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Soraya Johnson
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Democracies face the challenge of requiring competent yet representative leaders in order to effectively embody the will of the people. More than a hundred countries have electoral quotas for women and minorities to ensure representation; however, such efforts are being threatened globally under the guise of critiques alleging that quotas undermine meritocracy and candidate quality. 

To assess this claim, Stanford Assistant Professor of Political Science Soledad Artiz Prillaman examined in a CDDRL research seminar the relationship between candidate quality and electoral affirmative action. Her co-authored study relies on data from India, where the largest of such policies are enacted, and local Gram Panchayat positions (GPs) are proportionally reserved for women and lower caste individuals on a rotating basis. Using population, census, and survey data, Pillaman compared the quality of GPs by looking at officials’ education levels relative to their identity groups. 

Her findings reveal that politicians in general are positively selected, meaning that their quality, as indicated by their education level, is significantly higher than that of each identity group’s population. While quota-elected officials in low-income areas did have a lower average education level than non-quota officials, they did exhibit a higher degree of positive selection. This means that quota politicians are significantly better educated than their identity groups on average, making them more qualified for office.

This heightened positive selection can be due to selection discrimination, as voters weigh education more heavily for quota politicians. Furthermore, when accounting for structural discrimination and holding supply constant, there is no difference in average education between quota and non-quota candidates. 

Evidently, quotas do not affect candidate quality when accounting for structural discrimination and can improve quality in certain conditions due to a voter tendency to hold minority candidates to higher standards. As affirmative action policies are under challenge across the globe, it is critical to remember that improving minority representation in our democratic systems does not require sacrificing candidate quality.

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How Land Shapes the Fate of Societies

Tracing land’s role as a source of power, University of Chicago Professor of Political Science Michael Albertus analyzed how its distribution affects governance, social stratification, and conflict.
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Show Me the Money: Central Bank Museums and Public Trust in Monetary Governance

Juliet Johnson, Professor of Political Science at McGill University, explores how central banks build public trust through museums.
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In the wake of widespread challenges to affirmative action policy, Stanford Political Scientist Soledad Artiz Prillaman’s research challenges the notion that electoral quotas for minority representation weaken candidate quality.

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The share of the South Korean population living alone has substantially increased over the last four decades, sparking public concerns about loneness and its broader effects on individuals and society. In this talk Dr. Hyunjoon Park analyzes trends in living alone in Korea from 1980 to 2020. Analyses show a divergence in solo living between those with more and less education in both younger and older age groups but in oppositive directions. Among young men and women aged 25-34, those with a bachelor’s degree or higher are increasingly more likely to live alone than their peers with a high school education or less. In contrast, among older adults aged 65-74, individuals with the lowest level of education are increasingly more likely to live alone. Dr. Park discusses the implications of solo living trends for family dynamics and inequality in Korea.

Hyunjoon Park's headshot

Hyunjoon Park is Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology and Director of the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Park is interested in family and social stratification in cross-national comparative perspective, focusing on South Korea and other East Asian societies. He has studied changes in marriage, divorce, and living arrangements as well as consequences of demographic and economic trends for education, well-being, and socioeconomic outcomes of children, adolescents, and young adults in Korea. He was the director of the Korean Millennials Research Lab, a multiyear and multidisciplinary project team tasked with investigating the transition to adulthood among young adults in South Korea and Korean Americans in the US. His publications include the single-authored book Re-Evaluating Education in Japan and Korea: De-mystifying Stereotypes (Routledge, 2013); the coauthored book Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America (University of California Press, 2022), and the coedited volume Korean Families Yesterday and Today (University of Michigan Press, 2020). 

Directions and Parking > 

Philippines Conference Room (C330)
Encina Hall, 3rd Floor
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

Hyunjoon Park, Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
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Flyer for the conference "Taiwan Forward." Image: aerial view of Taipei.
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We have reached capacity for this event and registration has closed.


Organized by the Taiwan Program at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)
Co-sponsored by National Taiwan University's Office of International Affairs

As Taiwan looks to develop comprehensive strategies to promote national interests, it faces challenges shared by other advanced economies. How can Taiwan leverage AI innovation and its semiconductor prowess to drive resilience and continued growth while promoting entrepreneurship and forging advantages in emerging industries? What regulatory and policy measures are needed to scale Taiwan’s role as a global leader in biomedical and healthcare advancements while ensuring patient trust and safety? How can it address the gaps posed by rapid family changes and population aging? And how do its historical and linguistic legacies shape present narratives and identities, within Taiwan and among the Taiwanese diaspora?

Join us for a conference that explores these questions and more, featuring panel discussions with scholars from Stanford University, National Taiwan University, and other universities in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Singapore, alongside Taiwanese industry leaders. We will examine Taiwan’s strategies for navigating modernization in a shifting global landscape — bridging technology, industry, culture, and society through interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives.

 

8:45 - 9:10 a.m.
Opening Session

Welcome Remarks

Shih-Torng Ding
Executive Vice President, National Taiwan University

Gi-Wook Shin
Director, Shorenstein APARC and the Taiwan Program, Stanford University

Congratulatory Remarks

Chia-Lung Lin
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Taiwan

Raymond Greene
Director, American Institute in Taiwan 


9:10-10:40 a.m.
Panel 1 — Advancing Health and Healthcare: Technology and Policy Perspectives     
    
Panelists 

Kuan-Ming Chen
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, National Taiwan University

Lynia Huang
Founder and CEO, Bamboo Technology Ltd.

Ming-Jen Lin
Distinguished Professor, Department of Economics, National Taiwan University

Siyan Yi
Associate Professor, School of Public Health, National University of Singapore

Moderator
Karen Eggleston
Director, Asia Health Policy Program, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University


10:40-10:50 a.m.
Coffee and Tea Break


10:50 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Panel 2 — Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Technology Leadership

Panelists 

Steve Chen
Co-founder, YouTube and Taiwan Gold Card Holder #1

Matthew Liu
Co-founder, Origin Protocol

Huey-Jen Jenny Su
Professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Former President, National Cheng Kung University

Yaoting Wang
Founding Partner, Darwin Ventures, Taiwan

Moderator
H.-S. Philip Wong
Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering, Stanford University


12:30-1 p.m.

Perspectives from Stanford and NTU Students

Tiffany Chang
BS Student in Engineering Management & Human-Centered Design, Stanford University

Liang-Yu Ko
MA Student in Sociology, National Taiwan University


1-2 p.m. 
Lunch Break


2-3:30 p.m.  
Panel 3 — Interwoven Identities: Exploring Chinese Languages, Taiwanese-american Narratives, and Japanese Colonial Legacies in Taiwan

Panelists 

Carissa Cheng
BA Student in International Relations, Stanford University

Yi-Ting Chung
PhD Candidate in History, Stanford University

Jeffrey Weng
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University

Moderator
Ruo-Fan Liu
Taiwan Program Postdoctoral Fellow, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University


3:30-3:45 p.m. 
Coffee and Tea Break


3:45-5:15 p.m.    
Panel 4 —  The Demographic Transformation: Lessons from Taiwan and Comparative Cases

Panelists

Yen-Hsin Alice Cheng
Professor, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica

Youngtae Cho
Professor of Demography and Director, Population Policy Research Center, Seoul National University

Setsuya Fukuda
Senior Researcher, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan

Moderator
Paul Y. Chang
Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Association Senior Fellow, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University


5:15-5:30 p.m.    
Closing Remarks

Gi-Wook Shin
Director, Shorenstein APARC and the Taiwan Program, Stanford University

THIS CONFERENCE IS HELD IN TAIPEI, TAIWAN, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 23, 2025, FROM 8:45 AM TO 5:30 PM, TAIPEI TIME

International Conference Hall, Tsai Lecture Hall
College of Law
National Taiwan University

No.1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road
Taipei City, 10617
Taiwan

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Cover of the book "The Four Talent Giants"
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The Asia-Pacific region has seen extraordinary economic achievements. Japan's post-World War II transformation into an economic powerhouse challenging US dominance by the late 1980s was miraculous. China's rise as the world's second-largest economy is one of the 21st century's most stunning stories. India, now a top-five economy by GDP, is rapidly ascending. Despite its small population, Australia ranked among the top ten GDP nations in 1960 and has remained resilient. While cultivating, attracting, and leveraging talent has been crucial to growth in these countries, their approaches have varied widely, reflecting significant cultural, historical, and institutional differences.

In this sweeping analysis of talent development strategies, Gi-Wook Shin investigates how these four "talent giants'' achieved economic power and sustained momentum by responding to risks and challenges such as demographic crises, brain drain, and geopolitical tensions. This book offers invaluable insights for policymakers and is essential for scholars, students, and readers interested in understanding the dynamics of talent and economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

This title is forthcoming in July 2025.

