In Thailand in 1997 reformers drafted a new constitution. They hoped to trigger dramatic improvements in the country's political system. Analysts, activists, and politicians alike blamed many of Thailand's problems on shortcomings of a party system seen as dangerously weak and fragmented. Accordingly, the new charter was designed to strengthen political parties while reducing their number. These constitutional changes profoundly affected Thai politics, but not always in the ways or for the reasons that reformers had in mind. Have the changes improved or worsened the quality of democracy in Thailand? In addressing this question, Professor Hicken will highlight the unintended consequences of constitutional reform and the nature of governance under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai Party.

Allen Hicken studies political institutions and policy making in developing countries, especially in Southeast Asia. Countries he has worked in include Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, and Cambodia. Writing-in-progress includes a book manuscript, "Building Party Systems: Elections, Parties, and Coordination in Developing Democracies." He has published in the American Journal of Political Science and Electorial Studies, among other places. At Michigan he is affiliated with the university's Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Center for Political Studies. He earned his Ph.D in political science and Pacific studies from the University of California - San Diego.

In his provocative new book, "Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy", renowned scholar Stephen Walt analyzes the different strategies used by other countries to counter U.S. power. Walt cites that many countries are becoming increasingly worried about U.S. dominance and are beginning to turn their concerns into actions. These responses threaten our country's ability to achieve foreign policy goals and may eventually undermine our foremost position. To prevent this, Walt argues that the U.S. must adopt a foreign policy that other countries welcome, rather than one that reinforces the fear of U.S. power.

Co-Sponsored with the Commonwhealth Club of Silicon Valley

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication and Professor of Political Science. He is also Director of Stanford's new Center for Deliberative Democracy.

Fishkin received his B.A. from Yale in 1970 and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale as well as a second Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cambridge.

He is the author of a number of books including Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform (1991), The Dialogue of Justice (1992 ), The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (1995). With Bruce Ackerman he is co-author most recently of Deliberation Day (Yale Press, 2004). He is best known for developing Deliberative Polling-a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. Professor Fishkin and his collaborators have conducted Deliberative Polls in the US, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Bulgaria, China and other countries.

Fishkin has been a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge as well as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and a Guggenheim Fellow.

China's integrated circuit market is the fastest growing in the world, increasing from 7 percent of the world in 2000 to 20 percent in 2004. China's State Council has set the ambitious goal of having domestic production satisfy most of this demand, while closing the technology gap with developed countries.

Mr. Yu, President of the China Semiconductor Industry Association and former chief engineer of the Ministry of Electronics, is uniquely positioned to review the past decade's transition of the Chinese semiconductor industry from state controlled enterprises to growing companies responding to market forces. Mr. Yu will also provide his insights on the future of China's high tech development and its ramifications for trade relations with the U.S.

Mr. Yu Zhongyu has been engaged in semiconductor research and management for many years and is one of the leaders of China's integrated circuit (IC) industry. He has engaged in research and design of IC products and was honored with the National Science and Technology Award. Having joined the government in 1988, he was responsible for organizing and leading the IC project during "7th five-year plan" and "8th five-year plan"; he acted as a member of the leading group for the National "908" project and headed the construction leading group of the Huahong factory in the "909" project. These projects made important contributions to China's IC industry development. Mr. Yu has been the President of the China Semiconductor Industry Association since 2001.

How do you stop a terrorist?

You can work hard: Post men and equipment at every street corner, every port, every bay, every slip of beach, every straight stretch of asphalt long enough to land a plane.

You will spend billions, and your lines will be thin. All you've done is build the "impregnable" Atlantic Sea Wall--which the Allies punched through in hours on D-Day.

You've got to work smarter, not harder.

The opening line of the Oscar-winning movie A Beautiful Mind is "Mathematicians won the war." During World War II, the mathematics underlying cryptography played an important role in military planning.

Thereafter came a new kind of war. After the first frosts descended in the Soviet East, perhaps $2 billion were spent in the development of Game Theory.

Now again we face a new kind of war. And we need a new kind of mathematics to fight it.

Since 2001, tremendous amounts of information have been gathered regarding terrorist cells and individuals potentially planning future attacks. There is now a pressing need to develop new mathematical and computational techniques to assist in the analysis of this information, both to quantify future threats and to quantify the effectiveness of counterterrorism operations and strategies. Concepts and techniques from mathematics--specifically, from Lattice Theory and Reflexive Theory--have already been applied to counterterrorism and homeland security problems. The following is a partial list of such problems.

1. Strategies for disrupting terrorist cells

2. Data analysis of terrorist activity

3. Border penetration and security

4. Terrorist cell formation

Jonathan Farley is a CISAC science fellow and a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. His work focuses on applying lattice theory and other branches of mathematics to problems in counterterrorism and homeland security.

In 2001-2002 he was one of four Americans to win a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award to the United Kingdom. In the calendar years 2003 and 2004 he taught as a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004 he received the Harvard Foundation's Distinguished Scientist of the Year Award, a medal presented on behalf of the president of Harvard University for "outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of mathematics." The City of Cambridge, Mass., declared March 19, 2004, to be "Dr. Jonathan David Farley Day."

He obtained his doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University in 1995, after winning Oxford's highest mathematics awards, the Senior Mathematical Prize and Johnson University Prize, in 1994. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1991 with the second highest average in his graduating class.

Farley's work includes the solution of a problem posed by universal algebraist George Gratzer that remained unsolved for 34 years, and the solution (published in 2005) of a problem posed in 1981 by MIT mathematics professor Richard Stanley.

Sonja Schmid is a science fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and affiliated with the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University earlier this year. Her research has focused on understanding complex decision-making processes at the interface between science, technology, and the state in the Cold War Soviet context, and is based on extensive archival research and narrative interviews with nuclear energy specialists in Russia. Apart from the history and sociology of Soviet and post-Soviet science and technology, her research interests include risk communication, the popularization of science and technology, and international technology transfer.