Stanford University

Science and Technology

Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama and the 2012 Elections

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Abstract
Drawing on open-ended interviews with more than sixty political staffers, accounts of practitioners, and fieldwork, in this talk I present the previously untold history of the uptake of new media in Democratic electoral campaigning from 2000 to 2012. I follow a group of technically-skilled Internet staffers who came together on the Howard Dean campaign and created a series of innovations in campaign organization, tools, and practice. After the election, these individuals founded an array of consulting firms and training organizations and staffed a number of prominent Democratic campaigns. In the process, they carried their innovations across Democratic politics and contributed to a number of electoral victories, including Barack Obama's historic bid for the presidency, and currently occupy senior leadership positions in the president's re-election campaign. This history provides a lens for understanding the organizations, tools, and practices that are shaping the 2012 electoral cycle.  

In detailing this history, I analyze the role of innovation, infrastructure, and organization in electoral politics. I show how the technical and organizational innovations of the Dean and Obama campaigns were the product of the movement of staffers between fields, organizational structures that provided spaces for technical development, and incentives for experimentation. I reveal how Dean's former staffers created an infrastructure for Democratic new media campaigning after the 2004 elections that helped transfer knowledge, practice, and tools across electoral cycles and campaigns.  Finally, I detail how organizational contexts shaped the uptake of tools by the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012, analyze the emergence of data systems and managerial practices that coordinate collective action, and show how digital cultural work mobilizes supporters and shapes the meaning of electoral participation.

I conclude by discussing the relationship between technological change and democratic practice, showing how from Howard Dean to Barack Obama, new media have provided campaigns with new ways to find and engage supporters, to run their internal operations, and to translate the energy and enthusiasm generated by candidates and political opportunities into the staple resources of American electioneering.  While these tools have facilitated a resurgence in political activity among the electorate, this participation has come in long institutionalized domains: fundraising, volunteer canvassing, and voter mobilization.  Meanwhile, participation is premised on sophisticated forms of data profiling, targeted persuasive communications, and computational managerial practices that coordinate collective action.  As such, I argue that the uptake of new media in electoral campaigning is a hybrid form of organizing politics that combines both management and empowerment. 

Daniel Kreiss is Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kreiss's research explores the impact of technological change on the public sphere and political practice. In Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama (Oxford University Press, 2012), Kreiss presents the history of new media and Democratic Party political campaigning over the last decade. Kreiss is an affiliated fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and received a Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University. Kreiss's work has appeared in New Media and Society, Critical Studies in Media Communication, The Journal of Information Technology and Politics, and The International Journal of Communication, in addition to other academic journals.

Wallenberg Theater

Daniel Kreiss Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication Speaker University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

Social Foundations of Institutional Order in Latin America

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Abstract:

This talk will present an account of long-run institutional development in Latin America that emphasizes the social and political foundations of state-building processes. The argument focuses on societal dynamics that have path-dependent consequences at two critical points: the initial consolidation of national institutions in the wake of independence, and at the time when the "social question" of mass political incorporation forced its way into the national political agenda across the region during the Great Depression. Dynamics set into motion at these points in time have produced widely varying, but highly stable distributions of state capacity in the region.

About the speaker:

Marcus Kurtz is an Associate Professor at Ohio State University. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of comparative politics, democratization, political economy and development, with a focus on Latin America. His publications have appeared in such journals as American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, Journal of Politics, and Politics & Society. He has written two books, Free Market Democracy and the Chilean and Mexican Countryside (Cambridge, 2004) and Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective (forthcoming, Cambridge 2013).

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Marcus Kurtz Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Speaker Ohio State University

Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Francis Fukuyama Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Moderator CDDRL, Stanford University
Seminars

Thirteen Days -- and Fifty Years Later: What Have We Learned from the Cuban Missile Crisis?

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Fifty years ago, the Soviet Union and the United States stood on the brink of nuclear war. For thirteen days in October 1962, people around the world held their breath and hoped for a peaceful resolution to the Cuban Missile Crisis. This distinguished panel will discuss and debate the crisis from the perspectives of Moscow and Washington, and consider what history has taught us since those thirteen days in 1962.

