Stanford University

Science and Technology

German-Jewish Relations Today

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This seminar will focus on the Holocaust as the most important factor in shaping the relationship between all Germans and all Jews, as well as on some of the differences in Germany's relationship with Israel on the one hand and with American Jews on the other hand. Consul General Schütte will also address the situation of Jews in Germany today, based on personal observations and research during his posting at the German Embassy in Tel Aviv, as Deputy Head of Division for Middle East Affairs in the German Foreign Office, during a speaking tour in the U.S., and as a visiting scholar at the American Jewish Committee in New York.

About the Speaker
Mr. Rolf Schütte was born on June 9, 1953 in Goslar, Germany. He studied German and Russian Philology and Political Science at Göttingen University, Germany, at Ohio University, and at the Bologna Center of Johns Hopkins University in Italy. He joined the German Foreign Service in 1981 and served in different functions in the Foreign Office in Bonn and later Berlin (e.g. as Deputy Head of Division for Middle East Affairs and Head of Division for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova) as well as in the German Embassies in Moscow, Tel Aviv and Rome and in the German Mission to the United Nations in New York. Before becoming Consul General in San Francisco he spent a sabbatical year as a Visiting Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, the American Jewish Committee in New York and the Institute of European Studies in Berkeley.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies.

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Rolf Schütte Consul General Speaker the German Consulate General, San Francisco
Seminars

The Collapse of the Euro Area

Barry Eichengreen is the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987. He is also Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London, England). In 1997-98 he was Senior Policy Advisor at the International Monetary Fund. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (class of 1997). He is the convener of the Bellagio Group of academics and economic officials. He has held Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships and has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Palo Alto) and the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin). He has authored and edited many books, including, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939 (Oxford University Press, 1992), Global Imbalances and the Lessons of Bretton Woods (MIT Press, September 2006), and The European Economy Since 1945: Co-ordinated Capitalism and Beyond (Princeton University Press, 2007). Dr. Eichengreen was awarded the Economic History Association's Jonathan R.T. Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2002 and the University of California at Berkeley Social Science Division's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004. He is also the recipient of a doctor honoris causa from the American University in Paris.

Dr. Eichengreen received his Ph.D from Yale University in 1979.

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Barry Eichengreen Professor of Economics and Political Science Speaker University of California, Berkeley
Seminars

The Political Representation of the Poor: How Electoral Rules Affect Poverty Responsiveness

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Karen Long Jusko is an Assistant Professor (Subject to PhD) in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, with expertise in comparative democratic politics and quantitative methods for cross-national research. Karen's current research program investigates how electoral rules affect the political representation of the poor. This research has been supported by a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Dissertation Fellowship, a SSHRC Federalism and Federations Dissertation Supplement, and research grants from the National Poverty Center, and the Luxembourg Income Study, and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University.

Dissertation Research

"The Political Representation of the Poor"

How do electoral rules affect the poor? How responsive are elected governments to the interests of low-income citizens? When do parties have an incentive to seek the support of the low-income citizens? These questions motivate a broadly comparative analysis of the relationship between antipoverty policy and electoral rules. Presenting a series of formal analytic examples, and using Luxembourg Income Study data in empirical analysis, this research demonstrates that electoral rules interact with the context in which elections are held -- specifically, the distribution of low-income citizens across electoral districts -- to create or limit legislators' incentives to be responsive to the poor. In this way, the very institutions of democratic government may undermine opportunities for a more equitable society. This dissertation project establishes the foundation of a research agenda motivated by broader questions about whether and how the institutions of contemporary democracies create incentives to build societies that reflect democratic ideals.

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Karen Jusko Assistant Professor, Political Science Speaker Stanford University
Seminars

German Universities Discover Competition

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Seminar Description:

A revolution is taking place within the German university system. For the first time in their history, universities are engaged in direct competition with one another. Under the auspices of the so-called "Excellence Initiative," they are competing for almost two billion Euros in extra research funding, and for the prestige of being designated as a "Leading University."

Dr. Kaiser's lecture provides an overview of the Initiative process and a report on the preliminary results of the competition. He also offers an initial appraisal of the Initiative from the perspective of a former university president.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Gert Kaiser is President of the Science Center, North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf, Germany and a former rector of the Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf. He is currently the Max Kade Visiting Professor in the Department of German at the University of California, Davis.

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Gert Kaiser Visiting Professor, Department of German Speaker University of California, Davis
Seminars

Shorenstein APARC's Senior Research Scholar, Rafiq Dossani, invited to participate in an online debate on indian outsourcing

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Shorenstein APARC's Senior Research Scholar, Rafiq Dossani, invited to participate in an online debate on indian outsourcing.

Pro: Not as Tempting

by Sabrina Siddiqui, intern, BusinessWeek, and a senior at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

There is no doubt that over the last decade, India fortified its rule over the shared services and outsourcing (SSO) sector. Access to low-wage yet skilled workers allowed local global technology services giants Infosys (INFY), Tata Consultancy Services (TACSF), and Wipro (WIT) to employ tens of thousands of Indians to do work for such multinational corporate clients as Bank of America (BAC), Microsoft (MSFT), and Ericsson (ERIC).

But a recent study by Frost & Sullivan consolidates the idea that India's outsourcing has already peaked, and there are a number of factors to blame:

The Rupee Riddle. Earlier this year, the Indian rupee appreciated 8.4% against the U.S. dollar and touched 41.14 to the dollar, its highest rate in nine years. A significant reason for concern for the outsourcing sector, the upward value of the rupee continues to put a squeeze on earnings. By April, 2007, it had cut margins by about 2.5 percentage points.

Cost (In)Efficiency. Companies looking to outsource have long seen India as their most cost-efficient vehicle. But with wage inflation running 15% to 25% per year, India can no longer use the siren song of its labor being the cheapest. Competitors like China can offer their services at a lower cost, while firms like Infosys are stuck recruiting from outside the country, because the comparable Indian staff is growing too expensive.

That Age-Old Infrastructure. As much as the economy continues to boom, how long can it sustain its position when IT operations spend considerably on backup systems to fight regular blackouts? And the 300,000 engineering students who graduate each year may be short of the level needed to support modernization of infrastructure and industry growth. (Not to mention that the peculiarly accented "Doug Smith" on the computer help desk is a little too hard for U.S. callers to comprehend.)

So if you assume you're being rerouted by tech support to a call center in Bangalore, guess again. It seems India's grasp on the SSO market is at long-term risk, and it just so happens that your call might be answered by someone in Shanghai.

Con: Plenty of Spice Left

by Rafiq Dossani, Stanford University and Martin Kenney, University of California, Davis

Notwithstanding the occasional news stories about companies returning work earlier offshored to India, the logic behind offshoring and its financial impact (both on outsourcing firms operating in India and their American clients) remains intact. First, the logic: A fresh engineer costs $8,000, including benefits, on average in Bangalore. Even a "Google-quality", presumably equivalent to the best Google can hire anywhere (in fact, Google offers its India recruits the option of working in Silicon Valley if they so desire) costs $30,000. These wages are much lower than in the U.S. and will remain that way for at least a decadeespecially if the ambitious graduation targets of Indian education policymakers are realized.

Of course, there are problems in doing work long distance: Coordinating the work of global teams is costlier than coordinating such work locally. The intellectual property issues could be important. But offshoring is now tried and tested enough, and large corporations are deeply committed to it.

By 2010, many large multinational corporations like IBM (IBM) will have their largest workforces in India. This is creating a relatively rich ecosystem in a number of Indian cities, especially Bangalore.

Already, for a number of these firms, their Indian operations are being declared global centers of excellence, whose value goes well beyond just cost savings. Undoubtedly, some smaller firms have faced high initial costs, but even they, particularly the technology firms of Silicon Valley, have committed to Indian operations. Firms such as Infinera (INFNO) and HelloSoft have substantial Indian operations that are critical to their success. For them to retreat would require a major reorientation of their business strategy.

The appreciating rupee will, like rising wages, affect offshoring decisions. However, the Indian system integrators such as TCS, Infosys, and Wipro, which are also being squeezed by costs, have experienced profits rising at about 35% a year for the past decade and enjoy margins in excess of 20%. This provides ample room to absorb rising costs.

There can be little doubt that the Indian ecosystem is maturing. However, the growth of offshoring to India has not peaked.

Reprinted by permission from BusinessWeek.

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Democratic or Demagogic? "People Power" Reconsidered -- in the Philippines and Elsewhere

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Unarmed mass uprisings, celebrated as "people power" revolutions, have ended authoritarian regimes in various countries. But have these movements ushered in polities that fulfilled democratic expectations? The record is disappointing, and especially so in the Philippines after the ouster of President Ferdinand Marcos. Why? Much of the answer lies in the ability of elites to ride, hijack, and redirect the trajectories of "people power" movements. Such elites take advantage of the tension between the regular politics of stable institutions and the irregular politics of extraordinary moments. The large mobilizations associated with "people power" cannot be sustained for long periods. The masses will soon delegate power to, and rely on, their leaders, who will represent them as the polity settles down to the business of normal--institutional--politics. The very minute the new regime is inaugurated, it ceases to be revolutionary and starts to be conservative. It has a country to run, and state power to defend and consolidate, for its enemies are not likely to have given up. The institutional technology of popular rule has yet to be developed beyond grand first principles and banal motherhood statements. The supposedly revolutionary leaders of the new regime lapse into using the already well known methods of minority or elite rule. But recourse to such stratagems may in time trigger the formation of new "people power" movements against these self-entrenched incumbents--prolonging the cycle and preventing the conversion of contingent power into legitimate authority.

Amado Mendoza's current research is on the political economy of organized crime and anti-state violence in the Philippines. His many writings on that country include a book-in-progress on tax reform and two edited volumes, Debts of Dishonor (1992) and From Crisis to Crisis: A History of BOP [Balance of Payments] Crises in the Philippines (1987). He has been a visiting scholar at Tufts University, the Jean Monnet Institute, the University of Turku (Finland), and the Amsterdam Insti¬tute for International Relations. In addition to pursuing his academic career, he has worked as a business journalist, a merchant banker, a stockbroker, and on development issues for an NGO.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Amado M. Mendoza, Jr Associate Professor in Political Science and International Studies Speaker University of the Philippines
Seminars

Not What It Seems: Muslim Governance in Malaysia Today

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Tectonic shifts have underscored the gradual Islamization of mainstream politics in contemporary Malaysia. This is so despite popular media representations of the country as an epitome of moderate and progressive Muslim governance -- a portrayal regularly belied by the actions of its leaders as well. Recently, these shifts have been expressed in heated debates over apostasy, religious freedom, and constitutional rights. Insofar as the media have acknowledged Islamization, they have attributed it to the Islamist opposition party (PAS). Prof. Liow will show, however, that the ruling party (UMNO) has proven no less strident in expressing its own Islamist predilections, with significant implications for the dynamics of UMNO-PAS relations and, beyond them, the country's political future.

Joseph Chinyong Liow is head of research at S. Rajaratnam School of International

Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His books include Muslim

Resistance in Southern Thailand and Southern Philippines: Religion, Ideology, and Politics (2006); The Politics of Indonesia-Malaysia Relations: One Kin, Two Nations (2005); and (as co-editor) Order and Security in Southeast Asia (Routledge 2006). He is associate editor of Asian Security, and guest-edited "Internal Conflicts in Southeast Asia: The Nature, Legitimacy and Changing Role of the State," a special issue of that journal (2007). He has published numerous articles on Malaysian politics and the conflict in Southern Thailand. His PhD is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Joseph Chinyong Liow Associate Professor Speaker S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Seminars

Can Democracy Reach the Poor? A Presidential Perspective on Education, Poverty and Democracy in Latin America

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Dr. Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; a Stanford professor of political science, and sociology by courtesy; and coordinator of the Democracy Program at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). A specialist on democratic development and regime change and U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad, he is the founding co-editor of the Journal on Democracy.

He has written extensively on the factors that facilitate and obstruct democracy in developing countries and on problems of democracy, development, and corruption, particularly in Africa. He is the author of Squandered Victory:The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq; Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation; and Promoting Democracy in the 1990s.

He received a BA, MA, and PhD from Stanford University, all in Sociology.

For more information about this event, please refer to the article in The Stanford Report.

Cubberley Auditorium (School of Education)
485 Lausen Mall
Stanford, CA 94305

Alejandro Toledo Speaker

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

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.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Lectures

The Third Annual Globalization of Services Conference

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The Third Annual Globalization of Services Conference will explore the following questions:

  1. The changing geography of system integrators: The incumbent system integrators (SIs) are building up their developing nation service provision capability through acquisitions and internal expansion. The thrust of their expansion is to add capacity quickly. Can they manage it effectively? At a slower pace, the Indian SIs are doing the same in developed and developing nations: adding low cost workforces in developing countries, buying relationships in developed countries. Can they manage it effectively. Will growth rates and margins converge; if not, why not? What are some of the interesting differences between firm strategies?
  2. The changing business models of system integrators: The Indian system integrators appear to be driving a new, metric-based quality model that is driving price compression. Is this strong enough to provide a permanent advantage? IBM and others are responding with a combination of superior technology, client relationships and domain expertise, drawing upon their established strengths while also expanding in India and other low-cost developing countries. Are we witnessing a convergence to a common business model? Is there a European perspective? Is it different and does it make a difference?
  3. Product firms' globalization strategies (separate sessions on established and new firms): The IT product firms have to balance several additional factors that service firms like the SIs do not face when they globalize; among them, intellectual property protection, business development, managing innovation, research team coordination and marketing. How is this working, and what business models are they experimenting with? What are the differences between an established firm versus a startup?

All participants will receive a copy of Dr. Dossani's newest book India Arriving: How this Economic Powerhouse is Redefining Global Business. Details of this can be found through the link below. Provided through the generosity of Arada Systems.

Details about the previous two events can be found at:

Globalization of Services

The Second Annual Globalization of Services Conference

Conference Sponsors:

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Bechtel Conference Center

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South Asia Initiative
Globalization of Services Conference

Min Zhu seminar and SEN launch kick off SPRIE's fall quarter

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SPRIE kicked off the fall quarter with two special events: first was a seminar on October 9 presented by Min Zhu, co-founder of WebEx, who spoke on "Beyond Beijing and High Tech: Chinese Entrepreneurship on the Edge." Min discussed the entrepreneurship scene in China and suggested that Silicon Valley venture capitalists investing there may be heading for trouble. John Boudreau covered the talk in the "Tech Notebook" section of the San Jose Mercury News.

Then, on October 10, Martin Eberhard, Tesla Motors' Co-Founder and President of Technology, spoke at the launch of the Stanford Entrepreneurship Network (SEN), a federation of organizations, including SPRIE, that focus on entrepreneurship acrosss the Stanford campus. Eberhard spoke of taking Tesla from the beginning stages of a start-up and formulated six lessons he learned from the experience. For more information about the SEN, visit the Stanford Entrepreneurship Network.

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