ABOUT THE SPEAKER: James Cameron, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC for 2013-14, completed his PhD in July 2013 at the University of Cambridge. James is very interested in the contribution history can make to informing today’s debates on nuclear strategy and U.S.-Russian relations. After completing his master’s in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford, he was a business consultant specializing in the former Soviet Union. 

His dissertation, “The Development of United States Anti-Ballistic Missile Policy, 1961-1972”, used the transformation of the American anti-ballistic missile (ABM) program from John F. Kennedy to Richard M. Nixon as a prism through which to examine changing patterns of presidential nuclear leadership during this period. Employing both new American and Russian sources, the thesis shows how successive occupants of the Oval Office and their most trusted advisers managed the tension between their publicly articulated nuclear strategies and their inner convictions regarding the utility of nuclear weapons during this pivotal decade of the Cold War.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: Richard Nixon did not believe in mutual assured destruction. Yet he signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 1972, which enshrined MAD as a central fact of the U.S.-Soviet strategic nuclear balance. Conversely his predecessors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, publicly defended American nuclear superiority and pushed ahead with ABM, despite their private skepticism regarding the utility of both and desire to moderate the arms race. Employing newly available evidence from declassified telephone recordings and documents, this paper attempts to account for this contradiction. It does so by placing the perpetual presidential struggle to reconcile private convictions with public demands at the center of the emergence of assured destruction and the limitation of ABM as elements of U.S.-Soviet détente through strategic arms control.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Rachel Gillum is a PhD student in Political Science at Stanford University, and joined CISAC as a predoctoral fellow in September of 2013. She is also a fellow at the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS) and is affiliated with Stanford’s Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Rachel’s research focuses on the Muslim-American community and examines the determinants of a variety of political beliefs and behaviors towards the American government, from full integration and identification with the United States, to support for violent extremism.

Rachel previously served as a graduate associate researcher at the RAND Corporation’s International Policy Center, where she conducted in-depth analysis on terrorist recruitment strategies and presented policy suggestions to U.S. government clients. From 2010-2012, she served as the chief editor and head research assistant under Prof. Martha Crenshaw on the Mapping Militants Project, where she oversaw and helped devise the design of an online tool for the analysis of terrorist networks. Rachel has also worked as a consultant for the Gallup Organization and a research assistant at the Department of Defense’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: How do Muslim-Americans form beliefs about the treatment they expect to receive from US law enforcement? The results of an original, nationally-representative survey of Muslim-Americans suggest two key findings. First, expectations of fairness on the part of Muslim immigrants are shaped, in part, by the level of institutional corruption in their country of origin. Immigrants coming from less corrupt countries hold more optimistic views about expected treatment by US law enforcement. Second, Muslim immigrants who have been naturalized are less trusting in the government than newcomers, and Muslims who were born and raised in the United States are least likely to believe that law enforcement will deal with Muslims fairly. These results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of control variables. Ethnographic evidence drawn from interviews with Muslims-Americans suggests that Muslims update their expectations through interactions and familiarity with American institutions. US-born Muslims expect violations of their rights by the government and are politically concerned about such issues. Foreign-born Muslims, while aware of the controversies regarding US government surveillance and profiling of Muslim communities, tend to be less focused on issues related to citizen rights and more focused on the day-to-day concerns common to immigrants everywhere.

This event is now full. We cannot accept any more RSVP's, but you can e-mail Zhila Emadi (zemadi@stanford.edu), if you would like to be placed on a waitlist.

About the Speaker:

General C. Robert Kehler is the commander of U.S. Strategic Command. He provides the President and Secretary of Defense with a broad range of strategic capabilities and options. He is responsible for the plans and operations for all U.S. forces conducting strategic nuclear and conventional deterrence and Department of Defense space and cyberspace operations.

General Kehler entered the Air Force in 1975 as a distinguished graduate of the Pennsylvania State University Air Force ROTC program. He has commanded at the squadron, group, wing and major command levels, and has a broad range of operational tours in ICBM, space launch, space control, space and missile warning operations.

General Kehler's staff assignments include tours with the Air Staff and Strategic Air Command headquarters. He was also assigned to the Secretary of the Air Force's Office of Legislative Liaison, where he was the point man on Capitol Hill for matters regarding the President's ICBM Modernization Program. As director of the National Security Space Office, General Kehler integrated the activities of a number of space organizations on behalf of the Under Secretary of the Air Force and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office. He has also served as deputy director of operations, Air Force Space Command, and as deputy commander, U.S. Strategic Command.

More information TBA. 

Speaker bio: