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.
Homeland Security after the Bush Administration: Next Steps in Building Unity of Effort
Homeland security remains a house divided. Within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which incorporated 22 disparate agencies four years ago, major challenges persist in building cohesion and cooperation across Department boundaries. Difficulties also exist for strengthening interagency cooperation between DHS and the other federal Departments (ranging from Defense to Health and Human Services) with homeland security responsibilities. Still greater challenges lie in building cooperation beyond the federal government. States, localities and the private sector are critical to homeland security, but do not ordinarily fall under the president's command, and have their own priorities related to infrastructure protection, disaster preparedness, and other key functions. The profoundly non-hierarchical structure of the homeland security system requires unprecedented efforts to create unity of effort: that is, coordination and cooperation to accomplish mutually agreed objectives, by components of the government and private sector that typically cannot order each other what to do.
The CISAC Forum on Homeland Security will enable approximately 25 private sector leaders, senior government officials and scholars to share insights on homeland security beyond their usual realms of interaction. We would like to launch a dialogue between participants on the problems that exist in creating coordination and collaboration in homeland security, how unity of effort might be defined (and ultimately measured in terms of effectiveness) as a means to overcome those problems, and how different approaches in industry and government might be adapted to fill specific gaps in homeland security cooperation. The conference will conclude with an effort to reach consensus on initiatives that seem most promising to pursue, both for action by policymakers and industry leaders and for analysis in follow-on discussions and academic research.
Bechtel Conference Center
Paul Stockton
Moderator
Workshops
Oil Dependent Producer States
Just over a year ago, Professor Thomas Heller, Director of CDDRL's Rule of Law Program, had just launched a new project on oil dependent producer states. The project has now become one of the mainstays of the CDDRL law program.
Explaining Democratic Survival Globally (1946-2002) - Institutional and Non-institutional Causes
-
This research aims at explaining the apparently higher breakdown rate of presidential democracies over parliamentary ones. It shows that the alleged greater negative effect of presidential regimes on democratic breakdown than parliamentary democracies would disappear, not just when military legacy is considered, but also when the effectiveness or power of legislatures is taken into account.
Speaker Bio
Ming Sing is Associate Professor at the Department of Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong. He is a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego (2006-07).
His current research interests are comparing political culture in Asia and institutional engineering in the world. He joined the Asiabarometer Survey Team in 2006 exploring political culture of all Asian societies in relation to democracy He has been doing research on institutional and non-institutional factors shaping global democratic breakdown longitudinally.
He has published on various aspects of democratization in Hong Kong and is the author and editor of three books: Hong Kong's Tortuous Democratization: a Comparative Analysis (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), and Hong Kong Government & Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). His third book (University of Hong Kong, 2007) focuses on the institutional engineering and governance problems in Hong Kong. He has also published articles in Government & Opposition, Democratization, East Asia, China Information, Chinese Law & Government, Journal of Contemporary Asia, International Journal of Public Administration and elsewhere.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Ming Sing
Associate Professor, City University of Hong Kong; Visiting Fulbright Scholar, UCSD
Speaker
Seminars
Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN)
The Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation is an interdisciplinary center for the study of international and intergroup conflict and negotiation. Our primary foci are:
2006-2007 CISAC Fellows Forum
-
The CISAC Fellows Forum showcases some of the vitally important work that has been accomplished at CISAC this year. Moderated by Scott Sagan, CISAC co-director, three scholars represent the promising work of CISAC fellows:
David Patel
Postdoctoral Fellow
"Islam, Identity, and Electoral Outcomes in Iraq"
Why has a cohesive national Shiite political identity emerged in Iraq while Sunni Arabs remain fractured? What does the United States need to understand about how differences between Shiite and Sunni clerical networks influence electoral successes?
David Patel's work focuses on questions of religious organizations and collective action in the Middle East. In fall 2007, he will join the faculty at Cornell University as an assistant professor of political science.
Jacob Shapiro
"Mis-overestimating Terrorism: The Problems Terrorists Face and How to Make Them Worse"
Terrorist organizations face substantial internal challenges which make them vulnerable to government action. Careful counter terrorism strategies can exploit these organizational pathologies.
Jacob Shapiro is a graduate student in political science at Stanford University and a CISAC predoctoral fellow. His research focuses on the economic forces that motivate terrorist organizations and the organizational challenges that these groups face.
Rebecca Slayton
"Technology Limited: How Scientists Do and Don't Influence U.S. Defense Policy"
In the United States, high technology is a favorite solution to national security problems. But how do we know when complex technology has reached its limits? The rancorous debate over missile defense shows how experts use science to authoritatively frame options and thus influence the making of defense policy.
Rebecca Slayton is a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Stanford University and a CISAC affiliate. In 2004-2005 she was a CISAC science fellow. Slayton's research examines the relationships between technocrats, academia, and the media.
Bechtel Conference Center
Scott D. Sagan
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
0
ssagan@stanford.edu
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.
Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).
Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).
In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.
Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
CV
Document
sagan_cv_january_2026_.pdf
(273.48 KB)
Hide publication sections
Off
David S. Patel
Postdoctoral Fellow
Speaker
Jacob N. Shapiro
Predoctoral Fellow
Speaker
Rebecca Slayton
Lecturer, Science, Technology, and Society Program; CISAC Affiliate; former Science Fellow
Speaker
Conferences
Anatomy of a Project to Produce Nuclear Weapons
-
The anatomy of a program to develop a first nuclear weapon was analyzed as a precursor to comparison of potential counter-proliferation activities. In this talk we discuss this precursor task. The weapon and path selected for this analysis was covert development of a gun-type fission device using uranium enriched by centrifuge technology. The rationale for this selection is described. The anatomy was developed by identifying and sequencing each task required to ultimately assemble a single working nuclear explosive device and to provide a limited follow-on production capability. Tasks involve acquisition of materials, design and development of components including manufacturing tools and equipment, design and construction of facilities, operation of the facilities, assembly and integration of the components, and test and evaluation of the components and assembled device. Critical aspects of these steps will be discussed in the presentation. For each task the resources required (time, manpower, utilities, feed materials, and equipment) and their associated costs were estimated. These were inserted into standard project management tools. This permitted easy determination of overall costs and program duration as well as establishing a critical program path. The significance of this information and its use in one potential counter-proliferation activity is described as are potential extensions of this process to analysis of other proliferation pathways.
Robert C. Harney is an associate professor of systems engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School and is the Naval Sea Systems Command Chair of Total Ship Systems Engineering (Combat Systems). He received the BS degree in chemistry and physics from Harvey Mudd College in 1971 and the PhD in applied science from the University of California, Davis in 1976. His entire career has been spent in the field of national defense, working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory, and Martin Marietta Corporation before joining the Naval Postgraduate School in 1995. He teaches courses in sensor systems, weapon systems, and systems engineering. His primary research interests are in advanced sensor systems, unconventional weapons of mass destruction, and counter-terrorism.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Robert Harney
Associate Professor, Department of Systems Engineering
Speaker
Naval Postgraduate School
Seminars
McFaul gives Class Day lecture to 6,000 Stanford graduates, family members
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
CDDRL Director and political science Professor Michael A. McFaul gave the 2007 Class Day lecture on Saturday, June 16. More than 6,000 Stanford graduates, family members, faculty, and alumni attended the lecture.
Political science Professor Michael McFaul gave the Class Day lecture Saturday in Maples Pavilion.
If Stanford is indeed a bubble, political science Professor Michael McFaul deftly pointed out its radiant lining while simultaneously bursting it with a needle--in the form of sobering statistics and descriptions that paint a dour portrait of America's international standing--during his Class Day lecture on Saturday in Maples Pavilion.
Sponsored by the Stanford Alumni Association, the Class Day tradition gathers graduates and their families before a distinguished faculty member for a keynote address that is at once congratulatory and weighty. But McFaul, the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, began by describing his humble roots as a boy from Montana.
"When I came to Stanford as a 17-year-old freshman, I was raw and not ready for prime time," McFaul admitted. "I had never lived anywhere but Montana. I hadn't even set foot in California, let alone a foreign country."
In 1986, McFaul said he emerged from the Farm a dramatically different person--holding a bachelor's degree in international relations and Slavic languages and literatures, as well as a master's in Russian and East European studies. He had lived in the Soviet Union, Nigeria and Poland; and today, McFaul is regarded as one of the top scholars in terms of bringing together the theory and practice of democracy.
"I came here wanting to practice law and left here wanting to practice diplomacy," said McFaul, who in 2005 was appointed director of the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "So, my time in the bubble changed me."
Then McFaul brought out the needle. He noted that, just as this year's graduates were first arriving on the Farm, President George W. Bush was outlining his "freedom agenda," a plan to transform the world. McFaul said the plan outlined Bush's strategy for promoting democracy around the world as a way of keeping Americans safe.
But so far, McFaul lamented, few of the plan's goals have been realized. "It hasn't been pretty out there," McFaul said. "While you have been living inside the bubble, a lot has been happening--much of it bad--outside of the bubble."
McFaul then reminded graduates of positive developments, such as the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. And, no one, he added, misses the Taliban regime in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
"But overall, trends are disappointing," McFaul said. "In Afghanistan, democracy is barely holding on. In Iraq and Palestine, there's civil war."
Between 2003, when the departing undergraduates in the audience arrived as freshmen, and today, more than 3,000 American soldiers, roughly 60,000 Iraqis and more than 200,000 people in Darfur have died, McFaul said. He added that the number of al-Qaida's followers also has grown during the four years that the Class of 2007 was in "the bubble."
And yet, the graduates might have left Maples completely deflated were it not for the main message of McFaul's lecture, which was one of renewal. When he graduated from Stanford in 1986, McFaul gave a graduation speech at the ceremony for international relations majors in which he lamented the failing arms control treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States. He also expressed dismay that South Africa's apartheid regime had just declared emergency rule and that Washington seemed too confrontational or too indifferent to address either.
"However, after each of these periods, the United States had found a way to renew itself and become again a force for freedom and justice around the world," McFaul said. "So, my understanding of history gives me confidence in our capacity for renewal. But so does my sense of the future that comes from teaching here at Stanford University."
McFaul said he has taught enough of this year's graduates to know that they have the smarts, the drive and the convictions to turn things around--young men and women from throughout the United States but also from nations such as Afghanistan, Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia and Nigeria.
"Someone sitting here right now will someday open the first U.S. Embassy in a democratic Iran," McFaul said. "Someone sitting here right now will inspire a third grader in the South Bronx to become the first kid in his neighborhood to win a Nobel Prize in physics."
But in the effort to renew the world, McFaul also told the graduates they should not forget to renew themselves. He urged them not to describe whatever occupation they take up simply as a job title, but as an action verb; to occasionally welcome idle time to refocus their energies; to embrace uncertainty; and to continue to learn and stay connected to Stanford.
McFaul's parting message echoed the welcome address by Howard Wolf, '80, vice president for alumni affairs and president of the Stanford Alumni Association. "Alumni are the only permanent stakeholders" of the university, Wolf said. "Get involved, stay connected."
All News button
1