Apparel export quotas that defined the worldwide garment trade for four decades ended on 1 January 2005. Trade data since then suggest that production has shifted from Southeast Asia to China. For the most developed countries in Southeast Asia, the loss of the garment industry will be a tolerable inconvenience. But it will devastate countries whose economies depend on such exports. An extreme example is Cambodia, three-fourths of whose exports are apparel. Are the threads from which these poor economies hang about to break? Is this industrys migration out of Southeast Asia inevitable and irrevocable? What, if anything, can governments and companies in the region do?

Geoffrey Stafford earned his PhD in political science (1998) and an MA in Southeast Asian studies (1996) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After completing his dissertation, Globalization Amid Diversity: Economic Development Policy in Multi-Ethnic Malaysia 1987-1997, he joined a large retailer to work on issues of corporate social responsibility in the global garment-manufacturing arena. In that capacity he is now analyzing the effects of quota termination on the world apparel industry. He has taught the politics of Southeast Asia at the University of San Francisco.

Scott Horton is a leading authority on international law regarding torture. He led an American Bar Association investigation into standards of treatment for detainees which was published in April 2004. He was a consultant for those representing Guantanamo Bay detainees, advising them on the legal implications of officially sanctioned torture. He contributed to the recent book, "The Torture Papers: the Road to Abu Ghraib."

An attorney and human rights defender, Scott represented Andrei Sakharov, Elena Bonner and other leaders of the human rights movement in the formerly communist world for more than twenty years. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an advisor to its Center on Preventive Action, the president of the International League for Human Rights, chair of the New York City Bar's Committee on International Law, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School. He has appeared as a commentator on international law issues on BBC's Panorama, ABC's 20/20 and Nightline, the CBS Evening News, NBC Dateline, CNN's Paula Zahn Show, PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers and as a frequent guest on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

In 2007 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will be forty years old. Yet the most basic questions about it remain controversial. What exactly is it? An organization? A discourse? A regime? A concert? A community? A facade? None, one, some, or all of the above? Has it succeeded? Has it failed? Both? To what extent? How? Why? In the context of these uncertainties, this talk will explore three topics: (1) the controversy over whether ASEAN is, or is not, a "security community"; (2) the incompatibility of member sovereignty versus member democracy as principles of ASEAN cooperation; and (3) the implications of (1) and (2) for US-ASEAN relations. The talk will draw mainly on two sources: a paper that can be downloaded; and a March 2005 research-and-conferencing trip to Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

Korea, where ancient East Asian civilization and modern Western civilization interact and conflicting political ideologies, economic systems, and social practices collide, presents a particularly interesting case of the phenomenology of the consequences of cultural conflict involving the problems of detraditionalization, cultural hybridization, and the discontinuous nature of globalization. How do traditional religious beliefs and practices survive in modern Korean society and how do they interact with modern values and lifestyles derived from the West,particularly the United States?

What happens to a society when a cultural tradition that has valued the Confucian virtues of frugality, temperance, service to the family and local community, and natural, segmented human relations regulated by a communal sense of propriety and order transforms into one in which individualism, hedonism, utilitarian egotism, and the unbridled pursuit of material achievements predominate? What should replace or supplement eroding traditional values? Attempting to answer these questions requires us to seriously reflect on the relation of traditional moral culture to the contemporary situation in Korea.

Dr. Chung has taught at a number of institutions,including Boston University's College of General Studies and in the Department of Sociology and the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul.

He has published widely in both Korean and English,on social and ethical problems arising from East Asia's modern transformation. Dr. Chung has incorporated into his teaching and research the religious and social ethical problems involving globalization and encounters between civilizations with particular attention to Korea, East Asian religious traditions,and Christianity.

Buffet lunch will be provided to those who RSVP to Jasmin Ha at jaha@stanford.edu by Tuesday, May 10.

One of the most important scholarly issues in political economy during the last decade has been economic globalization.

A powerful case for the penetrating power of globalization on the nation states was the Asian financial crisis in 1997, which drove South Korea, once an exemplary success case of state-led economic development, to the brink of national bankruptcy.

The economic crisis and the following structural reform process of South Korea seem to clearly demonstrate the limit of state-centric developmental model and the converging effect of neoliberal capitalism even on a nonliberal state-led economy.

While recent scholarly discussions on the "globalization and the state" thesis have mostly focused on changes in the non-state actors or the state-market relationship, Ms. Jung draws our attention to the transformation of the state bureaucratic institutions.

In her talk, she uses South Korea as a critical case and traces the dramatic institutional changes of the Economic Planning Board (EPB) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) between 1994 and 1999. Ms. Jung unpacks the black box of why and how specific decisions on key bureaucratic institutional changes were made in Korea, tests how globalization affected the transformation process, and then analyzes the consequences of such changes for the role and authority of the South Korean state in economic development and reform.

Buffet lunch will be provided to those who RSVP to Jasmin Ha at jaha@stanford.edu by Tuesday, April 12.

The panelists will discuss the history and future of India-Pakistan relations, focusing on the most persistent conflict between the two neighboring countries, Kashmir. Since 1947 both countries have defied numerous international attempts at resolution and in 1998 entered its most dangerous phase when both India and Pakistan became nuclear powers.

Rafiq Dossani, senior research scholar at Shorenstein APARC, is responsible for developing and directing the South Asia Initiative. Dossani earlier worked for the Robert Fleming Investment Banking group, first as CEO of its India operations and later as head of its San Francisco operations. He has also been the Chairman and CEO of a stockbroking firm on the OTCEI exchange in India, the Deputy Editor of Business India Weekly, and a professor of finance at Pennsylvania State University. His most recent book is Telecommunications Reform in India, published in spring 2002 by Greenwood Press.

Dossani holds a B.A. in economics from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi, India; an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India; and a Ph.D. in finance from Northwestern University. He is currently undertaking projects on business process outsourcing (with the support of the Sloan Foundation), innovation and entrepreneurship in information technology in India, the institutional phasing-in of power-sector reform in Andhra Pradesh, and security in the Indian subcontinent.

Henry S. Rowen, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, is Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Management at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and a member of Stanford's Asia/Pacific Research Center. He was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the U.S. Department of Defense from 1989 to 1991. He was also Chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 1981 to 1983. Rowen served as President of the RAND Corporation from 1967 to 1972 and was assistant director, U.S. Bureau of the Budget, from 1965 to 1966. He is a member of the Defense Department's Policy Board.

Rowen is an expert on international security, economic development, Asian economics and politics, as well as U.S. institutions and economic performance. His current research focuses on economic growth prospects for the developing world, political and economic change in East Asia, and the tenets of federalism.

This is the first lecture in ICC's CURRENT AFFAIRS series presented in collaboration with Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.

Eugene Mazo is a post-doctoral fellow and research scholar at CDDRL, a John M. Olin fellow in law and economics at Stanford Law School, and a fellow of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation (SCCN). Educated as both a lawyer and a political scientist, he specializes in the fields of law and democracy, law and development, and law and globalization. His work has appeared in scholarly journals and in popular media outlets such as the International Herald Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Washington Post.

CDDRL Fellow, J. Alexander Thier will discuss Afghanistan's experiences with nation building, particularly in the post-Taliban era. J Alexander Thier was legal advisor to Afghanistan's Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions in Kabul in 2003-2004, where he assisted in the development of a new constitution and judicial system. In 2002 Alex worked in Kabul as a Constitutional and Legal expert to the British Department for International Development, and as Senior Analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Zbigniew Brzezinski has had a distinguished career in government and academia. From 1977 to 1981 he was the National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter. In 1981 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role in the normalization of U.S.-Chinese relations and for his contributions to the human rights and national security policies of the United States. He is currently the Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C.

The Oksenberg Lecture honors the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg (1938-2001) longtime member of Shorenstein APARC, senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for International Studies, and an authority on China. Professor Oksenberg was consistently outspoken about the need for the United States to engage with Asia in a more considered manner. In tribute, the Oksenberg Lecture recognizes distinguished individuals who have helped to advance understanding between the United States and the nations of the Asia-Pacific.