Advance praise for The Four Talent Giants:

"The Four Talent Giants is a wonderful book, full of new ideas and, especially, comparative empirical research. Gi-Wook Shin's ambitious treatment of the topic of human capital, or 'talent,' in the context of a globalized economy is very important and reading it will be a rewarding exercise for scholars, politicians, corporate leaders, and many others."
—Nirvikar Singh, University of California, Santa Cruz

"The current scholarly literature offers multiple country-specific talent formation studies, including those on the transformative role of skilled migration. However, few authors have dared to attempt a thorough cross-national analysis, comparing the nature and impact of policies across highly variable geopolitical contexts. The Four Talent Giants achieves this goal triumphantly, and accessibly, assessing the global implications of national experimentation for effective talent portfolio management."
—Lesleyanne Hawthorne, University of Melbourne
 

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National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India

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Gi-Wook Shin
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Stanford University Press
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APARC Predoctoral Fellow, 2024-2025
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Alisha Elizabeth Cherian joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as APARC Predoctoral Fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year. She is a PhD candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Stanford University. She received her BA from Vassar College in Anthropology and Drama with a correlate in Asian Studies, and her MA in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago.

Her dissertation, entitled "Beyond Integration: Indian Singaporean Public Urban Life", investigates how enforced racial integration shapes racial formations and race relations in Singapore. Her project explores everyday encounters and interactions that are structured, but not overdetermined, by the state's multiracial policies as well as colonial histories and regional legacies of Indian indentured and convict labour. With her research, she seeks to contribute to a more ethnographic understanding of how plural societies are approached both scholarly and practically.

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Gender Inequity and Economic Impact
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India is experiencing profound demographic changes and consequent shifts in the population age structure, though, unlike the experience of other countries, its demographic change is unique and unconventional. While declining fertility rates are often seen as a boost to women's empowerment, there are growing concerns about their impact on gender equity in India, including worsening sex ratios. One notable effect of this demographic shift is the rapid increase in the older population, particularly widows, who face heightened vulnerability shaped by cultural norms. This talk explores two key aspects of India's demographic changes: first, how fertility shifts have affected gender equity, and second, by estimating the economic value of widows, why we must move beyond cultural explanations to understand the vulnerability of widows in India.

KS James 100324

K S James possesses extensive research and teaching experience in the field of Demography. He was formerly the Director and Senior Professor of the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, India. His work examines the interaction of socio-economic and policy forces on demographic factors, including fertility, marriage, gender and ageing in India.  He has several books and articles in his credit including papers in Science, Lancet Global Health, BMC Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, JAMA Network Open, Population Studies and Journal of Demographic Economics. He holds a postdoctoral training from Harvard Centre for Population and Development, Harvard University, USA and Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has been a visiting fellow in many prestigious institutes and universities including Harvard University, USA; London School of Economics, UK; International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA), Austria; University of Southampton, UK and University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

Lunch will be served.

K S James, Senior Visiting Scholar Newcomb Institute, Tulane University
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Rachel Owens
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How have pre-communist social structures persisted in Russia, and why does this persistence matter for understanding post-communist political regime trajectories? In a CDDRL seminar series talk, Tomila Lankina, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, discussed her award-winning book, The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class (Cambridge University Press, 2022)The book challenges the assumption that the 1917 revolution succeeded in leveling old estate hierarchies, arguing that these social structures persist today. 

While analyses of the bourgeoisie factor heavily into the understanding of many societies, the relevance of this group is frequently left out when discussing countries like Russia and China, on the assumption that they had been completely leveled by revolutionary ruptures. Lankina’s book critically assesses this assumption. It adopts a uniquely interdisciplinary approach, utilizing archives, subnational comparisons, statistical analysis, social network analysis, and interviews with descendants. 

In characterizing the social structure of pre-communist Russia, Lankina noted that peasants comprised 77 percent of the population on the eve of the revolution. Other social groups, which she refers to as “educated estates” because of their higher literacy rates compared to those of peasants, included the urban meshchane, the merchants, nobility, and clergy. Out of the educated estates, meshchane constituted the majority, or 10 percent of the population. While their homes appeared rather modest, members of the meshchane exhibited characteristics of the urban bourgeoisie, and even their dress differed from that of the rural estate. They enjoyed much higher literacy rates than peasants.

