Apparel export quotas that defined the worldwide garment trade for four decades ended on 1 January 2005. Trade data since then suggest that production has shifted from Southeast Asia to China. For the most developed countries in Southeast Asia, the loss of the garment industry will be a tolerable inconvenience. But it will devastate countries whose economies depend on such exports. An extreme example is Cambodia, three-fourths of whose exports are apparel. Are the threads from which these poor economies hang about to break? Is this industrys migration out of Southeast Asia inevitable and irrevocable? What, if anything, can governments and companies in the region do?

Geoffrey Stafford earned his PhD in political science (1998) and an MA in Southeast Asian studies (1996) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After completing his dissertation, Globalization Amid Diversity: Economic Development Policy in Multi-Ethnic Malaysia 1987-1997, he joined a large retailer to work on issues of corporate social responsibility in the global garment-manufacturing arena. In that capacity he is now analyzing the effects of quota termination on the world apparel industry. He has taught the politics of Southeast Asia at the University of San Francisco.

America has done more than any other country to change the world. Yet, paradoxically, America is one of the countries least prepared to handle the world that it has changed. America has sprinkled magical stardust into the eyes of billions. It has made them believe that they too can succeed and thrive. Yet the world order remains frozen in time. The multilateral architecture is a fossilization of the 1945 power structure. The world has changed. But its structures have not. Global contradictions are emerging. America should begin to prepare itself for them. Ambassador Mahbubani will explore and discuss these and related ideas drawn from his latest book (forthcoming in 2005). Kishore Mahbubani modestly describes himself as ?a student of philosophy.? Others, less modest, have called him ?an Asian Toynbee, preoccupied with the rise and fall of civilizations? (The Economist) and a ?Max Weber of the new ?Confucian ethic?? (Washington Post). Without question he is one of Asia?s leading public intellectuals. His many publications include the provocatively titled Can Asians Think? (1998). His thirty-year career as a diplomat has included postings in Cambodia, Malaysia, and the United States. He was president of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002 and a fellow at Harvard University in 1991-92. He holds degrees in philosophy from Dalhousie University (1976) and the University of Singapore (1971). This is the tenth Southeast Asia Forum seminar of the 2003-2004 academic year.

Future historians will mark the first national election to be held in Malaysia since the retirement of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (1981-2003) as a watershed in the country's political history. Among key questions circulating in the run-up to the voting on 21 March 2004 were these: Would the ruling National Front gain or lose votes and seats? (Surprise: gained greatly.) Would the opposition Islamic Party, now in control of two states, improve or worsen its position? (Surprise: worsened sharply.) Would KeADILan, the political party which emerged after the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim, gain or lose? (Surprise: lost badly.) Answers to other questions were still unknown: Would the election benefit Malaysia's current Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi, at the congress of his political party later this year? What would the ruling coalition's landslide imply for Malaysian democracy, stability, and development? For Malaysia's role in the campaign against terrorism? For the country's relations with its neighbors and with the U.S.? (Surprise: Come hear Elizabeth Wong and find out.)

This is the ninth seminar of the 2003-2004 academic year Southeast Asia Forum.

Daulah Islamiyya (Islamic sovereignty, or an Islamic state) is a declared objective of the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyya. In Malaysia, where parliamentary elections are expected to be held in April, both the Muslim-Malay party (UMNO) in the ruling coalition and the Islamist party (PAS) opposed to UMNO have offered rival visions of Malaysia as an Islamic state. Radical groups in Indonesia have proposed replacing the "Pancasila state" in their country with an Islamic state. So what exactly is an "Islamic state"? And why does it matter so much for politics -- radical or democratic -- in Muslim Southeast Asia? Dr. Martinez will review and explore the contexts, in theory and in practice, that can help us understand what this debate is about. Patricia Martinez, a Malaysian, is among the most highly regarded and widely published scholars working on Islam in Southeast Asia. She is based at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, where she is senior research fellow for Religion and Culture and Head of Intercultural Studies at the Asia-Europe Institute. Her writings relevant to her talk include "Islam, Constitutionalism and the Islamic State" (2004) and "The Islamic State or the State of Islam in Malaysia"(2001). A 2003 essay, "Deconstructing Jihad; Southeast Asian Contexts," is available at http://www.ntu.edu.sg/idss/new-publi.asp. Dr. Martinez has just returned to Stanford from speaking engagements in Australia.

Sandra Morris will discuss her company's experience in the evolution of their global workforce. Morris is the general manager of Intel's e-Business Group which develops and runs all of the information systems, supply chain software, and internet applications at Intel Corporation. During the past three years, Intel's e-Business Group has been one of Intel's lead vehicles in establishing a professional software development and support capability in places such as Bangalore, India and Penang, Malaysia. Morris will discuss her experiences on how to be successful in global transitions as well as some of the pitfalls. She will also address the potential - and the limits - of offshoring and outsourcing.

Sandra Morris is vice president and chief information officer of Intel Corporation. As CIO, she manages Intel's e-Business Group and jointly manages Intel's information technology (IT) strategies with Douglas Busch.

Morris drives Intel's e-Business efforts. In this role, she is responsible for enterprise applications at Intel, including supply chain management, finance, employee services, marketing, and field sales and support applications. She oversees Intel's use of the Internet for e-Business with customers and suppliers, and is responsible for leading Intel to be a 100 percent e-Corporation.

Morris joined Intel from the David Sarnoff Research Center for RCA Corporation, where she prototyped the use of PCs in innovative multimedia applications. Prior to her work at RCA, Morris was a faculty member at the University of Delaware, where her research focused on the use of PCs in families and in schools. Morris co-authored a book published by McGraw-Hill, Multimedia Application Development Using Indeo® Video and DVI Technology.

Morris is a graduate of the University of Delaware where she earned her bachelor's degree, with honors and distinction, in education in 1976, and her master's degree in human resources in 1981. She has also completed postgraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania.