José Zalaquett is a Chilean lawyer and legal scholar known for his work defending human rights in Chile during the regime of General Pinochet. During Chile's transition to democracy, he served on the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission where he investigated and prosecuted human rights violations committed by the military regime. He has served as President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and as the head of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International. He currently co-directs the Human Rights Centre at the University of Chile, serves on the board of the International Centre for Transitional Justice, and is a member of the International Commission of Jurists. He has been awarded UNESCO's Prize for Human Rights Education and Chile's National Prize for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Video recording of the event is available here.

Event co-sponsored by the Stanford International Law Society, Departments of English, History, and Comparative Literature; the Program in Modern Thought and Literature; the Center for African Studies; the Stanford Humanities Center; and the Center for South Asia

History, Memory, and Reconciliation futureofmemory.stanford.edu is sponsored by the Research Unit in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is Asia’s most resilient regional organization.  Its ambitious new charter aims to foster, in a dynamic but disparate region, a triply integrated region comprising a Political and Security Community, an Economic Community, and a Socio-Cultural Community.  The charter’s debut under Thailand’s 2008-09 chairmanship of the Association was badly marred, however, by political strife among Thai factions, clashes on the Thai-Cambodian border, and border-crossing risks of a non-military kind.  How have these developments affected ASEAN’s regional performance and aspirations?  Are its recent troubles transitional or endemic?  Do they imply a need for the Association to reconsider its modus operandi, lest it lose its role as the chief architect of East Asian regionalism?

Dr Thitinan Pongsudhirak is director of the Institute of Security and International Studies and an associate professor of international political economy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.  He is a prolific author, having written many op eds, articles, chapters, and books on Thailand’s politics, political economy, foreign policy, and media, and on ASEAN and East Asian security and economic cooperation.  He has worked for The Nation newspaper (Bangkok), The Economist Intelligence Unit, and Independent Economic Analysis (London).  His degrees are from the London School of Economics (PhD), Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (MA), and the University of California (BA).  His doctoral study of the 1997 Thai economic crisis won the United Kingdom’s Lord Bryce Prize for Best Dissertation in Comparative and International Politics—currently the only work by an Asian scholar to have been so honored. 

Professor Jenny S. Martinez is a leading expert on international courts and tribunals, international human rights, and the laws of war. Her scholarship focuses on the role of courts and tribunals in advancing human rights, ranging from her work on the all-but-forgotten 19th-century international tribunals involved in the suppression of the trans-Atlantic slave trade through her work on contemporary institutions like the International Criminal Court and the role of courts in policing human rights abuses in the "war on terror." An experienced litigator, she argued the 2004 case of Rumsfeld v. Padilla before the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to clarify the constitutional protections available to post-9/11 "enemy combatants" who are U.S. citizens. Professor Martinez was named to the National Law Journal's list of "Top 40 Lawyers Under 40" and the American Lawyer's "Young Litigators Fab Fifty." She serves on the board of directors for the Open Society Justice Initiative and has served as a consultant on international human rights issues for both Human Rights First and the International Center for Transitional Justice.

Before joining the Stanford faculty in 2003, Professor Martinez was a senior research fellow at Yale University and an attorney at Jenner & Block. She clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer (BA '59) of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; she was an associate legal officer for Judge Patricia Wald of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

AGENDA

8:50-9:00 Welcome Remarks by Christer Prusiainen and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss

9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. "Political Transformation in Russia"

Chair: Linda Jakobson, Senior Fellow, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Paper Presenter: Christer Pursiainen, the Council on Baltic States

Discussant: Dr. Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Deputy Director, CDDRL, Stanford University

10:00-11:00 a.m. "Political Transformation in China"

Chair: Linda Jakobson, Senior Fellow, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Paper Presenter: Minxin Pei, Professor of Government, Claremont McKenna College

Discussant: Kevin O'Brien, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkley

11:00-11:15 a.m. Coffee Break

11:15 a.m. -12:15 p.m. "Chinese Foreign Policy in the New Era"

Chair: Christer Pursiainen, the Council on Baltic States

Paper Presenter: Sergei Medvedev, Professor, Moscow Higher School of Economics

Discussant: Steven Fish, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

12:15-13:15 p.m.  Lunch (Outside the Conference Room)

13:15-14:15: "Russia Foreign Policy in the New Era"

Chair: Christer Pursiainen, the Council on Baltic States

Paper Presenter: Linda Jakobson, Senior Fellow, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Discussant: Tom Fingar, Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

14:15-15:15 p.m. "Social Stratification in China since Reform"

Chair: Minxin Pei, Professor Claremont McKenna College

Paper Presenter: Dr. Li Chunling, Professor, Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Discussant: Andrew Walder, Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology, Stanford University

15:15-15:30 p.m. Coffee Break

15:30-16:30 p.m. "Social Stratification in Russia"

Chair: Minxin Pei, Professor, Claremont McKenna College

President Robinson will be drawing on the work of Realizing Rights in areas of corporate responsibility, right to health, decent work and climate justice.

Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997) and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), has spent most of her life as a human rights advocate. Born Mary Bourke in Ballina, County Mayo (1944), she was educated at the University of Dublin (Trinity College), Kings Inns Dublin, and Harvard Law School to which she won a fellowship in 1967.
 
As an academic (Trinity College Law Faculty 1968-90), legislator (Senator 1969-89) and barrister (1967-90. Senior Counsel 1980, English Bar 1973) she has always sought to use law as an instrument for social change, arguing landmark cases before the European Court of Human Rights as well as in the Irish courts and the European Court in Luxembourg. In 1988 Mary Robinson and her husband founded the Irish Centre for European Law at the Trinity College. Ten years later she was elected Chancellor of the University.
 
Now based in New York, Mary Robinson is currently the President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative. Its mission is to make human rights the compass which charts a course for globalization that is fair, just and benefits all.

About the Lecture Series
The Stanford Presidential and Endowed Lecture Series in the Humanities and Arts brings the most distinguished scholars, artists, and critics of our time to the Stanford University campus for lectures, seminars, panel discussions, and a variety of related interactions with faculty, students and the community at large.

Related Information
Map to Cubberley Auditorium
Stanford Humanities Center Events

Hind Arroub is a Visiting Scholar at CDDRL in the calendar year 2010, affiliated with the Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World, and an associate researcher at the Laboratory of Sociology "Culture et Societe en Europe", affiliated with the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and the University of Strasbourg in France. She has a PhD in Law and Political Science from Mohammed V University of Juridical, Economic and Social Sciences in Rabat. Her work takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of international law, political and social sciences, human rights and media, and her research interests revolve around Morocco and the Arab World with a focus on: politics and religion, authoritarian regimes and democracy, riots and social movements, media freedom, human rights, and global politics' relationship to the Arab World. She is the author of "Revolutions in the Era of Humiliocracy" (with Mahdi El-Mandjra), "The ‘Makhzan' in Moroccan Political Culture" (2004) and "Approach to the Foundations of Legitimacy of the Moroccan Political System", published in November 2009.

Sean Yom is a Hewlett Postdoctoral Fellow at CDDRL at Stanford University. He finished his Ph.D. at the Department of Government at Harvard University in June 2009, with a dissertation entitled "Iron Fists in Silk Gloves: Building Political Regimes in the Middle East". His primary research explores the origins and durability of authoritarian regimes in this region, focusing on the historical interplay between early social conflicts and Western geopolitical interventions.