David Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science and a co-director of the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford. He has conducted field research in Somalia, Nigeria, Spain, Estonia and France. His principal research interest is on how culture – specifically, language and religion – guides political behavior. He is the author of “Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-heritage Societies” and a series of articles on immigrant integration, civil war and terrorism. Laitin received his BA from Swarthmore College and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Eva Meyersson Milgrom is a senior research scholar at CDDRL and a visiting associate professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and the Public Policy Program. She is also an associate professor and senior research fellow at the School of Business at Stockholm University in Sweden.

Her current research focuses on the following topics: (1) implications of social behavioral theories on economic growth, in conjunction with Guillermina Jasso of New York University; (2) institutional change and its effects on promotion and demotion in Swedish private companies; inter-firm wage mobility in Sweden from 1979-1990; labor markets segregation (firm and individual characteristics) in collaboration with Illong Kwon of the University of Michigan along with Mike Gibbs and Kathy Lerulli; (3) equity considerations and the trade-offs between complementarities and influence costs within organizations; and (4) the structure of inequality and extremism. At Stanford, she has taught courses on international corporate governance and on managing diversity.

Her previous interdisciplinary work includes the following: In the summer of 2002, she organized a laboratory to provide an institutional analysis of economic growth based on firm-matched data from four Scandinavian countries. In fall 2002, she organized a conference that brought together scholars from diverse fields to analyze the phenomenon of suicide bombing and to discuss how this phenomenon affects current social science thinking and research. A book is in the works on this topic. Meyersson Milgrom also organized sessions on rational choice at the August 2002 meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Meyersson Milgrom previously served as a visiting scholar in the sociology departments at Stanford University (1998-2000) and Harvard University (2000-2001), and also served as a visiting associate professor at the Sloan School of Management, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2001-2002).

Her recent books published in Sweden include: The State as a Corporate Owner (1998, with Susannah Lindh) and Compensation Contracts in Swedish Publicly Traded Firms (1994). Her recently published articles include: "An Evaluation of the Swedish Corporate System" in Hans T:son Soderstom (January 2003); "Pay, Risk and Productivity" in Finnish Economic Papers (with Trond Petersen and Rita Asplund); "Equal Pay for Equal Work? Evidence from Sweden, Norway and the United States" in the Scandinavian Journal of Economics (vol. 4, 2001, with Trond Petersen and Vermund Snartland); and "More Glory and Less Injustice: The Glass-Ceiling in Sweden 1970-1990" in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility (Kevin T. Leicht, editor, with Trond Petersen).

Meyersson Milgrom was born in Sweden and received a PhD in sociology from Stockholm University.

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.