 

Drell Lecture Recording: NA

 

Drell Lecture Transcript: NA

 

Speaker's Biography: NA

 

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Oak Lounge

David Holloway

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E214
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 723-1737 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies
Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History
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David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into seven languages, most recently into Chinese. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

Faculty member at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
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David Holloway CISAC, History, and Political Science, Stanford Speaker

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 CISAC and Political Science, Stanford Speaker
Strobe Talbott President, Brookings Institution Speaker
Joe Cirincione President, Ploughshares Fund Moderator
Conferences
Drell Lecture

Democratization and Freedom of Speech: A Focus on Turkey, Arab World, and Ukraine

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Co-sponsored by CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, the Europe Center, Stanford Humanities Center, and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies

More info: http://www.stanford.edu/group/mediterranean/cgi-bin/web/2012/08/democratization-and-freedom-of-speech-a-focus-on-turkey-arab-world-and-ukraine/

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Conference Room

Nuray Mert FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor Panelist
Lina Khatib Program Manager for the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy Panelist CDDRL
Lucan Way Associate Professor of Political Science Panelist University of Toronto
Ali Yaycioğlu Assistant Professor of Middle East History Moderator Stanford
Panel Discussions

The Arab Uprising

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Abstract:

Nearly two years after the Tunisian uprisings launched a massive wave of regional protest across the Arab world, many important and highly contested questions remain. How has the protest wave affected the dynamics of regional politics? Has the protest wave ended, or is it likely to recur? What explains the timing, the accomplishments and the limitations of that protest wave? What does the survival of many Arab regimes, the frustration of revolutionaries, the rise of Islamist movements in electoral politics, and the spiraling conflict in Syria mean for hopes of democratization and peaceful political change?

About the speaker:

Marc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University, where he directs the Institute for Middle East Studies. He also directs the Project on Middle East Political Science, edits the Middle East Channel for ForeignPolicy.com and the Columbia University Press book series Columbia Studies on Middle East Politics, and is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. His most recent publications include The Arab Uprising (PublicAffairs 2012), Islamists in a Changing Middle East (ForeignPolicy 2012), and Blogs and Bullets II: New Media and the Arab Spring (US Institute for Peace).

CISAC Conference Room

Marc Lynch Director, Institute for Middle East Studies Speaker George Washington University
Seminars

Deepening Democracy: A Strategy for Improving Integrity of Elections Worldwide - The Report of the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security

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Stephen Stedman is Freeman Spogli senior fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and FSI, an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He currently serves as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General. His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Stephen J. Stedman

CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-2705 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
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Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.

In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.

In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.

His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

Director, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Director, Program in International Relations
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Stephen J. Stedman Freeman Spogli Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and FSI; CISAC Affiliated Faculty Member; Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science Speaker
Seminars

The War Within the War for Afghanistan

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Abstract:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran will discuss his new book, LITTLE AMERICA: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, which focuses on President Barack Obama's decision to surge troops and aid to Afghanistan. Chandrasekaran found the effort sabotaged not only by Afghan and Pakistani malfeasance but by infighting and incompetence within the American government: a war cabinet arrested by vicious bickering among top national security aides; diplomats and aid workers who failed to deliver on their grand promises; generals who dispatched troops to the wrong places; and headstrong military leaders who sought a far more expansive campaign than the White House wanted. Through their bungling and quarreling, they wound up squandering the first year of the surge.

About the speaker:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a senior correspondent and associate editor of The Washington Post. From 2009 to 2011, he reported on the war in Afghanistan for The Post, traveling extensively through the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar to reveal the impact of President Obama's decision to double U.S. force levels. He has served as The Post's national editor and as an assistant managing editor. In 2003 and 2004, he was The Post's bureau chief in Baghdad, where he was responsible for covering the reconstruction of Iraq and supervising a team of Post correspondents. He also wrote Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a best-selling account of the troubled American effort to reconstruct Iraq. He has served two terms as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, he holds a degree in political science from Stanford University, where he was editor in chief of The Stanford Daily. He lives in Washington, D.C.

CISAC Conference Room

Rajiv Chandrasekaran Senior Correspondent and Associate Editor Speaker The Washington Post
Seminars

China 2.0: Fostering Innovation Beyond Boundaries

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The third annual China 2.0 conference at Stanford University will bring together thought leaders from China and the US to discuss the driving forces and global implications of the rapid growth of China’s internet industry.

Already home to two of the world’s top five internet firms by market capitalization, China is a launchpad for both innovative start-ups and global powerhouses. These firms are increasingly shaping the global digital economy.

Comprising 1 billion mobile subscribers, over half a billion internet users, and a high rate of smartphone adoption, China’s internet is now so pervasive that in sectors from communication and commerce to media and entertainment, it is a key driver of investment and innovation.

While state-owned players dominated China's offline world, entrepreneurs are in the driving seat online, fueled by an increasingly deep reserve of venture capital and private equity.

The combination of ideas, entrepreneurs and capital is helping blur the lines between online and offline sectors, and the boundaries between industry sectors in China.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Robin Li

Co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Baidu

Jon Huntsman, Jr.

