CDDRL Mosbacher director Francis Fukuyama spoke with Alexander Görlach for The WorldPost about U.S. President Donald Trump, the populist wave sweeping Europe and “fake news.” Read here.

"Since 1978, China’s authoritarian political system has been different from virtually all other dictatorships in part because the ruling Communist Party has been subject to rules regarding succession. Term limits for senior leadership have kicked in at regular 10-year intervals three times so far, and the party’s system of cultivating and training new leaders to replace the outgoing ones had allowed it to avoid the stagnation of countries like Egypt, Zimbabwe, Libya or Angola, where presidents ruled for decades. But all of this is out the window now because of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent announcement that term limits on the presidency will be abolished. This means that he will likely be China’s ruler for the rest of his life, turning at one stroke an institutionalized autocracy into a personal one. This builds upon the massive cult of personality he has been cultivating, with “Xi Jinping Thought” now canonized in the Constitution alongside Chairman Mao," writes CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama in Washington Post. Read the article here. 

"There is growing consensus that populism constitutes a grave threat to liberal democracy, and to the liberal international order on which peace and prosperity have rested for the past two generations," writes Francis Fukuyama in the World Economic Forum. The fate of the global liberal order could be jeopardized due to rising populist powers and movements. Read the full article here. 

"For those who believe that liberal democracy constitutes the best form of government, the rise of populist nationalism is a very worrying phenomenon," writes Francis Fukuyama in Credit Suisse Research Institute's "The Future of Politics." Read the full article here.

China has been working on refining a "vast network of digital espionage as a means of social control." Regarding this practice and its future implications, "China’s experiments with digital surveillance pose a grave new threat to freedom of expression on the internet and other human rights in China," says Larry Diamond in The Atlantic. Read the full article here. 

The disqualification of democracy activist Agnes Chow Ting from running in the Hong Kong legislature’s by-election was “outrageous”, says Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Read the article here. 

"As 2018 unfolds, the domestic and international dimensions of Trump’s crisis-ridden presidency are beginning to intersect in wildly unpredictable and potentially disastrous ways. There are signs of preparations for a U.S. military attack on North Korea by mid-year, and a new report by a leading Russian expert on North Korea indicates that the Pyongyang regime “is convinced that the U.S. is preparing to strike.” This would likely be not a full-scale military assault to terminate the North Korea’s tyrannical regime but rather a punishing “bloody nose” strike, either to send a message about American resolve to halt further testing and development of Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons program or to actually destroy as much of its existing infrastructure as possible," writes Larry Diamond in The American Interest. Read here. 

The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies is proud to congratulate Stanford’s 2018 Rhodes and Schwarzman Scholars. In today’s climate, our scholarly work on foreign policy and international issues can feel ominous, so FSI is especially pleased to share the good news that four of the Rhodes and three of the Schwarzman Scholars studied with us.

Among the newly-appointed Rhodes scholars are Jelani Munroe, Alexis Kallen and Qitong “Tom” Cao, all current or former honors students in the Fisher Family Undergraduate Honors Program at FSI’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Madeleine Chang, co-president of the FSI-sponsored American Middle Eastern Network for Dialogue at Stanford (AMENDS), joins them as well. The Rhodes Scholarships provide all expenses for study at Oxford University; all four will commence in October 2018.

The Schwarzman Scholarships fund one-year master's degrees in global affairs at Beijing’s distinguished Tsinghua University. Scholars include Claire Colberg and Daniel Kilimnik, alumni of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) Honors Program, and Lucienne “Lucy” Oyer, a current Fisher Family honors student at CDDRL. They will begin study in August 2018.

“We are very proud of these terrific students in the FSI family and our exceptional faculty who have mentored them,” said FSI Director Michael McFaul. “These seven have exhibited extraordinary ideas and leadership here at FSI, and we look forward to seeing the great contributions they will make in their fields.”

While working on his honors thesis on the role of the armed forces in German security policy, Daniel Kilimnik relied on an FSI research grant that enabled him to interview legislators, government officials and academics in Berlin. Once he heads to Beijing, Kilimnik will investigate relationships between China, the U.S. and Europe.

“I can't imagine my undergraduate experience without the professors, mentors, friends and peers I got to know through FSI,” he said. “Without support from CISAC and FSI, I would not have been able to write my thesis.”

One CISAC mentor is Donald Emmerson, an emeritus senior fellow at FSI. As honors student Claire Colberg explored Vietnam’s policies toward China, Emmerson advised her to challenge conventional wisdom.

“All I did for Claire was to encourage her to be intellectually less respectful and more creative,” he said. “I would like to believe that merely by giving her free rein, I helped her develop her own voice.”

Madeleine Chang found her voice by embracing creative problem-solving. With help from FSI Student Programs, Chang was able to do the seemingly impossible: work around President Trump’s travel ban to hold a conference with undergraduates from all over the world, including students affected by the ban.

“The irony of being an American-Middle Eastern group unable to meet in America itself spoke to why we needed to meet: to remind ourselves and others of the incredible potential of young people connecting across borders,” Chang told Stanford News.

Unable to bring all students to the United States, Chang looked across the pond and was able to hold the AMENDS conference at Oxford. FSI senior fellow Larry Diamond and academic program manager Gina Gonzales provided support on- and off-the-ground to keep things moving, even outside the Stanford realm.

“It was incredible to see Maddie leverage her connections at Oxford to turn the challenge of overcoming the travel ban into a fantastic opportunity,” said Gonzales.

Diamond believes interactions with international students are particularly valuable to the academic community. He has advised several Rhodes-bound students who grew up outside the United States.

“It is always a particular joy working with foreign students,” he said. “They teach us so much about their countries, the development challenges they face, and how other parts of the world view the United States.

“You know when you are teaching students like Qitong and Jelani that you are engaging, in some way, future leaders in their fields.”

"The problems with our democracy—ever-deepening polarization, incivility, gridlock, dysfunction, conflicts of interest, and disregard for democratic norms—are not just problems of political culture and behavior. Politicians are driven by incentives, especially the desire to get re-elected. Institutions heavily shape these incentives, and our institutions are in need of reform. Unless we reform our democracy, we will be increasingly hard-pressed to improve the health of democracy globally." Listen to Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, explains in this podcast what are the options from here, by Hoover Institution.