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Why did Putin launch the war against Ukraine and what are his objectives and plan? How did the war impact Russia? What is the effect of Western sanctions on the Russian economy and society? How much longer can Russia sustain the war? What is the Russian public opinion regarding the war?

In this talk, Vladimir Milov will offer a highly detailed and nuanced analysis of all issues related to Russia and the war from his perspective based on long-term political experience and economic and state governance expertise.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Vladimir Milov Former Deputy Energy Minister of Russia (2002), adviser on economic and international affairs to Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny since 2017. Co-author of critical reports on Vladimir Putin's legacy ("Putin. The Results" & others) published together with late Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2008-2011.

 

 

Over the past three weeks, activists across Iran have been organizing to seek justice for the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who passed away in the custody of the country's Guardian Patrol. This is one of a series of protest movements that have challenged the Iranian regime over the past five years.

Stanford in Government, in partnership with CDDRL, hosts a conversation with Jason Rezaian on October 13 from 5:00-6:30 pm in the Moghadam Conference Room 123 of Encina Commons.

In this conversation, he'll offer his perspective on the near-term prospects for U.S.-Iran relations and draw parallels between his own experience in Iran and the experience of American political prisoners abroad.

Mr. Rezaian is a writer for Global Opinions at The Washington Post. He served as The Post's correspondent in Tehran from 2012 to 2016. He spent 544 days unjustly imprisoned by Iranian authorities until his release in January 2016. Mr. Rezaian chronicled his experience in Iran in his 2019 book Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the establishment of CDDRL, Hicham Alaoui joins ARD to discuss his recently released book, Pacted Democracy in the Middle East: Tunisia and Egypt in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Click here to order a copy of the book.

Pacted Democracy in the Middle East provides a new theory for how democracy can materialize in the Middle East, and the broader Muslim world. It shows that one pathway to democratization lays not in resolving important, but often irreconcilable, debates about the role of religion in politics. Rather, it requires that Islamists and their secular opponents focus on the concerns of pragmatic survival—that is, compromise through pacting, rather than battling through difficult philosophical issues about faith. This is the only book-length treatment of this topic, and one that aims to redefine the boundaries of an urgent problem that continues to haunt struggles for democracy in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hicham Alaoui is the founder and director of the Hicham Alaoui Foundation, which undertakes innovative social scientific research in the Middle East and North Africa. He is a scholar on the comparative politics of democratization and religion, with a focus on the MENA region.

In the past, he served as a visiting scholar and Consulting Professor at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University.  He more recently served as postdoctoral fellow and research associate at Harvard University. He was also Regents Lecturer at several campuses of the University of California system. Outside of academia, he has worked with the United Nations in various capacities, such as the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. He has also worked with the Carter Center in its overseas missions on conflict resolution and democracy advancement. He has served on the MENA Advisory Committee for Human Rights Watch and the Advisory Board of the Carnegie Middle East Center. He served on the board of the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University and has recently joined the Advisory Board of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard.

He holds an A.B. from Princeton University, M.A. from Stanford University, and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. His latest book is Pacted Democracy in the Middle East: Tunisia and Egypt in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave, 2022). His memoirs, Journal d'un Prince Banni, were published in 2014 by Éditions Grasset, and have since been translated into several languages. He is also co-author with Robert Springborg of The Political Economy of Arab Education (Lynne Rienner, 2021), and co-author with the same colleague on the forthcoming volume Security Assistance in the Middle East: Challenges and the Need for Change (Lynne Rienner, 2023). His academic research has been widely published in various French and English journals, magazines, and newspapers of record.

This event is co-sponsored by ARD, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, and the Center for African Studies at Stanford University.​

2022 Sam Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture
Date & Time: Wednesday, September 28, 2022     |    4:30 - 6:00 PM PT 
Location: Green Library, Bing Wing, 5th floor, Bender Room

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Overreach and Overreaction: The Downward Spiral in the U.S.-China Relations 

Stanford Libraries and the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions are pleased to present the 2022 Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture featuring Professor Susan Shirk who will be speaking on Overreach and Overreaction: The Downward Spiral in the U.S.-China Relations.  This is an in-person event.

Why did China abandon its successful foreign policy of restraint and shift toward confrontation and unchecked control over its own society? Surprisingly the shift began under Hu Jintao’s collective leadership (2002-12). Under the personalistic leadership of Xi Jinping the trend has intensified. Those who implement Xi's directives compete to outdo one another, provoking an even greater global backlash. To counter China’s overreach, the worst mistake the rest of the world, and the United States in particular, can make is to overreact. Understanding the domestic political drivers of foreign policy in both countries can help us stem the downward spiral in relations.

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About the Speaker

Susan Shirk is Chair of the 21st Century China Center and research professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. Shirk’s book, China:  Fragile Superpower helped frame the policy debate on China in the U.S. and other countries. Her articles have appeared in leading academic publications in political science, international relations, and China studies. She previously served as deputy assistant secretary of state (1997-2000) responsible for U.S. policy toward China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia. She is director emeritus of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and founded the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue, an unofficial forum for discussion of security issues. Shirk is a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College and received her PhD from M.I.T.

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The family of Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh donated his personal archive to the Stanford Libraries' Special Collections and endowed the Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture series to honor his legacy and to inspire future generations. Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh (1919-2004) was former Governor of the Central Bank in Taiwan. During his tenure, he was responsible for the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, and was widely recognized for achieving stability and economic growth. In his long and distinguished career as economist and development specialist, he held key positions in multilateral institutions including the Asian Development Bank, where as founding Director, he was instrumental in advancing the green revolution and in the transformation of rural Asia. Read more about Dr. Hsieh.

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Questions? Contact Sonia Lee from Stanford Libraries 

Do political parties serve the interests of representative democracy today?

Distrust in parties is at historic highs, and many reform efforts attempt to weaken party influence in politics. The erosion of intermediary institutions lies at the heart of the broader crisis of liberal democracy. While there is ample evidence that party success or failure impacts democratic outcomes in emerging democracies, we know less about how parties (and their strength or weakness) contribute to problems in established democracies. This talk lays out a concept of party intermediary capacity, which helps to assess how parties mobilize and represent voters. It then traces how party intermediary capacity has changed over time, with particular attention to the political economy of representation in the neoliberal era.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Didi Kuo is a Senior Research Scholar and Associate Director for Research at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Her research interests include democratization, political parties, and political reform. She oversees the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective, which seeks to bridge academic and policy research on American democracy. She was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America and is the author of Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the Rise of Programmatic Politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press 2018). 

 

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Norman Farrell will deliver this year's Annual Lecture on International Justice in a talk titled, "International Criminal Law, its Legal Framework and its Application in Ukraine."

The Center for Human Rights and International Justice's Annual Lecture on International Justice provides a space for highly accomplished figures in the international justice sphere to discuss meta-level topics, trends and techniques. These events are generously supported by Mr. John Rough.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Norman Farrell is an international Prosecutor with extensive experience in leading and managing large-scale criminal investigations or prosecutions of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and terrorist acts.  He has prosecuted cases arising from serious international crimes in the Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Lebanon. Mr. Farrell’s areas of expertise include international humanitarian law, international criminal law and advocacy before international criminal tribunals.

Mr. Farrell was appointed the Prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in March 2012.  Prior to this appointment, Mr Farrell was Deputy Prosecutor since 2008 at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).  Mr. Farrell held positions in the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICTY from 1999-2008 that include the Prosecutor’s Legal Director, Senior Appeals Counsel and Head of the Appeals Section. He represented, on appeal, the Office of the Prosecutor in a number of cases before the ICTY Appeals Chamber including the first prosecution for genocide in Prosecutor vs. Kristic.

From 1999-2003 he was, simultaneously, Prosecution Appeals Counsel on cases before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on genocide and violations of international humanitarian law in Rwanda. From 2002-2003 he was the Head of the Appeals Section of the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICTR.