Lankina explained that the comparatively high status of these “educated estates” — the meshchane, merchants, nobility, and clergy — persisted even after the Bolshevik revolution. To illustrate this, she highlighted partially intact social circles of the highly networked merchants, nobles, and tsarist-inspired soviet schools. Letters from the Samara province indicate that while many high-status citizens emigrated, there were matriarchs who stayed, spreading the tsarist-era values to their children and grandchildren after the revolution. Regardless of whether this middle class was endowed with democratic values, Lankina maintained that they passed human and entrepreneurial capital onto their offspring.

How did these estates endure? While the literature clearly articulates what happened to the ruling classes following the revolution, less time has been spent understanding what happened to the educated, middle-class segments of society. How did they adapt? 

Lankina proposed three different routes. First is the “pop-up brigade,” wherein young, educated individuals traveled around promoting education to peasant workers, instantly employable and absorbable into a new society. Then there is the “museum society,” where prominent nobles and merchants joined insular cultural institutions like archives, provincial libraries, and museums. Finally, “the organization man” denotes professionally skilled individuals, such as medics, who retained their positions following the revolution as the social hierarchy got absorbed into newer organizations. 

To illustrate the significance of this persistence in social structures and values, Lankina, drawing on her co-authored paper with Alexander Libman (APSR 2021), indicated that meshchane concentration (as opposed to more recent educational indices) is a better predictor of a post-communist region’s openness, at least in the 1990s.

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Corruption in Ukraine and EU Accession

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Will Dobson, book cover of "Defending Democracy in an Age of Sharp Power," and Chris Walker
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Eugene Finkel presents during a REDS Seminar co-hosted by The Europe Center and CDDRL on April 18, 2024.
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The Historical Roots of Russia’s Quest to Dominate Ukraine

According to Eugene Finkel, the Kenneth H. Keller Associate Professor of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, Russia’s recurrent attacks against Ukraine can be traced to issues of identity and security.
The Historical Roots of Russia’s Quest to Dominate Ukraine
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Tomila Lankina’s award-winning book, “The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class” (Cambridge University Press, 2022), challenges the assumption that the 1917 revolution succeeded in leveling old estate hierarchies, arguing that these social structures persist today.

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Noa Ronkin
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Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) proudly announces the launch of the Taiwan Program, which will serve as an interdisciplinary research and education hub on contemporary Taiwan. The program will investigate Taiwan’s strides as a modernization exemplar and the challenges its economy and society face in seeking to drive dynamism and growth in an era marked by shifting global relations. On May 2, 2024, APARC will host the program’s inaugural conference, Innovate Taiwan: Shaping the Future of a Postindustrial Society. Registration for the conference is now open.

Mirroring the dilemmas of other postindustrial societies, Taiwan today finds itself pressed by multiple imperatives. These include the need to generate novel economic competitiveness models amid rapid technological advancement and declining multilateral cooperation, address changing demographic realities, foster cultural diversity and tolerance, fulfill the action pathway to achieve net-zero emissions, and create the institutional and policy conditions to enable these adaptations. The Taiwan Program will explore how Taiwan can effectively address these challenges and seize the opportunities they afford for it to remain at the forefront of vibrancy and progress in the 21st century. 

Housed within APARC, part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the Taiwan Program will pursue a mission encompassing research endeavors, education and learning initiatives, and exchange opportunities. By investing in these three core areas, the program will produce interdisciplinary, policy-relevant research to understand and address Taiwan’s challenges of economic, social, technological, environmental, and institutional adaptation in the coming decades; prepare the next generation of students to become experts on Taiwan; and facilitate meaningful interactions between Stanford faculty, researchers, and students with their Taiwanese counterparts and with policy experts, industry leaders, and civil society stakeholders in Taiwan. In all these areas, the program will leverage APARC’s expertise and networks and build upon the center’s strong track record of academic research and policy engagement with East Asia. This includes leveraging the proven model and rich experience of APARC’s esteemed programs on contemporary China, Japan, and Korea.

We aim to foster research-practice partnerships between the United States and Taiwan while contributing to Taiwan's long-term development.
Gi-Wook Shin
APARC Director

"The Taiwan Program underscores our commitment to deepening understanding of and engagement with Taiwan,” said Gi-Wook Shin, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea and director of APARC. “We aim to foster research-practice partnerships between the United States and Taiwan while contributing to Taiwan's long-term development," added Shin, who is also a professor of sociology, a senior fellow at FSI, and director of the Korea Program at APARC.

The program will be led by a distinguished scholar of contemporary Taiwan to be recruited by the university in an international search. APARC will soon announce its inaugural postdoctoral fellow on contemporary Taiwan, who will help organize the program’s activities in the next academic year. The new program is made possible thanks to tremendous support from several Stanford donors who care deeply about Taiwan’s role on the global stage and U.S.-Taiwan relations. 

"We are profoundly grateful to our supporters for their partnership and commitment to advancing understanding of Taiwan and the U.S.-Taiwan relationship in this pivotal Asia-Pacific region," noted Shin. “This new investment will help us establish a world-leading program on Taiwan at Stanford.”

To inaugurate the new program, APARC will host the conference "Innovate Taiwan: Shaping the Future of a Postindustrial Society." Held on May 2 at the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall, this full-day event will convene esteemed academic and industry leaders to engage in panel discussions covering topics such as migration, culture, and societal trends; health policy and biotechnology; economic growth and innovation; and the dynamics of domestic and international Taiwanese industries. Visit the conference webpage to learn more and register to attend in person.

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Robert Carlin, Siegfried Hecker, and Victor Cha
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A Perilous Crossroads: Deciphering North Korea's Escalating Belligerence

Amid North Korea’s increasing provocations, APARC’s Korea Program hosted three experts — Robert Carlin, Victor Cha, and Siegfried Hecker — to consider whether Pyongyang plans to go to war.
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Portrait of Kiyoteru Tsutsui and a silhouette of the Toyko Syline at night.
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Decoding Japan's Pulse: Insights from the Stanford Japan Barometer

The Asahi Shimbun is publishing a series highlighting the Stanford Japan Barometer, a periodic public opinion survey co-developed by Stanford sociologist Kiyoteru Tsutsui and Dartmouth College political scientist Charles Crabtree, which unveils nuanced preferences and evolving attitudes of the Japanese public on political, economic, and social issues.
Decoding Japan's Pulse: Insights from the Stanford Japan Barometer
Panelists discuss the US-Japan alliance
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A Pivotal Partnership: The U.S.-Japan Alliance, Deterrence, and the Future of Taiwan

A panel discussion co-hosted by Shorenstein APARC and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA examined the key dynamics at play in the unfolding regional competition over power, influence, and the fate of Taiwan.
A Pivotal Partnership: The U.S.-Japan Alliance, Deterrence, and the Future of Taiwan
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The program will explore policy-relevant approaches to address Taiwan’s contemporary economic and societal challenges and advance U.S.-Taiwan partnerships.

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Taiwan skyline at dawn with logo of the Taiwan Program and text about the conference "Innovate Taiwan: Shaping the Future of a Postindustrial Society"
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*Please note, registration for this event has closed.*

A conference to inaugurate the Taiwan Program at Shorenstein APARC

As Taiwan seeks to stimulate vitality and progress in an era defined by shifting global dynamics, it grapples with a myriad of challenges akin to those that other postindustrial societies face. How can Taiwan innovate its economic competitiveness and refashion collaboration networks amid rapid technological transformations and diminishing globalization? What strategies can it employ to adapt to vast demographic changes? How can it cultivate cultural diversity?

Join us in person to discuss these questions and more at a full-day conference celebrating the launch of the new Taiwan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Hear from esteemed academic and industry leaders as they delve into topics including demography and migration, societal trends, health policy and biotechnology, economic growth and innovation, and the dynamics of domestic and international Taiwanese industries. 

Watch this space for updates on the agenda and confirmed speakers.

9:00 - 9:15 a.m.
Opening Session

Opening remarks

Gi-Wook Shin
Director of Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University

Congratulatory remarks

Richard Saller
President of Stanford University


9:15-10:45 a.m.
Panel 1: Migration, Culture, and Societal Trends        
    
Panelists 

Pei-Chia Lan
Distinguished Professor of Sociology, National Taiwan University

Ruo-Fan Liu
Ph.D. Candidate at University of Wisconsin-Madison
Incoming Postdoctoral Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University

Jing Tsu
Jonathan D. Spence Chair Professor of Comparative Literature & East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University

Moderator
Kiyoteru Tsutsui
Deputy Director of Shorenstein APARC and Director of the Japan Program, Stanford University