Jon M. Huntsman, Jr.

Former US Ambassador to China and Governor of Utah
Li has led Baidu to become China’s largest search engine, with over 80% market share and a market capitalization of $40 billion. A pioneer and leader of China’s internet industry, he was named by Time magazine in 2010 as one of the “World’s Most Influential People” and in 2012 he topped Forbes China’s list of best CEOs.

Huntsman served as US Ambassador to China through April 2011 when he stepped down to run for the 2012 Republican nomination for President.  Twice elected as Governor of Utah, he also has served as Deputy Secretary of Commerce for Asia, US Ambassador to Singapore, and Deputy US Trade Representative. 

 

Other featured speakers will include internet industry pioneers and leading executives, investors and entrepreneurs from both sides of the Pacific.  Stanford faculty, researchers, students and alumni from the business and engineering schools will also actively participate.

Conference sessions will focus on key issues, such as:

  • How are China's internet players expanding into new markets both at home and overseas?
  • How are Silicon Valley firms shaping their global strategies for China, to tap opportunities there both as a market and a source of ideas and talent?
  • How are new partnerships among US and China companies fostering new engines for innovation?
  • What are the latest trends in China’s domestic and foreign venture capital and private equity investment landscape? Which sectors are over-funded and in which sectors will the next wave of entrepreneur-led market disruption emerge?
  • With the challenges facing firms such as Facebook, Zynga and Groupon in the US, are China's immune from a downturn due to differences in business models?
  • What innovations from hot sectors, such as mobile gaming, are on the horizon?

More information on the conference agenda, directions to the conference venue, parking information and media/press, please visit the conference website.

Any questions? Please email sprie-stanford@stanford.edu.

Knight Management Center
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Stanford University

Conferences

Revolutionary Struggle and Authoritarian Durability after the Cold War

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Abstract:

Lucan Way will present the initial findings of his new book project (co-authored with Steven Levitsky, Harvard University), "Revolutionary Struggle and Authoritarian Durability after the Cold War." The project examines why some authoritarian leaders are capable of surviving severe economic crises, large-scale protest, or serious electoral challenges while others are not. We focus on how legacies of violent revolutionary struggle have shaped the capacity of regimes across the globe to deal with crises at the end of the Cold War, when autocrats faced their most serious challenges. Most interpretations of durability focus on the flow of benefits or patronage to top regime officials. By contrast, we will argue that patronage alone is not a very effective source of elite cohesion. Institutionalized patronage may ensure elite cooperation during normal times, but it often fails to do so during crises. The most cohesive regimes, we contend, complement patronage with nonmaterial ties. In particular, we argue that the identities, and social and organizational ties forged during periods of sustained, violent, and ideologically-driven conflict serve as a critical source of cohesion---and durability---in authoritarian regimes

About the speaker:

Lucan Way is associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on democratic transitions and the evolution of non-democratic rule in cross-regional perspective. He is best known for his work on hybrid or competitive authoritarian rule. His book, "Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War" (with Steven Levitsky), was published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press. He has also published in articles in Comparative Politics, Journal of Democracy, Perspectives on Politics, Politics & Society, Studies in Comparative and International Development, World Politics, as well as a number of area studies journals and book chapters. Most recent articles include "Deer in Headlights: Incompetence and Weak Authoritarianism" in Slavic Review and "Beyond Patronage: Violent Struggle, Ruling Party Cohesion and Authoritarian Durability" (with Steven Levitsky) in Perspectives on Politics. He is completing a book: Pluralism by Default and the Sources of Political Competition in the Former Soviet Union and is beginning a new project exploring the impact of violent revolutionary origins on authoritarian durability after the Cold War. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and is in residence at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law for the fall of 2012.

CISAC Conference Room

Lucan A. Way Associate Professor, Political Science Speaker University of Toronto
Seminars

Fellows explore science & policy of nuclear power and weapons

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The horror of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has become an inescapable part of childhood in Japan. For Toshihiro Higuchi – a CISAC fellow who this last academic year focused on the political risks and fallout of nuclear weapons – it started with comic books and pencil sales for victims of the American bombs.

“For me, like every kid in Japan, the discourse about Hiroshima and Nagasaki was always familiar – from reading graphic books about the hell-like aftermath to joining a donation drive at school for victim relief,” said Higuchi, a historian and postdoctoral fellow at CISAC. “I remember that I was fascinated by the sheer power of nuclear weapons, and how that power overshadows everything else about war and conflict.”

