**This event has been cancelled**

Torben Iversen is Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy at Harvard. His research and teaching interests include comparative political economy, electoral politics, and applied formal theory. He is the author of Capitalism, Democracy, and Welfare (Cambridge UP 2005), Contested Economic Institutions (Cambridge UP 1999), and co-author (with Frances Rosenbluth) of Women, Work, and Power: The Political Economy of Gender Inequality (Yale UP, 2010). He is also the co-editor of Unions, Employers and Central Bankers (Cambridge UP 2000) and has published more than three dozen articles in leading journals and edited volumes. His work has won numerous American Political Science Association prizes including the Victoria Schuck Award, Best Book on European Politics and Society Award, the Luebbert Best Article Award, and the Gabriel Almond Best Dissertation Award. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow and National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is currently completing a book-length project with David Soskice on the political representation of economic interests in historical perspective.

This seminar is part of the Comparative Politics Workshop in the Department of Political Science and is co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

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The Russian Economy is in a recession due to a perfect storm of the low oil prices, sanctions and the lack of reforms. First time since 1998, Russians see a major fall in their real incomes. How long will the recession continue?  What can the Russian government do? What will happen after the recession is over?
 

Sergei Guriev is a professor of economics at Sciences Po in Paris, France. From 2004 to 2013, Dr. Guriev was a tenured professor of economics and rector of the New Economic School in Moscow. He will begin an appointment as Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 2016.

The Russian System of personalized power has been demonstrating an amazing capacity for survival even in the midst of decay. It has defied many predictions and ruined many analytical narratives. Today the Russian authoritarian rule is trying to prolong its life by turning to repressions at home and by containing the West. Russia, kicking over the global chess board with the war in Ukraine, returns to the international scene as a revisionist and revanchist power. The Russian Matrix demise will be painful, and it already has brought about  Russia’s confrontation with the West.  The challenge posed by Russia’s decaying petro –nuclear state is huge, and it is sure to be one of the dominant problems of the twenty-first century.

RSVP

Lilia Shevtsova is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution (Washington), and an Associate Fellow at the Russia-Eurasia Program, Chatham House - The Royal Institute of International Affairs (London). She is the member of the boards of the Institute for Humanities (Vienna), the Finnish Centre for Excellence in Russian Studies (Helsinki), the Liberal Mission Foundation, and the New Eurasia Foundation (Moscow); a member of the International Forum for Democratic Studies’ Research Council(Washington); a member of the Editorial Boards of the journals: “American Interest,”“Journal of Democracy,” and “New Eastern Europe.“ Shevtsova was Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington) and the Moscow Carnegie Center, founding chair of the Davos World Economic Forum Council on Russia’s Future, and a member of the Council on Terrorism. “Foreign Policy” magazine included Shevtsova in the list of 100 Global Public Intellectuals. She was a participant at the Bilderberg Club meetings; served as Chair of the Program on Eurasia and Eastern Europe, SSRC (Washington) and member of the Social Council for Central and Eastern European Studies. She contributes to global leading media, including: Foreign Policy, FT, Washington Post, Le Monde, Monde Diplomatique, Die Zeit, Fokus, El Pais, American Interest, Survival, Journal of Democracy, Diplomaatia. 

Shevtsova is author of twenty books, including Yeltsin’s Russia: Myths and Reality; Putin’s Russia; Russia –Lost in Transition: The Yeltsin and Putin Legacies; Lonely Power (Why Russia Has Failed to Become the West and Why the West Is Weary of Russia), Russia: Change or Decay (in co-authorship with Andrew Wood), Crisis: Russia and the West in the Time of Trouble.

A Lecture-Concert by

Professor Jindong Cai, Music Director and Conductor, Stanford Symphony Orchestra

In collaboration with members of

The Peking University Symphony Orchestra

NOV 12, 2015

19:30 – 21:00

Stanford Center at Peking University

At the turn of the twentieth century, the foundations of traditional Chinese society were crumbling. Many patriotic and idealistic young people went overseas to seek inspiration and education, determined to learn from the outside world and forge a new path forward for China. Beethoven was introduced to China during this period by a series of remarkable artists and intellectuals who learned about the composer while studying in Japan. The polymath artist, writer, and monk Li Shutong was the first Chinese to write about Beethoven in a short, but revealing, article called  “The Sage of Music.”  Xiao Youmei was the first Chinese to bring the sound of Beethoven to Chinese people.  After his studies in Japan and Germany, Xiao came back to China in 1921 and began promoting music education at Peking University, where he created the first Chinese symphony orchestra to perform Beethoven’s music. Since then, Beethoven has become an iconic figure in China and played a role in many major historical events from the May Fourth Movement to the normalization of US-China relations.  Beethoven became a hero to reformers, intellectuals, music lovers, and party cadres alike. The new Penguin Special “Beethoven in China,” by Stanford professor and orchestra conductor Jindong Cai and culture journalist Sheila Melvin tells the compelling story of Beethoven and the Chinese people.

In the first part of this special lecture-concert, Professor Cai will share his own experience of hearing Beethoven’s music for the first time in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. He will also briefly tell the story of how Beethoven and his music became so deeply rooted in modern China. The second part of the event will feature a 15-member ensemble of musicians from the Peking University Orchestra – a first-ever re-creation of the 1922 orchestra that premiered Beethoven in Beijing. The performance, conducted by Maestro Cai, will give the audience a unique historical experience and allow them to travel back in time and hear how Beethoven’s music sounded when it was first performed at Peking University.  

General Philip M. Breedlove will discuss the rapidly evolving geopolitical climate in Europe. Additionally, he will highlight many of the current and future security challenges which the United States and NATO must be prepared for.

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Gen. Breedlove is Commander, Supreme Allied Command, Europe, SHAPE, Belgium and Headquarters, U.S. European Command, Stuttgart, Germany.   

The General was raised in Forest Park, Ga., and was commissioned in 1977 as a distinguished graduate of Georgia Tech's ROTC program. He has been assigned to numerous operational, command and staff positions, and has completed nine overseas tours, including two remote tours. He has commanded a fighter squadron, an operations group, three fighter wings, and a numbered air force. Additionally, he has served as Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, Washington, D.C. Operations Officer in the Pacific Command Division on the Joint Staff; Executive Officer to the Commander of Headquarters Air Combat Command; the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force; and Vice Director for Strategic Plans and Policy on the Joint Staff. 

Prior to assuming his current position, General Breedlove served as the Commander, U.S. Air Forces in Europe; Commander, U.S. Air Forces Africa; Commander, Air Component Command, Ramstein; and Director, Joint Air Power Competence Centre, Kalkar, Germany.  He was responsible for Air Forces activities, conducted through 3rd Air Force, in an area of operations covering more than 19 million square miles.  This area included 105 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.  As Vice Chief, he presided over the Air Staff and served as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Requirements Oversight Council and Deputy Advisory Working Group. He assisted the Chief of Staff with organizing, training, and equipping of 680,000 active-duty, Guard, Reserve and civilian forces serving in the United States and overseas. General Breedlove has flown combat missions in Operation Joint Forge/Joint Guardian. He is a command pilot with 3,500 flying hours, primarily in the F-16.

The brain works with electricity. Modulating the electrical function of the brain at different sites of the brain can give rise to information about how the brain works and how it may be broken in certain disorders. In the next decades of the century, we will be approaching the field of electriceuticals rather than pharmaceuticals in the treatment of many neuropsychiatric disorders. In this talk, Prof. Parvizi will give an overview of the lessons learned from the time of classical stimulations of the brain until the current technological advancements in this field.

Josef Parvizi MD PHD is an Associate Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and director of Stanford Human Intracranial Cognitive Electrophysiology Program. He received his MD from the University of Oslo and PhD in neurosciences from the University of Iowa. He completed his medical internship at Mayo Clinic and Neurology Residency at BIDMC-Harvard before joining the UCLA for fellowship training in Clinical Epilepsy and Neurophysiology.  Prof. Parvizi moved to Stanford University in July 2007 and started the Human Intracranial Cognitive Electrophysiology Program (SHICEP). His research is now supported by NIH, Stanford NeuroVentures Program, and Stanford School of Medicine. His expertise is in functional mapping of the human brain using the three methods of electrocorticography, electrical brain stimulation, and functional imaging.

This is an event that will be held at BCC

What have China and Japan learned from each other? How has this long interaction shaped the images the two countries have of each other since imperial times to the present? Tracing the different phases of learning between China and Japan from the Tang, Meiji, and post 1972, Ezra Vogel will make suggestions about how the two countries might deal with history issues.

Ezra Vogel is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard. After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan in 1950, he studied sociology in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, receiving his Ph.D. in 1958. He then went to Japan for two years to study the Japanese language and conduct research interviews with middle-class families. From 1961-1964, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, studying Chinese language and history. He was director of Harvard’s Fairbank Center and the Asia Center. He remained at Harvard, becoming lecturer in 1964 and, in 1967, professor. Professor Vogel retired from teaching on June 30, 2000.

Drawing on his original fieldwork in Japan, he wrote Japan's New Middle Class (1963). A book based on several years of interviewing and reading materials from China, Canton Under Communism (1969), won the Harvard University Press faculty book of the year award. The Japanese edition of his book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979) is the all-time best-seller in Japan of non-fiction by a Western author. His study of Guangdong is published as One Step Ahead: Guangdong Under Reform (1989). His book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011) became a best seller in China. He lectures frequently in Asia, both in Chinese and Japanese. He has visited East Asia every summer since 1958 and has spent a total of over six years in Asia.

This event is fully booked. 

This event is now full.  Please contact khaley@stanford.edu if you would like to be added to the wait list.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not the cipher he is sometimes thought to be. His early life, his career in intelligence, and his early service in the newly democratic St. Petersburg -- explain the policies now on display at home and increasingly abroad. Putin has evolved as the country has, becoming the most consequential leader of any country in the world. Although he is often portrayed as an enigma or as caricature, it is essential to understand the characteristics, events and goals that motivate him.  

Steven Lee Myers has worked at The New York Times for twenty-six years, seven of them in Russia during the period when Putin consolidated his power. He spent two years as bureau chief in Baghdad, covering the winding down of the American war in Iraq, and now covers national security issues. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Date: October 20, 2015  (Tuesday)

Time: 16:30 – 18:00  

Language: Lecture in English

Venue: Stanford Center at Peking University

China’s controversial one-child policy, launched in 1980, continues to generate controversy and misinformation.  Several generalizations about the policy are widely believed:  that Mao Zedong consistently opposed efforts to limit China’s population growth; that as a result China’s population continued to grow rapidly until after his death, necessitating the switch to mandatory and coercive birth limits; that the launching of the one-child policy led to a dramatic decline in China’s fertility rate; and that due to the one-child policy, China and the world benefited from 400 million births that were thereby prevented. These are just a few of the common claims about China’s one-child policy that are myths, contradicted by the facts.  This talk by Prof Whyte, which is based on a paper co-authored with demographers Wang Feng and Yong Cai, is designed to systematically correct the record. 

Martin K. Whyte is the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Sociology, Emeritus. He was Professor of Sociology at Harvard from 2000 to 2015. Previously, he taught at the University of Michigan and George Washington University. His research and teaching specialties are comparative sociology, sociology of the family, sociology of development, the sociological study of contemporary China, and the study of post-communist transitions. Within sociology, Whyte’s primary interest has been in historical and comparative questions—why particular societies are organized the way they are and how differences across societies affect the nature of people’s lives. Whyte is a member of the American Sociological Association, the Association for Asian Studies, the Sociological Research Association, the Population Association of America, and the National Committee for U.S. China Relations.