David Timberman is a political analyst and development practitioner with 30 years of experience analyzing and addressing political, governance and conflict-related challenges, principally in Southeast and South Asia.  As a Visiting Scholar at Stanford/APARC he is working on a book on the contemporary Philippine political economy.  During 2015-2016 he was a Visiting Professor of Political Science at De La Salle University in Manila. He has lived and worked in the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore, including experiencing first-hand the democratic transitions in the Philippines (1986-1988) and Indonesia (1998-2001). He has written extensively on political and governance issues in the Philippines and has edited or co-edited multi-author volumes on the Philippines, Cambodia, and economic policy reform in Southeast Asia.

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In this talk, Karine Walther discusses her new book Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821-1921. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Americans increasingly came into contact with the Islamic world, U.S. diplomatic, cultural, political, and religious beliefs about Islam began to shape their responses to world events. In Sacred Interests, Karine V. Walther excavates the deep history of American Islamophobia, showing how negative perceptions of Islam and Muslims shaped U.S. foreign relations from the Early Republic to the end of World War I.

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The Iraqi government, the Peshmerga, the international coalition and a consortium of militia have been winning the war against ISIS in Iraq.  The concern moving forward is whether Iraq’s state institutions have what it takes to prevent ISIS from reemerging in a new, and more deadly form after the current conflict is over. What does recent history, the current military campaign, and the Donald Trump administration’s current trajectory tell us about Iraq’s prospects?

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Dr. Jillian Schwedler is Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York’s Hunter College and the Graduate Center, and Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Rafiq Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council.  She is member of the Board of Directors and the Editorial Committee of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), publishers of the quarterly Middle East Report.

Dr. Schwedler’s books include the award-winning Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (Cambridge 2006) and (with Laleh Khalili) Policing and Prisons in the Middle East (Columbia 2010).  Her articles have appeared in World Politics, Comparative Politics, Middle East Policy, Middle East Report, Journal of Democracy, and Social Movement Studies, among many others.  Her research has received support from the National Science Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, the Fulbright Scholars Program, the American Institute for Yemen Studies, and the Social Science Research Council, among others. 

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From 1975 to 1990, Lebanon experienced a long war involving various national and international actors. The peace agreement that followed and officially propelled the country into a "postwar" era did not address many of the root causes of war, nor did it hold main actors accountable. Instead, a politics of "no victor, no vanquished" was promoted, in which the political elite agreed simply to consign the war to the past. However, since then, Lebanon has found itself still entangled in various forms of political violence, from car bombings and assassinations to additional outbreaks of armed combat.

In this talk, Sami Hermez discusses his newly released book War Is Coming. The book argues that the country's political leaders have enabled the continuation of violence and examines how people live between these periods of conflict. What do everyday conversations, practices, and experiences look like during these moments? How do people attempt to find a measure of certainty or stability in such times? Hermez's ethnographic study of everyday life in Lebanon between the volatile years of 2006 and 2009 tackles these questions and reveals how people engage in practices of recollecting past war while anticipating future turmoil. Hermez demonstrates just how social interactions and political relationships with the state unfold and critically engages our understanding of memory and violence, seeing in people's recollections living and spontaneous memories that refuse to forget the past. With an attention to the details of everyday life, War Is Coming shows how even a conversation over lunch, or among friends, may turn into a discussion about both past and future unrest.

Shedding light on the impact of protracted conflict on people's everyday experiences and the way people anticipate political violence, Hermez highlights an urgency for alternative paths to sustaining political and social life in Lebanon.

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Dr. Tien will reflect on security and economic trends in the Asia-Pacific region, and speak about Taiwan's foreign policy strategy in light of these trends. 

Bio

Dr. Hung-mao Tien received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since September 2016, he has been the the chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation, the semi-official body in Taiwan responsible for direct exchanges and dialogue with the People's Republic of China. He is also the president and board chairman of the Institute for National Policy Research in Taipei, as well as an advisor to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and board member of several foundations and business corporations in Taiwan. He previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, ROC (Taiwan), Representative (ambassador) to the United Kingdom, and presidential advisor to former President Lee Teng-hui.  He has also served in an advisory capacity to Harvard University’s Asia Center, The Asia Society in New York, and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Tien has taught in universities in both the US and Taiwan as professor of political science.  His numerous publications in English (author, editor and co-editor) include: Government and Politics in Kuomintang China 1927-37 (Stanford University Press); The Great Transition: Social and Political Change in the Republic of China (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press); and Democratization in Taiwan, Implications for China (St. Anthony’s Series, Oxford University), Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies, Themes and Perspectives (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press), China Under Jiang Zemin (Rienner), and The Security Environment in the Asia-Pacific (M.E. Sharpe).