That fascination with the political and social fallout of nuclear weapons and the complexities of nuclear energy is what drives the six nuclear fellows at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. The fellows – funded by grants from the Stanton Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation – spend their time at Stanford conducting research to build public engagement and shape government policy.

“I have great respect for scientists who can apply their knowledge not just to advance their field, but to use their skills to more directly improve policy,” said Robert Forrest, a physicist examining the role of nuclear reactors driven by particle accelerators. “In some small way, I hope to eventually be one of them. Nuclear issues present not only a fascinating and profound set of problems, but I feel a sort of responsibility toward them as a physicist.”

Seminars, mentorships with Stanford scholars and some of the world’s thought-leaders on nuclear science and policy, as well as annual visits to national laboratories, military bases and security conferences enhance the decades-old CISAC nuclear fellowship program.

“I got properly interested in nuclear weapons on a CISAC trip to the Nevada Test Site,” said John Downer, a Stanton postdoctoral fellow who focuses on the risks of nuclear power. “It’s one thing to read about atomic bombs; it’s another to stand on the edge of a giant crater in the desert.”

 

 

 

Lynn Eden, CISAC’s associate director for research, recently led the center’s postdoctoral fellows to the two-day Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium in La Vista, Neb., in which top military brass, academics and policymakers gathered to discuss nuclear deterrence in the emerging international security environment.

“Panelists had very different ideas about the role of nuclear weapons now and in the future,” said Eden, author of the groundbreaking book, Whole World on Fire, which explores how the U.S. government has underestimated the potential damage of nuclear detonations. “I have to say, the Shultz, Perry, Kissinger, Nunn vision of a world without nuclear weapons was not at the top of the agenda.”

Eden was referring to the watershed editorial in the Wall Street Journal co-authored by the four Cold War veterans, who are now advocating for a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. The heft of their credentials and the passion behind their argument enabled President Barack Obama to call for the same, and be honored with a Nobel.

Eden said many of Strategic Command’s responsibilities regarding nuclear war planning have not changed under the Obama administration, but the thinking of their top officers has. U.S. Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, the commander of Strategic Command, met privately with the CISAC fellows. “None of our questions surprised him, and his answers were extremely thoughtful,” she said. 

The March 11, 2011, earthquake in Japan and subsequent tsunami and nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant gave the fellows rich, real-world lessons about the human and environmental costs of nuclear energy gone wrong. The worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl meltdown of 1986 galvanized Stanford scholars across the campus to study the cause and effects of the Japanese tragedy.  

“As someone who is interested in technological risk, I think there is no technological sphere where the stakes are higher and the knowledge more political than in nuclear power – except maybe in nuclear weapons,” Downer said. “The way formal reports and journalistic accounts construe nuclear disasters and radioactive fallout is often terrifyingly misleading. I think I can contribute something by helping restructure debates about nuclear risks.”

In keeping with CISAC’s mission, the fellows are encouraged to engage in pubic debate by drawing out the policy relevance of an issue. They publish in scholarly journals and write academic papers, as well as blog and submit op-eds and editorials to online sites.  Forrest, for example, had a commentary on Huffington Post that urged Congress to maintain federal funding for scientific research and development.

Benoît Pelopidas, a postdoctoral nuclear fellow from France, ran a Friday evening film series this last academic year, highlighting such traditional films as the Kurosawa classic “I Live in Fear” – about a Japanese man whose fear of another nuclear bomb drives him to insanity – to the recent South African science fiction thrilled, “District 9,” which explores strands of xenophobia and social segregation behind national security.

“At Stanford, I found a real interdisciplinary community interested in nuclear issues and unexpected access to policymakers,” Pelopidas said, including former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and Ambassador James Goodby, senior fellows at CISAC’s neighboring Hoover Institution who called on him to write a paper about the future of nuclear deterrence. “This helped me appreciate the value of interdisciplinary research in the nuclear discourse – to create opportunities for change.”

What’s next for the six fellows:

  • Edward Blandford: University of New Mexico, assistant professor of nuclear engineering in the Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering
  • Alexandre Debs: Yale University, assistant professor of political science
  • John Downer: University of Bristol, U.K., assistant professor of risk and resilience in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
  • Robert Forrest: Continues his research at CISAC into the role of particle accelerators in a nuclear-powered future
  • Toshihiro Higuchi: University of Wisconsin-Madison, an ACLS/Mellon Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the Department of the History of Science
  • Benoît Pelopidas: University of Bristol, U.K., assistant professor of international relations at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
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The Stanford Graphic Novel Project, Pika-Don (crash-boom), tells the true story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a naval engineer during WWII in Hiroshima, who survived the 1945 atomic bombings. | Stanford Graphic Novel Project
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