From 1996-1999, Mr. Farrell worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Bosnia as a delegate, subsequently in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania as the Regional Legal Advisor.  In 1998, he was Legal Advisor on international humanitarian law and international criminal law for the ICRC in Geneva, Switzerland.

Before his involvement in international law, Mr Farrell was Crown Counsel at the Crown Law Office - Criminal in Toronto, Canada and has appeared as Counsel before the Ontario Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada.

Mr. Farrell holds a Master of Laws (LLM) from Columbia University in New York, and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) as well as B.A (Hons) from Queens University, Kingston, Ontario. He was admitted to the Law Society of Ontario in 1988.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, CREEES Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies, and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

Corruption is rampant in many authoritarian regimes, leading to the widespread perception that autocrats have little incentive or ability to curb government wrongdoing. Yet meaningful anti-corruption efforts by nondemocratic governments are more common and more often successful than is widely assumed.

In this talk, Christopher Carothers draws on extensive documentary research to argue that Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign in China, despite its limitations, has been effective at curbing bribery, embezzlement, and other illicit practices since 2012. Moreover, although corruption control is often thought to rely on democratic or quasi-democratic institutions constraining power, Xi’s campaign has succeeded through a top-down, authoritarian approach. The outcomes of this signature Xi policy, Carothers explains, hold broader implications for our thinking about China’s future direction.

This talk is based on Carothers’ first book, Corruption Control in Authoritarian Regimes: Lessons From East Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Christopher Carothers is a political scientist conducting research on authoritarian politics with a regional focus on China and East Asia. His research has been published in Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Democracy, the Journal of East Asian Studies, the Journal of Contemporary China, Politics and Society, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and other leading publications. Dr. Carothers received his PhD in Government from Harvard University in 2019 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Contemporary China.

In this talk, prominent political activist Sanaa Seif and award-winning journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous will discuss the current political conditions in Egypt, the massive expansion of the carceral state under the rule of Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and the country’s role within the geopolitical shifts reshaping the region. At the heart of the conversation will be the newly released book, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, authored by Seif's brother Alaa Abdel-Fattah, one of the most high-profile political prisoners in Egypt. The book will be available for purchase at the event.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Sanaa Seif is an Egyptian filmmaker, producer, and political activist. She has been imprisoned three times under the Sisi regime for her activism, most recently from the summer of 2020 until December 2021, when she was abducted by security forces after trying to get a letter in to her brother in prison. Hundreds of cultural figures and dozens of institutions campaigned for her release.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist based in Cairo. For eight years he worked as a producer and correspondent for the TV/radio news hour Democracy Now! In 2011, he returned to Egypt to cover the revolution. Since then, he has reported for a number of print and broadcast outlets from across the region. He received an Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for his coverage of the Egyptian revolution and an Emmy award for his coverage of the Donald Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban. He is currently an editor and reporter at Mada Masr, Egypt's leading independent media outlet.

This event is co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.​

Once upon a time, there was a seductive story about twin revolutions, a political one in France and an industrial one in Britain, that supposedly ushered in our modern world. This narrative never sat well with empirical realities, yet it lives on in textbooks. What might be a more persuasive framework for a global history of the modern era? What are the implications for research and the teaching of history?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Stephen Kotkin is the John P. Birkelund Professor of History and International Affairs in what used to be called the Woodrow Wilson School and in the History Department of Princeton University, as well as a Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He directs the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and co-directs its program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy, which he founded. He also founded Princeton’s Global History Initiative. His scholarship encompasses geopolitics and authoritarian regimes in history and in the present.

Kotkin has published two volumes of a three-volume history of the world as seen from Stalin’s desk: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 (Penguin, November 2014) and Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 (Penguin, October 2017). The final installment, Totalitarian Superpower, 1941-1990s, is underway. He writes reviews and essays for Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, and The Wall Street Journal, and served as the business book reviewer for The New York Times Sunday Business Section. He is an occasional consultant for governments and some private companies. PhD UC Berkeley (1988).