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. 

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Please feel free to bring a bag lunch.

Central Conference Room, 2nd Floor Encina Hall

Seminars
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PLEASE NOTE TIME & DATE CHANGE FOR THIS SEMINAR ONLY. Please feel free to bring a bag lunch.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, Encina Hall East

Katherine Fithen Speaker Computer Emergency Response Team
Al Conrad Speaker Canadian National Defense Headquarters
Seminars
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Please feel free to bring a bag lunch.

Central Conference Room, 2nd Floor Encina Hall

Jayantha Dhanapala Under-secretary General for Disarmament Affairs Speaker United Nations
Seminars
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Please feel free to bring a bag lunch.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, Encina Hall East

Fritz Steinhausler Austrian Professor
Seminars
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Please feel free to bring a bag lunch.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, Encina Hall East

Steven Block Stanford Biology and Physics Departments
Seminars
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Among heads of state, Indonesia's is unique--and uniquely challenged. Aburrahman Wahid ("Gus Dur") is virtually blind and has suffered two strokes. His country, the world's fourth most populous, is bedeviled by political and economic crises. Momentum toward secession in several outlying regions, notably Aceh and Irian Jaya, threatens to unravel the republic. In Maluku province, intercommunal violence has accelerated. Prospects for continued recovery from the devastating recession of 1998 are uncertain. As impatience mounts over the inability of Gus Dur's government to date to solve such problems, fragile stability and nascent democratization are at risk of reversal, especially if elements in the army decide to intervene. Who is the man in the eye of this hurricane? What does his background tell us about his ability to cope with his country's manifold problems? Is he up to the task? Will he be ousted by his rivals? Or, in Indonesia's post-authoritarian political climate, do Gus Dur's weaknesses amount to a kind of strength? Donald K. Emmerson is a senior fellow at the Asia/Pacific Research Center. His edited book, Indonesia beyond Suharto, has just been published. Other recent writings include pieces in the Journal of Democracy and the National Interest--the former on political change in Southeast Asia, the latter on Western moralpolitik in East Timor. In June and August 1999 he helped to monitor Indonesia's national elections in Maluku and the UN's plebiscite on sovereignty in East Timor, respectively. His talk on Gus Dur will include information obtained during a three-hour interview with the new president in Jakarta in December 1999.

Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall, East Wing, Third Floor

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

Selected Multimedia

Date Label
Donald K. Emmerson Professor
Seminars

The Yaqui Valley, in Sonora, Mexico is a region of rapid demographic, economic, and ecological change in both upland and coastal areas. Situated on the west coast of mainland Mexico on the Gulf of California, the Valley currently comprises 225,000 has of irrigated wheat-based agriculture: recently adding aquaculture to its landscape. It is the birthplace of the Green Revolution for wheat and one of Mexico's most productive breadbaskets.

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-4560 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor
walder_2019_2.jpg PhD

Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor at Stanford University, where he is also a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Previously, he served as Chair of the Department of Sociology, Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and Head of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Walder has long specialized in the sources of conflict, stability, and change in communist regimes and their successor states. His publications on Mao-era China have ranged from the social and economic organization of that early period to the popular political mobilization of the late 1960s and the subsequent collapse and rebuilding of the Chinese party-state. His publications on post-Mao China have focused on the evolving pattern of stratification, social mobility, and inequality, with an emphasis on variation in the trajectories of post-state socialist systems. His current research is on the growth and evolution of China’s large modern corporations, both state and private, after the shift away from the Soviet-inspired command economy.

Walder joined the Stanford faculty in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1981 and taught at Columbia University before moving to Harvard in 1987. From 1995 to 1997, he headed the Division of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Walder has received fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His books and articles have won awards from the American Sociological Association, the Association for Asian Studies, and the Social Science History Association. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His recent and forthcoming books include  Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement  (Harvard University Press, 2009);  China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed  (Harvard University Press, 2015);  Agents of Disorder: Inside China’s Cultural Revolution  (Harvard University Press, 2019); and  A Decade of Upheaval: The Cultural Revolution in Feng County  (Princeton University Press, 2021) (with Dong Guoqiang); and Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China’s Southern Periphery (Stanford University Press, 2023).  

His recent articles include “After State Socialism: Political Origins of Transitional Recessions.” American Sociological Review  80, 2 (April 2015) (with Andrew Isaacson and Qinglian Lu); “The Dynamics of Collapse in an Authoritarian Regime: China in 1967.”  American Journal of Sociology  122, 4 (January 2017) (with Qinglian Lu); “The Impact of Class Labels on Life Chances in China,”  American Journal of Sociology  124, 4 (January 2019) (with Donald J. Treiman); and “Generating a Violent Insurgency: China’s Factional Warfare of 1967-1968.” American Journal of Sociology 126, 1 (July 2020) (with James Chu).

Director Emeritus of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Director Emeritus of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University, July to November of 2013
Graduate Seminar Instructor at the Stanford Center at Peking University, August to September of 2017
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