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Who Should Fight? The Ethics of the Draft

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  • Should citizens be required to serve their country by fighting for it?
  • Do we think differently about the decision to go to war when only a small number of citizens will fight it?
  • Do volunteer armies and draft armies fight differently in combat?

This panel discussion focuses on the draft versus the volunteer army in the U.S. Our distinguished panelists examine "who should fight" in a democracy, focusing on the ethical dimension of a state's system of military service.

Panelists are:

David Kennedy (History, Emeritus, Stanford). Kennedy's scholarly focus is on the integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. A prolific historian, he won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in History for Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, which recounts the history of the United States in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II, and was a 1981 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in History for Over Here: The First World War and American Society, which uses the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system.

Eliot Cohen (Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies). Cohen's work focuses on diplomacy, international relations, irregular warfare, military history, military power and strategy, as well as strategic and security issues. He has served as Counselor of the U.S. Department of State, a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the Secretary of Defense, and a member of the Defense Policy Board. He also directed the U.S. Air Force's Gulf War Air Power Survey.

Jean Bethke Elshtain (Social and Political Ethics, Divinity School, The University of Chicago). Regularly named as one of America's foremost public intellectuals, Elshtain writes frequently for journals of civic opinion and lectures widely in the United States and abroad on themes of democracy, ethical dilemmas, religion and politics, and international relations. Elshtain has authored many books including Women and War; Democracy on Trial (a New York Times' notable book for 1995); and Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (named one of the best nonfiction books of 2003 by Publishers Weekly.

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Oak Lounge

David Kennedy History, Emeritus Speaker Stanford
Eliot Cohen Strategic Studies Speaker Johns Hopkins
Jean Bethke Elshtain Social and Political Ethics Speaker University of Chicago Divinity School

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, where he previously served as the social science co-director. He is the Inaugural Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellow for Nuclear Ethics and Security at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (2026-2027). Sagan also serves as co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he 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.     

Former co-director, Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Scott D. Sagan (Moderator) Political Science Moderator Stanford
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Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

Democratic Politics and Labor Activism in Korea

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Professor Lee will examine why South Korean labor unions have engaged in militant activism since the country's transition to democracy in 1987.  This situation contrasts with Taiwan, to which Korea's economic and political development is otherwise very similar.   Professor Lee will argue that the militant unionism reflects the weakness of Korea's democratic institutions, particularly its political parties.

Professor Lee received her doctoral degree in political science from Duke University and has been teaching at the State University of New York at Binghamton since 2006.  Her research has appeared in Studies in Comparative International Studies, Critical Asian Studies, Asian Survey, Korean Observer, and Asia-Pacific Forum.  Her book, tentatively entitled Democratic Politics and Labor Activism in East Asia, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2011.

Philippines Conference Room

Yoonkyung Lee Assistant Professor, Sociology and Department of Asian and Asian-American Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton Speaker
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Korean Studies Colloquium Series
Stanford Korea Democracy Project

Back to the Future? Pre-World War II Europe and Corporatist Regionalism in Southeast Asia

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The European Union’s efforts to export its model of regional integration have often been contrasted with the persistently top-down character of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations.  Few, however, have examined the actual pattern of interest representation inside ASEAN and the extent to which it has been influenced by EU norms. 

The findings are surprising:  Neither has the EU actively promoted its essentially liberal-pluralist brand of interest representation in Southeast Asia, nor have ASEAN elites been inclined to adopt it, notwithstanding domestic pressures to make the Association more “people-centered.”  ASEAN elites have instead equipped the organization with a top-down, state-centered political culture with corporatist and organicist features reminiscent of Europe before World War II.

Jürgen Rüland is a professor of political science at the University of Freiburg, whose Southeast Asia Program he chairs with support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.  He also heads the Advisory Council of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (Hamburg).  Together with Christl Kessler, he was awarded the William Holland Prize for the best article published in Pacific Affairs in 2006.  His research interests include Southeast Asian regionalism, interactions between different regions, and processes of cultural appropriation.  He will be at Stanford from September through December 2010

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Jürgen Rüland 2010 Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow Speaker Stanford University
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Second and Third Generation Human Rights in Africa: Workshop #8

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Building on the foundation of 2009-10 workshop Legalizing Human Rights in Africa, the 2010-11 interdisciplinary research workshop will extend the examination of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa to broader questions around second and third generation rights. The workshop will canvas human rights insights from a broad sweep of disciplinary expertise, such as history, science, engineering anthropology, sociology, philosophy, law and political science. The goal of the workshop is to broaden human rights scholarship beyond single disciplinary domains.

Because the field of second and third generation human rights is broad, we have narrowed the discussion topics to the most urgent ones that are well suited to interdisciplinary analysis by anticipated workshop participants. Initial sessions will lay the foundation for the generational framework of human rights in Africa and the recent progression beyond civil and political rights. The workshop will proceed to discuss a wide range of the most significant and timely second and third generation human rights challenges in Africa.

Encina West 208

Helen Stacy Moderator
Workshops
Second and Third Generation Rights in Africa

Second and Third Generation Human Rights in Africa: Ethics of Healthcare Workforce Maldistribution -- Zimbabwe as a Case Study

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Building on the foundation of 2009-10 workshop Legalizing Human Rights in Africa, the 2010-11 interdisciplinary research workshop will extend the examination of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa to broader questions around second and third generation rights. The workshop will canvas human rights insights from a broad sweep of disciplinary expertise, such as history, science, engineering anthropology, sociology, philosophy, law and political science. The goal of the workshop is to broaden human rights scholarship beyond single disciplinary domains.

Because the field of second and third generation human rights is broad, we have narrowed the discussion topics to the most urgent ones that are well suited to interdisciplinary analysis by anticipated workshop participants. Initial sessions will lay the foundation for the generational framework of human rights in Africa and the recent progression beyond civil and political rights. The workshop will proceed to discuss a wide range of the most significant and timely second and third generation human rights challenges in Africa.

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Encina West 208

Helen Stacy Senior Fellow, CDDRL; Senior Lecturer, Stanford School of Law; Europe Center Research Affiliate and Director, Program on Human Rights Moderator
Michele Barry Senior Associate Dean of Global Health, Stanford School of Medicine and Stanford Health Policy Associate Speaker
Workshops
Second and Third Generation Rights in Africa

Second and Third Generation Human Rights in Africa: Workshop #5

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Building on the foundation of 2009-10 workshop Legalizing Human Rights in Africa, the 2010-11 interdisciplinary research workshop will extend the examination of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa to broader questions around second and third generation rights. The workshop will canvas human rights insights from a broad sweep of disciplinary expertise, such as history, science, engineering anthropology, sociology, philosophy, law and political science. The goal of the workshop is to broaden human rights scholarship beyond single disciplinary domains.

Because the field of second and third generation human rights is broad, we have narrowed the discussion topics to the most urgent ones that are well suited to interdisciplinary analysis by anticipated workshop participants. Initial sessions will lay the foundation for the generational framework of human rights in Africa and the recent progression beyond civil and political rights. The workshop will proceed to discuss a wide range of the most significant and timely second and third generation human rights challenges in Africa.

Co-sponsored by the Center on African Studies and the Stanford Humanities Center.

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Board Room, Humanities Center

Richard Goldstone Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa Speaker
Helen Stacy Moderator
Workshops
Second and Third Generation Rights in Africa

Second and Third Generation Human Rights in Africa: Human Rights and Poverty in Africa

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Building on the foundation of 2009-10 workshop "Legalizing Human Rights in Africa," the 2010-11 interdisciplinary research workshop will extend the examination of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa to broader questions around second and third generation rights. The workshop will canvas human rights insights from a broad sweep of disciplinary expertise, such as history, science, engineering anthropology, sociology, philosophy, law and political science. The goal of the workshop is to broaden human rights scholarship beyond single disciplinary domains.

Because the field of second and third generation human rights is broad, we have narrowed the discussion topics to the most urgent ones that are well suited to interdisciplinary analysis by anticipated workshop participants. Initial sessions will lay the foundation for the generational framework of human rights in Africa and the recent progression beyond civil and political rights. The workshop will proceed to discuss a wide range of the most significant and timely second and third generation human rights challenges in Africa.

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Encina West 208

Helen Stacy Moderator

Dan Banik

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 283-9432
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Consulting Scholar, 2014-16; Visiting Associate Professor 2013-2014, 2010-2011
dan_pressebilde7.jpg PhD

Professor Dan Banik is a Consulting Scholar at CDDRL and is currently completing a study examining the impacts of development aid from Norway and China on poverty reduction in Malawi and Zambia. He is a professor of political science and research director at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and Environment (SUM). He is also holds a visiting professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing.

Prof. Banik has conducted research in India, China, Bangladesh, Malawi, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Africa and Mexico, and directs the interdisciplinary research program 'Poverty and Development in the 21st Century (PAD)' at the University of Oslo. He has previously served as the head of the Norwegian-Finnish Trust Fund in the World Bank for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (TFESSD) and on the Board of the Norwegian Crown Prince and Crown Princess's Foundation. His books include ‘The Democratic Dividend: Political Transition, Poverty and Inclusive Development in Malawi (with Blessings Chinsinga, Routledge 2016), ‘The Legal Empowerment Agenda: Poverty, Labour and the Informal Economy in Africa’ (2011, Ashgate), ‘Poverty and Elusive Development’ (2010, Scandinavian University Press) and ‘Starvation and India’s Democracy’ (2009, Routledge).

Prof. Banik is married to Vibeke Kieding Banik, who is a historian at the University of Oslo.

 

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Dan Banik CDDRL Visiting Scholar 2010-2011 Speaker

Paul H. Wise

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Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Dr. Paul Wise is dedicated to bridging the fields of child health equity, public policy, and international security studies. He is the Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society and Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology and Developmental Medicine, and Health Policy at Stanford University. He is also co-Director, Stanford Center for Prematurity Research and a Senior Fellow in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Wise is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been working as the Juvenile Care Monitor for the U.S. Federal Court overseeing the treatment of migrant children in U.S. border detention facilities.

Wise received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in Latin American Studies and his M.D. degree from Cornell University, a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and did his pediatric training at the Children’s Hospital in Boston. His former positions include Director of Emergency and Primary Care Services at Boston Children’s Hospital, Director of the Harvard Institute for Reproductive and Child Health, Vice-Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and was the founding Director or the Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention, Stanford University School of Medicine. He has served in a variety of professional and consultative roles, including Special Assistant to the U.S. Surgeon General, Chair of the Steering Committee of the NIH Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research, Chair of the Strategic Planning Task Force of the Secretary’s Committee on Genetics, Health and Society, a member of the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH, and the Health and Human Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant and Maternal Mortality.

Wise’s most recent U.S.-focused work has addressed disparities in birth outcomes, regionalized specialty care for children, and Medicaid. His international work has focused on women’s and child health in violent and politically complex environments, including Ukraine, Gaza, Central America, Venezuela, and children in detention on the U.S.-Mexico border.  

Core Faculty, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Paul Wise Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society and CHP/PCOR Core Faculty Member; CDDRL, CISAC Affiliated Faculty Commentator
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Second and Third Generation Rights in Africa

Second and Third Generation Human Rights in Africa: Workshop #2

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Building on the foundation of 2009-10 workshop Legalizing Human Rights in Africa, the 2010-11 interdisciplinary research workshop will extend the examination of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa to broader questions around second and third generation rights. The workshop will canvas human rights insights from a broad sweep of disciplinary expertise, such as history, science, engineering anthropology, sociology, philosophy, law and political science. The goal of the workshop is to broaden human rights scholarship beyond single disciplinary domains.

Because the field of second and third generation human rights is broad, we have narrowed the discussion topics to the most urgent ones that are well suited to interdisciplinary analysis by anticipated workshop participants. Initial sessions will lay the foundation for the generational framework of human rights in Africa and the recent progression beyond civil and political rights. The workshop will proceed to discuss a wide range of the most significant and timely second and third generation human rights challenges in Africa.

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Encina West 208

Helen Stacy Speaker
Workshops
Second and Third Generation Rights in Africa

Second and Third Generation Human Rights in Africa: Workshop #1

-

Building on the foundation of 2009-10 workshop, the 2010-11 interdisciplinary research workshop will extend the examination of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa to broader questions around second and third generation rights. The workshop will canvas human rights insights from a broad sweep of disciplinary expertise, such as history, science, engineering anthropology, sociology, philosophy, law and political science. The goal of the workshop is to broaden human rights scholarship beyond single disciplinary domains.

Because the field of second and third generation human rights is broad, we have narrowed the discussion topics to the most urgent ones that are well suited to interdisciplinary analysis by anticipated workshop participants. Initial sessions will lay the foundation for the generational framework of human rights in Africa and the recent progression beyond civil and political rights. The workshop will proceed to discuss a wide range of the most significant and timely second and third generation human rights challenges in Africa.

Please RSVP by emailing Michael Lopez (mjlopez@stanford.edu).

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Encina West 208

Helen Stacy Moderator
Workshops
Second and Third Generation Rights in Africa

Economic Modernization in Late British India: Hindu-Muslim Differences

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The Muslims of South Asia made the transition to modern economic life more slowly than the region’s Hindus. In the first half of the twentieth century, they were relatively less likely to use large-scale and long-living economic organizations, and less likely to serve on corporate boards. Providing evidence, this paper also explores the institutional roots of the difference in communal trajectories. Whereas Hindu inheritance practices favored capital accumulation within families and the preservation of family fortunes across generations, the Islamic inheritance system, which the British helped to enforce, tended to fragment family wealth. The family trusts (waqfs) that Muslims used to preserve assets across generations hindered capital pooling among families, and they were ill-suited to profit-seeking business. Whereas Hindus generally pooled capital within durable joint family enterprises, Muslims tended to use ephemeral Islamic partnerships. Hindu family businesses facilitated the transition to modern corporate life by imparting skills useful in large and durable organizations.

Timur Kuran is Professor of Economics and Political Science, and Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. His research focuses on social change, including the evolution of preferences and institutions. He has just completed a book, The Long Divergence (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2010), on the role that Islam played in the economic rise of the Middle East and, subsequently, in the institutional stagnation that accompanied the region's slip into a state of underdevelopment. Some of the archival work on which this book was based will be published, also in 2010, as a ten-volume bi-lingual set entitled Kadı Sicilleri. Among Kuran's earlier publications are Private Truths,(Harvard University Press, Işığında 17. Yüzyıl İstanbul'unda Ekonomik Yaşam / Economic Life in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul, as Reflected in Court Registers Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification 1995) and Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton University Press, 2004), each translated into several languages, including Turkish.

Link to paper:  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1656038

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Timur Kuran Professor of Economics and Political Science Speaker Duke University
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