Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

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This is a CDDRL's Special Seminar, co-sponsored with Shorenstein APARC.

Dr. Fu-Kuo Liu is currently a Visiting Fellow at Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings Institution and is an Associate Research Fellow and Adjunct Associate Professor at National Chengchi University's Institute of International Relations. Additionally, he serves as the Executive Director of the National Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) Taiwan.

Previously, Dr. Liu was Chairman of the Research and Planning Board at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2002-2004) and a Consultative Advisor for the Mainland Affairs Council (2004-2006). He has taught at the Chinese Culture University and National Chung Shing University. He was a Visiting Fellow at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo and Georgetown University. His research mainly covers Taiwan security and foreign policy, regional security, and the cross-strait development. He received a Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Hull in the United Kingdom in 1995.

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Fu-kuo Liu Visiting Fellow, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, Foreign Policy Studies Speaker The Brookings Institution
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The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, in cooperation with the Center for the Pacific Rim and its Kiriyama Chair for Pacific Rim Studies at University of San Francisco, is pleased to present an international conference on "Public Diplomacy, Counterpublics, and the Asia Pacific."

The conference challenges the dominance of U.S.-centric and state-centered conceptions of "public diplomacy" to better understand and practice this resurgent component of world affairs. The complex, shifting contours of our globalizing world demand a broader -- comparative, multi-track, and ethical -- perspective on public diplomacy and its importance today.

A new perspective must take into account public diplomacy initiatives emanating from various places throughout the world. (We begin by "mapping" public diplomacy initiatives originating in the Asia Pacific.)

It must capture the significance of not only state-sponsored programs tightly linked to foreign policy, but also private activities involving a wide range of actors and arenas (i.e., NGOs, international business, media old and new, pop culture) that perhaps more subtly but no less profoundly impact national interests and world affairs.

Ultimately, a new perspective must comprehend that public diplomacy can be more than an instrumental quest for "soft power." A pathway toward robust people-to-people interactions, public diplomacy in its myriad forms can help achieve reconciliation -- the overcoming of historical injustices and other troubling conflicts in our post-9/11 world.

A primary objective of the conference is to discuss and refine papers for a book manuscript (to be considered for publication via a new series of Stanford University Press and the Brookings Institution). The conference/book will cover the following four issue areas: (1) historical and conceptual perspectives; (2) country/region surveys examining significant public diplomacy institutions and initiatives throughout the Asia Pacific; (3) case studies of transnational, multi-track diplomatic efforts driven by civil societies; and (4) case studies of public diplomacy by marginalized groups and in emerging public spheres (e.g. "the blogosphere.")

Conference panels -- at Stanford the morning of April 19 and at USF all day April 20 -- will be in colloquium format for presenters to discuss their research. Limited spaces will be available for observers, and a reservation is required.

The first public talk is on April 18 (5:45-7:00 p.m.) at the University of San Francisco. Shorenstein APARC's Michael Armacost will be speaking on "Japanese Power and Its Public Faces." You can find more details about this event on the USF Center for the Pacific Rim website.

The second public talk is on April 19 (12:15-1:55 p.m.) at Shorenstein APARC. Stephen Linton, Ph.D. (Chairman, Eugene Bell Foundation; Associate, Korea Institute, Harvard University) will give a talk titled "Treating Tuberculosis in North Korea: Toward US-DPRK Reconciliation." Lunch will be served so an RSVP is required. You may reserve a seat by clicking the link to Dr. Linton's lecture.

The conference keynote address is on April (5:45-7:00 p.m.) at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Stephen Linton will deliver a talk titled "Treating Tuberculosis in North Korea: NGO Humanitarian Assistance as Public Diplomacy." The keynote address is free and open to the public. RSVP recommended. Please call the USF Center for the Pacific Rim Events RSVP Line at (415) 422-6828.

More information about this conference and the panel sessions can be found on the website for the USF Center for the Pacific Rim.

This conference is co-sponsored by The Asia Society Northern California; The Japan Society of Northern California; Business for Diplomatic Action; Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University; and the Taiwan Democracy Program in the Center on Democracy Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

Philippines Conference Room and the Okimoto Conference Room in Encina Hall. Some sessions will be held at the University of San Francisco.

Conferences

John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building
Stanford, CA 94305

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Visiting Scholar 2007-2010
Miriam_web.jpg PhD

Before coming to CDDRL, Miriam Abu Sharkh was employed at the United Nation's specialized agency for work, the International Labour Organization, in Geneva, Switzerland. As the People's Security Coordinator (P4), she analyzed and managed large household surveys from Argentina to Sri Lanka. She also worked on the Report on the World Social Situation for the United Nation's Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York. Previously, she had also been a consultant for the German national development agency (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ) in Germany where she focused on integrating core labor standards into German technical cooperation.

She has written on the spread and effect of human rights related labour standards as well as on welfare regimes, gender discrimination, child labour, social movements and work satisfaction.

Currently, she holds a grant by the German National Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to study the evolvement of worldwide patterns of gender discrimination in the labor market, specifically the effects of international treaties. These questions are addressed in longitudinal, cross-national studies from the 1950´s to today.

This research builds on her previous work as a Post-doctoral Fellow at CDDRL as well as her dissertation on child labor for which she received a "Summa cum Laude" ( Freie Universität Berlin, Germany-joint dissertation committee with Stanford University). After discussing various labor standard initiatives, the dissertation analyzes when and why countries ratify the International Labour Organization's Minimum Age Convention outlawing child labour via event history models. It then examines the effect of ratification on child labor rates over three decades through a panel analyses. While her dissertation employed quantitative methods, her Diplom thesis (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) builds on extensive fieldwork in South Africa examining the genesis, strategies, and structures of the South African women's movement.

She has traveled extensity, both professionally and privately, loves to dive and sail and speaks German, Spanish and French as well as rudimentary Arabic.

Her current research interests include labor related international human rights, especially child labour and (non-)discrimination, social movements and work satisfaction.

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Douglas C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry Weingast will present their new book A Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History.

Neither economics nor political science can explain the process of modern social development. The fact that developed societies always have developed economies and developed polities suggests that the connection between economics and politics must be a fundamental part of the development process. This book develops an integrated theory of economics and politics. We show how, beginning 10,000 years ago, limited access social orders developed that were able to control violence, provide order, and allow greater production through specialization and exchange. Limited access orders provide order by using the political system to limit economic entry to create rents, and then using the rents to stabilize the political system and limit violence. We call this type of political economy arrangement a natural state. It appears to be the natural way that human societies are organized, even in most of the contemporary world. In contrast, a handful of developed societies have developed open access social orders. In these societies, open access and entry into economic and political organizations sustains economic and political competition. Social order is sustained by competition rather than rent-creation. The key to understanding modern social development is understanding the transition from limited to open access social orders, which only a handful of countries have managed since WWII.

About the speakers:

Douglas C. North received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1993 "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change". Douglas C. North was installed as the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in Saint Louis in October 1996 and is the Hoover Institution's Bartlett Burnap Senior Fellow. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in July 1996. He is the author of more than fifty articles and ten books. His current research activities include research on property rights, transaction costs, economic organization in history, a theory of the state, the free rider problem, ideology, growth of government, economic and social change, and a theory of institutional change.

North received his B.A. in 1942 and his Ph.D. in 1952 from the University of California at Berkeley.

John J. Wallis is a Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, where he has taught since 1983. His field of specialization is economic history, and his major areas of interest are state and local government finances, the New Deal, the 1830s, and explaining institutional change. His current research focuses on understanding early American government and the critical decade of the 1830s. Wallis has authored dozens of academic journal articles and book chapters.

Wallis received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington in 1981.

Barry R. Weingast is the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University; where he served as department chair from 1996 to 2001. He is also a professor of economics, by courtesy, at the university and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Weingast is an expert in political economy and public policy, the political foundation of markets and economic reform, U.S. politics, and regulation. His current research focuses on the political determinants of public policymaking and the political foundations of markets and democracy. Weingast is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He co-authored Analytic Narratives (1998, Princeton) and has numerous academic publications.

Weingast received his Ph.D. in economics from the California Institute of Technology in 1978.

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Douglas C. North Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences Speaker Washington University in Saint Louis
John J. Wallis Professor of Economics Speaker the University of Maryland
Barry R. Weingast Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science Speaker Stanford University
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Shibley Telhami holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, and is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Previously, he was the Director of the Near Eastern Studies Program at Cornell University and has taught at Ohio State University, the University of Southern California, Princeton University, Columbia University, Swarthmore College, and the University of California at Berkeley. His publications include Power and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords (Columbia University Press, 1990); International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, ed. with Milton Esman (Cornell University Press, 1995); and Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East , ed. with Michael Barnett (forthcoming, Cornell University Press, 2001); and numerous articles on international politics and Middle Eastern affairs.

Professor Telhami has actively been bridging the academic and policy world. He served as advisor to the United States delegation to the United Nations during the Iraq-Kuwait crisis, and was on the staff of Congressman Lee Hamilton. He is the author of a report on Persian Gulf security for the Council on Foreign Relations, and the co-drafter of a Council report on the Arab-Israeli peace process. Professor Telhami is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East. He has been a member of the American delegation of the Trilateral American/Israeli/Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee mandated by the Wye River Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and has a weekly radio commentary broadcasting widely over the Middle East.

He received his B.A. from the Queens College of the City University of New York (1974), M.A. from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley (1978), and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1986).

Professor Telhami will be reporting on his latest poll of Arab public opinion and interpreting the results on key issues.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Shibley Telhami Senior Fellow Speaker Brookings Institution
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Michael A. McFaul
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In my travels to more than 50 countries, I have been thrown out of only one - Uzbekistan - just a few months after its emergence as an independent state in 1992 under its first and only president, Islam Karimov. My crime? Working for an American democracy promotion organization and meeting with human rights activists.

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Kathryn Stoner, CDDRL associate director for research, is Stanford Book Salon host for the month of February 2007. The Book Salon is an online book program that reaches about 4,100 Stanford alumni. Stoner-Weiss volunteered to host the book The Desert Queen by Janet Wallach, "an important book that should be of interest to anyone wondering about the history of conflict in the Middle East, and the formation of Iraq in particular."
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Dr. Linton was born in Philadelphia in 1950 and grew up in Korea, where his father was a third generation Presbyterian missionary. He is a visiting associate of the Korea Institute, Harvard University, for 2006-07. Linton is currently Chairman of The Eugene Bell Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that provides humanitarian aid to North Korea.

Dr. Linton's talk will focus on the Eugene Bell Foundation and its programs. Named for Rev. Eugene Bell, Lintonn's great-grandfather and a missionary who arrived in Korea in 1895, the Foundation serves as a conduit for a wide spectrum of business, governmental, religious and social organizations as well as individuals who are interested in promoting programs that benefit the sick and suffering of North Korea.

Since 1995, the Foundation strives primarily to bring medical treatment facilities in North Korea together with donors as partners in a combined effort to fight deadly diseases such as tuberculosis (TB). In 2005, the North Korean ministry of Public Health officially asked the Foundation to expand its work to include support programs for local hospitals. The Foundation currently coordinates the delivery of TB medication, diagnostic equipment, and supplies to one third of the North Korean population and approximately forty North Korean treatment facilities (hospitals and care centers).

Dr. Linton's credentials include: thirty years of teaching and research on Korea, twenty years of travel to North Korea (over fifty trips since 1979), and ten years of humanitarian aid work in North Korea. Dr. Linton received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, a Masters of Divinity from Korea Theological Seminary, and a Masters of Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Korean Studies from Columbia University.

This public lecture is part of the conference "Public Diplomacy, Counterpublics, and the Asia Pacific." This conference is co-sponsored by The Asia Society Northern California; The Japan Society of Northern California; Business for Diplomatic Action; Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University; and the Taiwan Democracy Program in the Center on Democracy Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

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Stephen Linton Chairman Speaker The Eugene Bell Foundation
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Amr Hamzawy is Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a noted Egyptian political scientist who previously taught at Cairo University and the Free University of Berlin. Hamzawy has a deep knowledge of Middle East politics and specific expertise on the reform process in the region. His research interests include the changing dynamics of political participation in the Arab world, the role of Islamist opposition groups in Arab politics, with special attention both to Egypt and the Gulf countries.

Hamzawy's studies at Cairo University focused on civil society and democratization in the Arab world, Islamism, and the cultural impacts of globalization in Muslim majority societies. He received his Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin, where he worked as an assistant professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Some of his publications include The Saudi Labyrinth: Evaluating the Current Political

Opening, (Carnegie Paper 68, March 2006); Human Rights in the Arab World: Independent Voices, coedited with Anthony Chase, (University of Pennsylvania, 2006); Zeitgenössisches Arabisches Denken: Kontinuität und Wandel, (Verlag des Deutschen Orient-Instituts, 2005); Civil Society in the Middle East, (Verlag Hans Schiler, 2003); Religion, Staat und Politik im Vorderen Orient, coedited with Ferhad Ibrahim, (Lit Verlag, 2003)

Amr Hamzawy holds a Ph.D from Free University of Berlin; M.A. from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, M.A. from the University of Amsterdam, and B.Sc. from Cairo University.

CISAC Conference Room

Amr Hamzawy Speaker Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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This talk will analyze the evolution of lawfare, what Jeremy Bentham called "an irregular system of warfare." Meierhenrich introduces lawfare as a conceptually and analytically distinct type of warfare, and a political strategy not previously theorized in any systematic fashion. In his conceptualization, lawfare is a revolutionary strategy for broadcasting power, by which he means a strategy aimed at the systematic and comprehensive overhaul of the foundations of politics and society. This strategy comprises, inter alia, constitutional enactments, ordinary legislation, presidential decrees, and other regulatory instruments. Based on evidence from cases, Meierhenrich illustrates the economy with which the strategy of lawfare may be used and the ingenuity that it requires. Restating an influential aphorism, he shows how law made the state, and the state made law. By so doing, he explains why this irregular system of warfare stands in much higher favor with men in general than that which is carried on by open force -- illustrating the dark side of democracy and the rule of law.

About the speaker:

Jens Meierhenrich is Assistant Professor of Government and of Social Studies at Harvard University, where he is also a Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He recently served as the Carlo Schmid Fellow in Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and has previously worked with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Professor Meierhenrich is the author of a genocide trilogy, forthcoming from Princeton University Press, comprising "The Rationality of Genocide," "The Structure of Genocide," and "The Culture of Genocide." His book "The Legacies of Law" on the function of legal norms and institutions in the transition to - and from - apartheid, is currently under review. Meierhenrich's publications also include a series of articles on comparative and international law and politics. Work in progress includes a book on judicial responses to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, a comparative analysis of international courts and tribunals, and a long-term project on state formation and state collapse. He has conducted extensive field research in several international organizations as well as in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Jens Meierhenrich was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a D.Phil. in politics and international relations.

CISAC Conference Room

Jens Meierhenrich Assistant Professor of Government and of Social Studies Speaker Harvard University
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