FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.
FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.
Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.
America and the World: Presidential Candidate Advisors Speak on International Security
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The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Dependence on expensive foreign oil. Challenging diplomacy with nuclear-armed countries. America's next president needs a strong vision and stronger will to tackle these formidable tasks and those that lie ahead. Which candidate is best equipped to meet these challenges? Our panel of top advisors to the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees will address each candidate's plan to improve our international security. Join us to listen and ask questions of these experts.
Sponsored by The Commonwealth Club of California.
Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Peacock Court
999 California St.
San Francisco, CA
Hon. James Woolsey
Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Former Director of Central Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency (1993-1995); Advisor to Senator McCain
Speaker
Michael A. McFaul
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and served as FSI Director from 2015 to 2025. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.
McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).
McFaul has authored ten books and edited several others, including, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, as well as From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, (a New York Times bestseller) Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.
He is a recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary PhD from Montana State University; the Order for Merits to Lithuania from President Gitanas Nausea of Lithuania; Order of Merit of Third Degree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. In 2015, he was the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University.
McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.
International Working Group on Russian Sanctions
The International Working Group on Russian Sanctions aims to provide expertise and experience to governments and companies around the world by assisting with the formulation of sanctions proposals that will increase the cost to Russia of invading Ukraine, and support democratic Ukraine in the defense of its territorial integrity and national sovereignty.
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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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Dr. Gloria C. Duffy
President and CEO, The Commonwealth Club of California; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton
Moderator
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Indian Democracy and Law from the Bottom Up: the Case of Urban Rickshaw Pullers and Street Vendors
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Madhu Kishwar is Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi; founder-president of Manushi Sangathan, an organization committed to strengthening democratic rights and women's rights in India; and founder editor of Manushi - A Journal About Women and Society, which has been published continuously since 1978. Her work on issues relating to "Laws, Liberty and Livelihoods" is aimed at evolving a pro-poor agenda of economic reforms in India. Kishwar, the author of numerous books and articles, has lectured extensively in India and abroad, and received many awards for her work. Her two most recent books are Zealous Reformers, Deadly Laws, New Delhi, Sage Publications, 2008; and Deepening Democracy: Challenges of Governance and Globalization in India, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2005.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Madhu Kishwar
Senior Fellow
Speaker
The Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi, co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for South Asia
Seminars
The Rule of Law and Its Promotion Abroad: Three Problems of Scope
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Krasner moderates Atherton talk on foreign affairs
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Stephen D. Krasner, senior fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and professor of international relations, moderated at an event last week discussing foreign affairs form the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the 2001 September 11th attacks of the WTC.
James Goldgeier, senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of political science at George Washington University, discussed foreign affairs in the years between 11/9/89, when the Berlin Wall fell, and 9/11/01, when the World Trade Center fell, at the kick-off meeting of the World Affairs Council of Northern California on Sunday, Sept. 28, at 3 p.m., at 75 Tuscaloosa Avenue in Atherton.
Goldgeier, who has served as foreign affairs officer at the State Department and the National Security Council, focused on how the lack of priority for foreign policy in the years between these events is shaping the election debates and the agenda for the next president.
Stephen D. Krasner, with his expertise in the area of international relations, moderated these talks.
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Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the War in Asia
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The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, the Center for Pacific and Asian Studies at The University of Tokyo and the Department of Area Studies at The University of Tokyo will present a 3 part discussion comparing the formation of divided memories in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States.
The aim of this research is that it puts Japanese textbooks in a comparative framework, and changes the nature of the dialogue about these issues as a result. We will NOT focus on Japanese textbooks per se but rather on the comparative analysis.
Part 1. Comparative Analysis of High School History textbooks in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States
- Professor Gi-Wook Shin (Director, Shorenstein APARC): an overview of our project
- Professor Peter Duus (Stanford University): the comparative analysis of historical narratives presented in the textbooks of China, Japan and the U.S.
