About the event: Governments often impose oversight of the police. Proponents argue that oversight curbs bad behavior, while critics counter that it sparks harmful backlash. We provide evidence from the staged rollout of a new code of criminal procedure in Colombia, which introduced judicial oversight of arrests. Judicial oversight caused a 40% drop in the number of arrests, we find, and a simultaneous improvement in arrest quality. Arrests for low-level crimes like vandalism plummeted, while arrests for serious crimes (like homicide) did not decline. Colombia thus reversed the hemisphere-wide run-up in policing of minor offenses, without police backlash and likely without causing a major crime wave.

About the speaker: Dorothy Kronick is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy, U.C. Berkeley. She is a political scientist studying crime, policing, and democracy in contemporary Latin America. Her research on these topics has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, and Science, among other outlets. Prior to joining GSPP, she was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania; prior to that, she received her PhD from Stanford University.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Reception to follow from 5:00pm - 6:30pm in the lobby in front of the William J. Perry Conference Room

About the event: Thirty years ago, the idea that China could challenge the United States economically, globally, and militarily seemed unfathomable. Yet today, China is considered a great power. How did China manage to build power in international system that was largely dominated by the United States? What factors determined the strategies Beijing pursued to achieve this feat? Using authoritative Chinese sources and granular data, this book demonstrates that China was able to climb to great power status through a careful mix of emulation, exploitation, and entrepreneurship on the international stage. This “upstart” strategy—determined by where and how China chose to compete—allowed China to rise economically, politically, and militarily without triggering a catastrophic international backlash that would stem its rise. China emulated the United States (pursued similar strategies in similar areas) when its leaders thought doing so would build power while reassuring the United States of its intentions. China exploited (adopted similar approaches in new areas of competition) when it felt that the overall US strategy was effective but didn’t want to risk direct confrontation. China pursued entrepreneurial actions (innovative approaches to new and existing areas of competition) when it believed a more effective approach was available that would better enable Communist Party control. Beyond explaining the unique nature of China’s rise, this book provides insights into the next twenty-five years of Chinese power as well as policy guidance on how the United States can maintain a competitive edge in this new era of great power competition.

About the speaker: Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Courtesy Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. She is also a Non-Resident Scholar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She continues to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve for which she currently works at the Pentagon as Deputy Director of Reserve China Global Strategy. For her contributions to U.S. strategy in Asia, she won the Individual Reservist of the Year Award in 2016 (CGO) and 2022 (FGO). She has published widely, including in International Security, Security Studies, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly, the Economist and the New York Times. Her most recent book, Upstart: How China Became a Great Power (Oxford University Press, 2024), evaluates China’s approach to competition. Her book, The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, (Cornell University Press, 2019), won the 2020 American Political Science Association International Security Section Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member. She holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. Her publications and other commentary can be found at www.orianaskylarmastro.com and on twitter @osmastro.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the event: Histories of political science and of the laws of war identify the nineteenth-century scholar Francis Lieber as their modern founder. His 1863 General Orders 100 codified the modern laws of war, internationalizing his political thought. Yet relatively unremarked is that Lieber wrote his foundational texts during U.S. settler colonization, which he justified in whole. I argue that GO100 facilitated settler colonial violence by defining modern war as a public war, arrogating it to sovereign states; distinguishing revenge from retaliation, attributing revenge to the “savage”; and elevating a certain racialized/gendered governance, ascribing it to the Cis-Caucasian race. Producing Native peoples and Native wars as lacking in the proper characteristics of sovereign belligerency resulted in a subordination of status and a legitimation of exterminatory tactics that were subsequently universalized and (re)internationalized through GO100’s determinative influence on the laws of war. Tracing GO100 further exposes the founding of the discipline in Native peoples’ dispossession and extermination.

About the speaker: Helen M Kinsella is a Professor of Political Science & Law, Affiliate Faculty of the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the Human Rights Center, and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change and a Visiting Scholar, The Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.  

She writes on gender and armed conflict and on the histories of international humanitarian law and humanitarianism. She has published in the American Political Science Review, Review of International Studies, International Theory, Political Theory, International Studies Quarterly, Feminist Review, among others.
She is the author of the award winning book The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian (Cornell University Press) and recently  “Settler Empire and the United States: Francis Lieber on the Laws of War,” in the American Political Science Review.

She is currently writing on two longer projects on U.S. Native peoples and Native wars the the development of the laws of war, and on sleep in war.

https://www.helenmkinsella.com

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Lunch to be provided for registered attendees. Registration closes Monday, September 23.

About the Event: In recent years, a series of initiatives have emerged with the aim to advance women’s participation in the nuclear weapons field. These initiatives are informed by two assumptions. Women are missing, and women’s inclusion can bring change. Currently, empirical evidence is missing to support either of the two assumptions. Systematically collected data is lacking on the number of women working in the nuclear weapons field. Women's experiences have been recorded only anecdotally and the impact of women's increased participation remains unclear. The Women and the Bomb project collects the missing data. It studies the roles, experiences and views of women in various sectors of the US nuclear weapons field, including government departments and agencies, national nuclear laboratories, the military and non-governmental organizations.

About the Speaker: Jana Wattenberg is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at Aberystwyth University (funded by UKRI). She is also a visiting scholar at American University (Washington DC), a Lecturer in Security at Aberystwyth University and a Senior Fellow with Women in International Security.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.