflicts, terrorism and economic security. According to Stedman, the book was received positively during recent launches in Europe, Asia and Washington, D.C. and, earlier this month, the authors presented their findings to senior White House officials.
While U.S. power is in decline, Jones said, it is the only nation with the military, diplomatic, economic and political power needed to take a global lead in tackling transnational threats. The world's rising powers-China, India and Brazil-recognize that the alternative to U.S. leadership is "entropy and chaos," he said, and that every state stands to benefit more from the former as long as it is geared to structured cooperation.
"This is not a love fest of great powers," Jones continued. "There are real interests here and there [would] be tough and sustained negotiations." But the alternatives-maintaining the status quo where global decisions are made by the outmoded G-7 group of industrialized nations, or establishing a "league of democracies" that would exclude critical players such as China-are simply unworkable. "We recognize that our model is tough but we think it's the most likely to have impact on the threats that face us," Jones said.
Nuclear Learning Revisited
Amandeep Singh Gill is a visiting fellow at CISAC. He is a member of the Indian Foreign Service and has served in the Indian Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, the Indian Embassy in Tehran and the High Commission of India in Colombo. At headquarters in New Delhi, he has served twice in the Disarmament and International Security Affairs Division of the Ministry of External Affairs from 1998 to 2001 and again from 2006 to 2008 at critical junctures in India’s nuclear diplomacy. He was a member of the Indian delegation to the Conference on Disarmament during the negotiations on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He has also served as an expert on the UN Secretary General’s panels of experts on Small Arms and Light Weapons and on Missiles.
His research priorities include disarmament, arms control and non proliferation, Asian regional security and human security issues. He is currently working on the interaction of nuclear policies of major states, particularly in Asia.
Before joining the Indian Foreign Service, Amandeep Gill worked as a telecommunications engineer. He retains an abiding interest in the interaction of science, security and politics. He is founder of a non-profit called Farmers First Foundation that seeks to reclaim agriculture for the farmers and demonstrate the viability of integrated agriculture in harmony with nature.
David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into six languages, most recently into Czech in 2008. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.
Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.
If you would like to be added to the email announcement list, please visit https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/socialscienceseminar
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
David Holloway
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E214
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into seven languages, most recently into Chinese. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.
Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.
Can Development Aid Contribute to Social Cohesion? Evidence From a Field Experiment in Post-Conflict Liberia
James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, a professor of political science and CISAC affiliated faculty member at Stanford University. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance.
He is presently working on a book manuscript (with David Laitin) on civil war since 1945. Recent publications include “Iraq’s Civil War” (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007), “Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States” (International Security, Spring 2004), and “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” (APSR, February 2003).
Fearon won the 1999 Karl Deutsch Award, which is "presented annually to a scholar under the age of forty, or within ten years of the acquisition of his or her Doctoral Degree, who is judged to have made, through a body publications, the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research." He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences in 2002.
Patrick Johnston is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a CISAC predoctoral fellow. His dissertation examines the military effectiveness of civilian targeting in civil wars. He has published articles on the organization of insurgencies, spoiler dynamics in peace processes, and the political economy of civil war in journals such as Security Studies, Civil Wars, Canadian Journal of African Studies, andReview of African Political Economy. Johnston holds a BA in political science from the University of Minnesota, Morris and an MA in political science from Northwestern University.
If you would like to be added to the email announcement list, please visit https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/socialscienceseminar
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
James D. Fearon
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
James Fearon is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he is also the social science co-director at its Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a professor of political science, as well as an affiliate at the institute's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance. Fearon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. Some of his current research projects include work on the costs of collective and interpersonal violence, democratization and conflict in Myanmar, nuclear weapons and U.S. foreign policy, and the long-run persistence of armed conflict.