- Professor Jae-Jung Chung (The University of Seoul) : the comparative analysis of textbooks in South Korea and Japan
- Dr. Weike Li (Editor, Peoples Education Press, Beijing): on Chinese textbooks
- Professor Haruo Tohmatsu (Tamagawa University): the comparative analysis of Japanese textbooks with other textbooks
Part 2. Textbooks as an International Relations issue
- Dr. Daniel Sneider (Shorenstein APARC): the history of textbooks as an international issue and the different approaches to solving it
- Professor Hiroshi Mitani (The University of Tokyo): the personal experiences with Sino-Japanese and Korean-Japanese historical Dialogue
- Professor Shinichi Kitaoka (The University of Tokyo, former ambassador to UN): the experience of official joint committee between Japan and China
Part 3. General Discussions
- Professor Tatsuhiko Tsukiashi (The University of Tokyo, Korean history)
- Professor Shin Kawashima (The University of Tokyo, Chinese history)
The University of Tokyo
Komaba Hall 1F, 18th bldg.
Gi-Wook Shin
Speaker
Daniel C. Sneider
Speaker
Conferences
Lisa Blaydes
Encina Hall West, Room 408
Stanford, CA 94305-6044
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blaydes@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Political Science
Lisa Blaydes is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is the author of State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Professor Blaydes received the 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field of comparative politics from the American Political Science Association for this project. Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 academic years, Professor Blaydes was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles, and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Shadi Hamid
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CDDRL Hewlett Fellow 2008-09
Shadi Hamid was a Hewlett Fellow in 2008-09 at CDDRL. At the same time he also served as director of research at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). Prior to that, he was a research fellow at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, where he conducted research on the evolving relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jordanian regime. His articles on Middle East politics and U.S. democracy promotion policy have appeared in The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Jerusalem Post, The New Republic, The American Prospect, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and other publications. A Marshall Scholar, Hamid also completed his doctoral degree in politics at Oxford University, writing his dissertation on Islamist political behavior in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.
Previously, Hamid served as a program specialist on public diplomacy at the State Department and a Legislative Fellow at the Office of Senator Dianne Feinstein. During 2004-5, he was a Fulbright Fellow in Jordan, researching Islamist participation in the democratic process. He writes for the National Security Network's foreign affairs blog Democracy Arsenal and is a security fellow at the Truman National Security Project. He has been a consultant to various organizations on reform-related issues in the Arab world, and has appeared on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NPR, Voice of America, and the BBC. Hamid received his B.S. and M.A. from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
Expert Information, Public Deliberation and Electoral Support for Good Governance; Experimental Evidence from Benin
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Leonard Wantchekon, PhD is a Professor of Politics and Economics at the New York University. Wantchekon's areas of interest include political economy, development, applied game theory, and comparative politics.
He is the author of several articles on post-civil war democratization, resource curse, electoral clientelism and experimental methods in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Political Science Review, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Constitutional Political Economy, Political Africaine and Afrique Contemporaine.
Some of his recent publications include "The Paradox of 'Warlord' Democracy: A Theoretical Investigation", American Political Science Review, (Vol. 98, No1, 2004); and "Resource Wealth and Political Regimes in Africa" (with Nathan Jensen), Comparative Political Studies, (Vol. 37, No. 7, 816-841, 2004).
Wantchekon is the editor of the Journal of African Development (JAD), formally known as Journal of African Finance and Economic Development (JAFED). He is the founding director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy, which is based in Benin (West Africa) and at New York University. He is currently serving on the APSA international committee as well as the APSA Africa initiative committee. He was also a division chair at the 2005 APSA Annual meetings in Washington DC.
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Conference Room
Leonard Wantchekon
Professor of Politics and Economics
Speaker
New York University
Seminars
Why is there no ethnic voting in Mali? Results from an Experiment in the Field
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Thad Dunning is Assistant Professor of Political Science and a research fellow at Yale's Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies as well as the Institution for Social and Policy Studies.
Dunning studies comparative politics, political economy, international relations, and methodology. His book, Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes (2008, Cambridge University Press), studies the democratic and authoritarian effects of natural resource wealth.
Dunning conducts field research in Latin America and Africa and has written on a range of methodological topics, including econometric corrections for selection effects and the use of natural experiments in the social sciences. Previous work has appeared in International Organization, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Political Analysis, Studies in Comparative International Development, Geopolitics and in a Handbook of Methodology (2007, Sage Publications).
He received a Ph.D. degree in political science and an M.A. degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley (2006).
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Thad Dunning
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Speaker
Yale University
Seminars