Stanford University

Questions of integration: social, political, and economic incorporation of New Europe in a globalized world

Authors
Roland Hsu
News Type
News
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During 2007–2008 the forum on contemporary Europe launched the second phase of its comprehensive, multi-year analysis of Europe and the EU’s global relations in the context of an expanding European Union. What began last year with analysis of political membership this year added a focus on implications of expanded membership in key areas, including social integration of immigrant communities. Forum researchers and invited scholars addressed questions central to understanding the process of European integration and areas of concern it raises. During the fall of 2007, in seminars, keynote speeches, and international conferences, Forum researchers addressed such questions as:

  • What explains the electoral results of populist parties, with their nationalist and anti-immigrant platforms, gaining where they had previously remained marginal (Switzerland) and declining where they had regularly held influence (France)?
  • How should OSCE member states and election monitors respond to the denial of visas for monitoring Russia’s parliamentary elections?
  • What is inflaming renewed outbursts of violence in multiple urban centers? Do the riots reveal urban youth segregated by race? Compelled by fundamentalism? Or disaffected with the promised EU economic mobility?
  • Do instances of violence against ethnicminorities reveal a return to a pre-modern xenophobia or an old behavior used to express a new rejection of EU integration?
  • Will laws protecting historical memory, such as the Spanish act to rebury victims of Fascist forces and German and Austrian laws criminalizing holocaust denial, resolve or inflame neo-fascist parties?
  • What stance can the EU take in regard to Turkey’s article 301 criminalizing historical comments as denigrating the heritage of the Turkish state?
  • Does EU membership mollify or magnify cultural tensions behind separatist movements in cases such as Flanders, Catalonia, Corsica, Basque homelands, and, potentially, Kurdish regions of Turkey?

Highlights of the following fall 2007 events illustrate forum research on these vital questions.

INTERNATIONAL CONVERENCE ON ETHNICITY IN TODAY'S EUROPE

The forum joined with the Stanford Humanities Center to organize an international conference on “Ethnicity in Today’s Europe.” Amir Eshel, director of the forum, opened the conference with remarks on the growth of immigrant communities, and their increasingly widespread origins, as well as implications for security and integration. The Stanford faculty organizing committee identified and attracted the top scholars on the subject from both sides of the Atlantic, including professors Saskia Sassen (sociology, Columbia), Alec Hargreaves (French, Florida State), Leslie Adelson (German studies, Cornell), Kader Konuk (Germanic languages and literatures, Michigan), Rogers Brubaker, (sociology, UCLA), Carole Fink (history, Ohio State), Salvador Cardus Ros (sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), and Bassam Tibi (international relations, University of Gottingen). Panels were moderated by Stanford faculty: Helen Stacy (law school), J.P. Daughton (history), Joshua Cohen (political science, philosophy, FSI), Pavle Levi (art), and Josef Joffe (FSI).

Panelists and a large, engaged public audience convened for a screening of the award-winning film Fortress Europe and a discussion with the film-maker Zelimir Zilnik. The conference-related Presidential Lecture by Partha Chatterjee (political science, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta; anthropology, Columbia), brought a capacity audience to open the conference with a study of the historical foundations of inter-ethnic relations in post-colonial Europe. The forum’s assistant director, Roland Hsu, has invited participants to contribute to a volume he will edit and introduce on Ethnicity in Today’s Europe to be published in 2008.

FSI INTERNATIONAL CONFERNCE: FCE PANEL ON EUROPE - A CHANGING CONTINENT?

The forum invited three leading figures on EU policy to speak on the FCE panel at the FSI international conference. Engaging the theme of power and prosperity, Wolfgang Münchau, writer for the Financial Times; Monica Macovei, former justice minister, Romania; and Mark Leonard, executive director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and Open Society [Soros] Foundation, spoke on the challenge of interpreting recent EU electoral, juridical, economic, and social reforms. This panel examined economic growth in the newest member states in the East, the challenge of political and social integration in the West, and countervailing pressures for consolidating post-communist governments and transparency reforms. The European Union’s expansion to 27 member nations promises a vast Euro-zone and a stronger trans-Atlantic partner. Questions from the audience engaged the panel on what level of confidence should be placed in this promise. The dilemma over Kosovo, pending Serbian EU accession, the expansion eastward to include societies bordering former Soviet republics, the question of Turkey’s membership, as well as tightening labor markets and welfare budgets in Western Europe, led the panel and audience to anticipate with cautious optimism the potency of EU integration and foreign policy initiatives.

AN EVENING WITH ORHAN PAMUK

Forum-affiliated faculty brought such questions to a special lunch with Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk; and then joined an overflow audience event at Memorial Auditorium titled An Evening with Orhan Pamuk. The forum co-sponsored the visit by Pamuk, along with Mediterranean Studies, the Office of the Provost, and the FSI S.T. Lee lecture series.

Research and public programs on these subjects will continue at the forum in the following selected events:

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN POST-COMMUNIST EUROPE

Designed by forum acting director Katherine Jolluck, this international conference will examine the trafficking of women for sexual slavery, a trade that has rapidly expanded since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. The conference will bring together scholars, policy experts, and NGO analysts to discuss the issue from economic, legal, and human rights perspectives. Special attention will be devoted to strategies to combat the problem and address the needs of victimized females. Madeline Rees, head of Women’s Rights and Gender Unit, U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, former U.N. high commissioner for human rights in Bosnia, has been invited to give the keynote speech.

JAN ELIASSON: THE FUTURE OF DARFUR

The forum has invited Jan Eliasson, former Swedish foreign minister and current U.N. special envoy to Darfur, to speak on his work on behalf of the international community and the EU-African Union mission to bring peace and humanitarian relief to Darfur and its neighboring states.

KOSOVO: PROSPECTS FOLLOWING THE DECEMBER 2007 U.N. STUTS TALKS

The forum has invited multiple affiliated centers including the Center for Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies, the Department of History, and the Stanford Law School to co-sponsor a panel discussion following the December 2007 U.N.-EU deadline for status talks. Elez Biberaj, director of the Eurasia division at VOA, and Obrad Kesic, formerly at IREX and also former advisor to Yugoslav President Panic, will speak on prospects for the status of Kosovo and the efficacy of potential EU membership to mediate Kosovo-Serbian relations.

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Semantic Information Systems and Visualization

Business Informatics

In today’s businesses information technology plays a central role. It is not only tightly knit into most enterprises’ core business processes but can also be a major source of innovation. For a considerable time the research in computer science has been concerned both with developing solutions that enable or facilitate particular business activities as well as with the provision of an infrastructure that is capable of providing the necessary data and computing capacity to these applications.

A Ticking Time Bomb: The Global Tobacco Pandemic - Current and Future Scenarios

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John Seffrin, Ph. D., will be speaking on the issues of tobacco, with his experience as CEO of America Cancer Society, and as the immediate past president of the International Union Against Cancer in Geneva, Switzerland.

Medical School Office Building (MSOB)
Room x303
251 Campus Drive
Stanford, CA 94305

John Seffrin CEO of America Cancer Society Speaker
Lectures
Global Tobacco Prevention Research Initiative

Terrorism Law: Between the Executive and Legislative Models

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Daphne Barak-Erez LL.B. (Tel-Aviv) (summa cum laude) 1988, LL. M. (Tel-Aviv) (summa cum laude) 1991, and J. S. D (Tel-Aviv) 1993, is a professor at the Faculty of Law and the Stewart and Judy Colton Chair of Law and Security at Tel-Aviv University. She specializes in administrative law, constitutional law and gender law. She was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School (1993-1994), a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Public Law, Heidelberg (2000), an Honorary Research Fellow at University College, London (2002), a Visiting Researcher at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (2004), a Visiting Fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi (2006), and a Schell Fellow at Yale Law School (2006). She was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Federalism (Fribourg, Switzerland) (2005), the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto (2005 and 2007), the University of Siena (2006) and Queen's University (2007).

She also served as the Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights (2000-2001) and the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Law (2000-2002) and currently serves as a member of Israel's Council of Higher Education (since 2007). She was awarded several prizes, including the Rector's Prize for Excellence in Teaching (twice), the Zeltner Prize, the  Woman of the City Award (by the City of Tel-Aviv) and the Women in Law Award (by the Israeli Bar). She is the author and editor of several books and has many articles published in journals in the United States, Canada, England, and Israel.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Daphne Barak-Erez Professor Speaker Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University
Seminars

Cross-Coupling of International and National Law. Gender Labor Market Non-Discrimination Legislation 1958 - 2005

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Before coming to CDDRL, Miriam Abu Sharkh was employed at the United Nation's specialized agency for work, the International Labour Organization, in Geneva, Switzerland. As the People's Security Coordinator (P4), she analyzed and managed large household surveys from Argentina to Sri Lanka. She also worked on the Report on the World Social Situation for the United Nation's Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York. Previously, she had also been a consultant for the German national development agency (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ) in Germany where she focused on integrating core labor standards into German technical cooperation.

She has written on the spread and effect of human rights related labour standards as well as on welfare regimes, gender discrimination, child labour, social movements and work satisfaction.

Currently, she holds a grant by the German National Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to study the evolvement of worldwide patterns of gender discrimination in the labor market, specifically the effects of international treaties. These questions are addressed in longitudinal, cross-national studies from the 1950´s to today.

This research builds on her previous work as a Post-doctoral Fellow at CDDRL as well as her dissertation on child labor for which she received a "Summa cum Laude" ( Freie Universität Berlin, Germany-joint dissertation committee with Stanford University). After discussing various labor standard initiatives, the dissertation analyzes when and why countries ratify the International Labour Organization's Minimum Age Convention outlawing child labour via event history models. It then examines the effect of ratification on child labor rates over three decades through a panel analyses. While her dissertation employed quantitative methods, her Diplom thesis (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) builds on extensive fieldwork in South Africa examining the genesis, strategies, and structures of the South African women's movement.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Miriam Abu Sharkh

John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building
Stanford, CA 94305

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Visiting Scholar 2007-2010
Miriam_web.jpg
PhD

Before coming to CDDRL, Miriam Abu Sharkh was employed at the United Nation's specialized agency for work, the International Labour Organization, in Geneva, Switzerland. As the People's Security Coordinator (P4), she analyzed and managed large household surveys from Argentina to Sri Lanka. She also worked on the Report on the World Social Situation for the United Nation's Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York. Previously, she had also been a consultant for the German national development agency (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ) in Germany where she focused on integrating core labor standards into German technical cooperation.

She has written on the spread and effect of human rights related labour standards as well as on welfare regimes, gender discrimination, child labour, social movements and work satisfaction.

Currently, she holds a grant by the German National Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to study the evolvement of worldwide patterns of gender discrimination in the labor market, specifically the effects of international treaties. These questions are addressed in longitudinal, cross-national studies from the 1950´s to today.

This research builds on her previous work as a Post-doctoral Fellow at CDDRL as well as her dissertation on child labor for which she received a "Summa cum Laude" ( Freie Universität Berlin, Germany-joint dissertation committee with Stanford University). After discussing various labor standard initiatives, the dissertation analyzes when and why countries ratify the International Labour Organization's Minimum Age Convention outlawing child labour via event history models. It then examines the effect of ratification on child labor rates over three decades through a panel analyses. While her dissertation employed quantitative methods, her Diplom thesis (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) builds on extensive fieldwork in South Africa examining the genesis, strategies, and structures of the South African women's movement.

She has traveled extensity, both professionally and privately, loves to dive and sail and speaks German, Spanish and French as well as rudimentary Arabic.

Her current research interests include labor related international human rights, especially child labour and (non-)discrimination, social movements and work satisfaction.

Miriam Abu Sharkh Visiting Scholar Speaker CDDRL
Seminars

Leaders, Accountability and Foreign Policy in Non-Democracies

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Jessica Weeks is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, the 2007-2008 Zukerman Fellow and a pre-doctoral fellow at CISAC, and the Teaching Assistant for the CISAC Honors Program. Her dissertation, "Leaders, Accountability, and Foreign Policy in Non-Democracies" studies how different levels of domestic accountability affect leaders' decisions about international conflict. Additional research investigates the effectiveness of military interventions, and the escalation and resolution of international military crises.

Jessica graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Political Science from The Ohio State University in 2001, and received an MA in International History and Politics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Jessica L. Weeks Speaker
Seminars
Conflict Resolution

Conceptualizing Biological Agents as Weapons of Warfare

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Carol Atkinson (speaker) retired as a lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Air Force in 2005. While in the military she served in a wide variety of management and operational positions in the fields of intelligence, targeting, and combat assessment. During the Cold War she flew on the Strategic Air Command's nuclear airborne command post as a target analyst. During Operation Desert Storm (1991) she worked on the intelligence staff in Riyadh, and, subsequently, on the contingency planning staff in Dhahran/Khobar, Saudi Arabia. While in the military, she taught at the Air Force Academy and the Air Force's Command and Staff College.

Atkinson holds a PhD in international relations from Duke University, an MA in geography from Indiana University, and a BS from the United States Air Force Academy (5th class with women). She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Atkinson's primary research focuses on U.S. military-to-military contacts as channels of international norm diffusion. She is also working on a project examining the influence of educational exchange programs on democratization and a project on the social construction of the biological warfare threat in the United States.

Jessica Weeks (respondent) is a doctoral candidate in the Stanford Department of Political Science. Her research interests include foreign policy decision-making in non-democratic regimes, the settlement of military crises, and the effects of foreign military interventions on target states. She will be a pre-doctoral fellow at CISAC during 2007-2008. Jessica received her BA in political science from The Ohio State University, and an MA in international history and politics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Carol Atkinston Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for International Studies Speaker University of Southern California
Jessica Weeks Doctoral Candidate, Department of Political Science Commentator Stanford University
Seminars

Ukraine's Victors

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs
Since the 2004 Orange Revolution, most of the news from Ukraine has emphasized the failures of the "revolutionaries." President Viktor Yushchenko and his first prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, could not sustain the economic growth rates seen under the pre-Orange government. Analysts in Moscow, London, Kiev and Washington blamed Ms. Tymoshenko's alleged populism for declining exports and depressed investment. Mr. Yushchenko looked like a feckless leader who was then tainted with charges of corruption over a gas deal between Russia and Ukraine, which delivered windfall profits to a mysterious company in Switzerland.
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