10:45-11:00 a.m.
Coffee and Tea Break


11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Panel 2: Health Policy and Biotechnology

Panelists 

Ted Chang
CTO of Quanta Computer

Bobby Sheng
Group CEO and Chairman of Bora Pharmaceuticals

C. Jason Wang
Director of the Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention
LCY Tan Lan Lee Professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy, Stanford University

Moderator
Karen Eggleston
Director of the Asia Health Policy Program, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University


12:30-2:00 p.m. 
Lunch Break


2:00-3:00 p.m.  
Panel 3: Taiwan at Stanford and Beyond

Panelists 

Tiffany Chang
Undergraduate Student in Management Science and Engineering
Research Assistant at Shorenstein APARC , Stanford University

Carissa Cheng
Undergraduate Student in International Relations, Stanford University

Yi-Ting Chung
Ph.D. Student in History, Stanford University

Moderator
Marco Widodo
Undergraduate Student in Political Science, Stanford University


3:00-3:30 p.m. 
Coffee and Tea Break


3:30-5:00 p.m.    
Panel 4:  Economic Growth and Innovation

Panelists

Steve Chen
Co-Founder of YouTube and Taiwan Gold Card Holder #1

Jason Hsu
Edward Mason Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School
Former Legislator of the Legislative Yuan Taiwan

CY Huang
Founder and President of FCC Partners

Rose Tsou
Former Head of Verizon Media International and E-Commerce
Former Regional Head of Yahoo APAC
Former General Manager of MTV Taiwan

Moderator
Larry Diamond
Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University


5:00 - 5:30 p.m.    
Social Networking Session
 

Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall, First floor, Central, S150
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

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In December 2023, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) announced the launch of its newest research initiative, the Program on Identity, Democracy, and Justice (IDJ). Last month, IDJ hosted Harvard University professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die, for a series of launch events centered on questions explored in their newest book, Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

The day’s programming included a seminar with graduate students and postdoctoral scholar associates of the program, a roundtable with undergraduate students, and the culminating event, titled "Multiracial Democracy and its Future in the United States” — a public lecture and moderated conversation with the authors about their newest book.

"Tyranny of the Minority" book displayed on a table
Copies of "Tyranny of the Minority" were available for sale at the event. | Nora Sulots

The event opened with remarks from Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, and was co-moderated by Stanford's Hakeem Jefferson, assistant professor of political science and IDJ’s faculty director, and UC Berkeley's Jake Grumbach. Following the conversation, the panel engaged the standing-room-only crowd through a lively audience Q&A.

In their talk, Levitsky and Ziblatt reiterated their argument that democratic erosion in the United States has been enabled by “democratic semi-loyalist” elites who prioritize their own career incentives or partisan gains over their duty to condemn anti-democratic behavior, such as instigating political violence or refusing to accept electoral defeats.

Grumbach and Jefferson invited the authors to discuss how their background as scholars of comparative politics – Levitsky and Ziblatt have studied Latin American and European politics, respectively – informed their analysis of American democracy. The authors commented on how remarkable they found the parallels between moments when democratic norms have come under question in other countries, like the February 6 insurrection in France or Peronist leader Cafiero’s key decision to join President Alfonsín on the balcony of the presidential palace to accept defeat and deter another coup in Argentina, and what we see in the U.S. today.

The conversation also addressed open debates on how concerned we should be about American democracy, and audience members brought up questions on how to think about generational differences, demographic change, and frustrated lawmaking. Jefferson called the launch event an “exciting, energizing convening of ideas” and shared how keen he is to continue these conversations through upcoming program events.

You can learn more about IDJ on the program’s website and watch a recording of the event below.

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View of the huge crowd from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, during the March on Washington
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New Research Program Explores Intersection of Identity, Democracy, and Justice

Led by Professor Hakeem Jefferson, the program housed at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law will advance innovative research on the multifaceted dimensions of identity and their role in democratic development, struggles for recognition, social justice, and inclusion.
New Research Program Explores Intersection of Identity, Democracy, and Justice
Hakeem Jefferson
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Welcoming Hakeem Jefferson to CDDRL

Jefferson, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, will join the center as a faculty affiliate.
Welcoming Hakeem Jefferson to CDDRL
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The launch events hosted by CDDRL's new research initiative invited undergraduates, graduate associates, and members of the public to discuss the future of multiracial democracy.

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