History
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Presented by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies

  • Sessions from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm open ONLY to Stanford Faculty and Students
  • The 4:30 pm session is OPEN TO PUBLIC

Stanford Faculty and Students who RSVP will receive workshop papers when the papers become available.

RSVP at link or by email to abbasiprogram@stanford.edu

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE:

9:00 - 10:30 am: Border Crossings
Moderator: Parna Sengupta, Introduction to Humanities Program, Stanford University

  • Amin Tarzi, Middle East Studies, Marine Corps University
    “Yaghistan Revisited: The Struggle for Domination of Afghan-Pakistan Borderlands”
  • James Caron, South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania
    “Divisive Hegemonies and Interlinked Publics: Case Studies of Religious Scholarship and Social Awareness in Afghanistan and the North West Frontier Province, 1930-2008”
  • Jamal Elias, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
    “Identity, Modernity and Meaning in Pukhtun Truck Decoration”

10:30 -11 am: Coffee Break

11 am- 12:30 pm: Molding Minds and Bodies
Moderator: Steve Stedman, Center for Security and International Cooperation, Stanford University

  • Tahir Andrabi, Economics, Pomona College
    “Religious Schooling in Pakistan and its Relation to Other Schooling Options: A Disaggregated Analysis”
  • Farzana Shaikh, Asia Programme, Royal Institute of International Affairs
    “Will the ‘right’ kind of Islam save Pakistan?: The Sufi Antidote”
  • Fariba Nawa, Journalist, Fremont
    “Opium Nation”

2:00- 4:00 pm: Nations, Tribes, and Others
Moderator: Aishwary Kumar, Department of History, Stanford University

  • Gilles Dorronsoro, The Carnegie Endowment
    “Religious, Political and Tribal Networks in the Afghan War”
  • Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Department of History, James Madison University
    “Epistemological Quandaries of the Afghan Nation: Mobility, Territoriality and The Other”
  • Thomas Ruttig, Afghanistan Analysts Network
    “How Tribal Are the Taleban?”
  • Lutz Rzehak, Humboldt University
    “How to Become a Baloch? The Dynamics of Ethnic Identities in Afghanistan”

4:00- 4:30 pm: Coffee Break

4:30-6:00 pm: Public Session: The Global Politics of Afghanistan and Pakistan
Moderators:

  • Shahzad Bashir, Religious Studies, Stanford University
  • Robert Crews, Department of History, Stanford University

[Co-sponsored with CISAC, Center for South Asia, Department of History, CREEES]

For more information, please see http://islamicstudies.stanford.edu or contact the program office at abbasiprogram@stanford.edu

Bechtel Conference Center

Workshops
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David Hamburg is president emeritus at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where he served as the Corporation's eleventh president from 1982 to 1997. Under his leadership the work of the Corporation focused on education and healthy development of children and youth, human resources in developing countries and international security issues. He established a number of task forces on education and preventing conflict which produced seminal research and policy analysis and which will continue to influence the work in these fields in the future.

A medical doctor, Hamburg had a long history of leadership in the research, medical and psychiatric fields before his transition from a trustee of Carnegie to its president. He was chief, adult psychiatry branch, National Institutes of Health, from 1958 to 1961; professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University from 1961 to 1972; Reed-Hodgson Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University from 1972 to 1976; president of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, 1975-1980; and director of the division of health policy research and education and John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy at Harvard University, 1980-1983. He served as president and then chairman of the board (1984-1986) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Hamburg was a member of the United States Defense Policy Board with Secretary of Defense William Perry and cochair with former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. He is a member of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and a visiting professor at Harvard Medical School's department of social medicine. He was the founder of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government.

Hamburg received both his A.B. and M.D. degrees from Indiana University. He has received numerous honorary degrees during his career as well as the American Psychiatric Association's Distinguished Service Award in 1991, the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in 1996, the International Peace Academy's 25th Anniversary Special Award in 1996, the Achievement in Children and Public Policy Award from the Society for Research in Child Development in 1997, and the National Academy of Sciences' Public Welfare Medal in 1998.

CISAC Conference Room

David Hamburg President Emeritus, Carnegie Corporation of New York Speaker
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CISAC Co-Director Scott D. Sagan has been named The Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professor in Political Science. A member of Stanford's faculty since 1987, Sagan's research focuses on nuclear security and the emerging terrorist threat; nuclear proliferation, particularly in South Asia; ethics and international relations; and accidents in complex organizations. Before coming to Stanford, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the Director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989), The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993) and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (W.W. Norton, 2002). He is co-editor with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz of Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000) and the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009). His most recent publications include "The Case for No First Use" in Survival (June 2009) and "Good Faith and Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations" in George Perkovich and James A. Acton's (eds.) Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (Carnegie Endowment, 2009).

Sagan received Stanford's Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching in 1996, and the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1998. As part of CISAC's mission of training the next generation of security specialists, he established Stanford's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. He earned a bachelor's degree with high honors in government from Oberlin College and holds a doctorate in political science from Harvard University.

The Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professorship in Political Science

The Caroline S.G. Munro Chair was established by the Board of Trustees in 1981 in recognition of Mrs. Munro's farsighted commitment to strengthening scholarship and teaching at Stanford.

A series of gifts during her lifetime and a bequest endowing the William Bennett Munro Memorial Fund in 1973 in honor of her late husband--a professor of history and government at Harvard and the California Institute of Technology--were sufficient to support the William Bennett Munro Professorship in Political Science; the William Bennett Munro Memorial Lectures; and the Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professorship.

Caroline Sanford Gorton and William Bennett Munro were married in 1913. They had one child, William Bennett Munro, Jr., who graduated from Stanford in 1937. Their granddaughter, Jane Bruce Munro, was a member of the Class of 1968.

In accordance with Mrs. Munro's preferences, the professorship may be awarded in either political science or history.

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Philip Taubman is a consulting professor at CISAC and the author of Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage. He is currently working on a book project about nuclear threats and the joint effort of Sid Drell, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Bill Perry and George Shultz to reduce nuclear dangers. Professor Taubman worked at the New York Times as a reporter and editor for nearly 30 years, specializing in national security issues, including intelligence and defense policies and operations. At the Times, Taubman served as a Washington correspondent, Moscow bureau chief, deputy editorial page editor, Washington bureau chief and associate editor.

Taubman was a history major at Stanford, Class of 1970, and served as editor-in-chief of the Stanford Daily in 1969. Before joining the New York Times, he worked as a correspondent for Time magazine and was sports editor of Esquire.

Map of Margaret Jacks Hall

The Terrace Room
Margaret Jacks Hall
(building 460, third floor)

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Philip Taubman is affiliated with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Before joining CISAC in 2008, Mr. Taubman worked at the New York Times as a reporter and editor for nearly 30 years, specializing in national security issues, including United States diplomacy, and intelligence and defense policy and operations. He served as Moscow bureau chief and Washington bureau chief, among other posts. He is author of Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage (2003), The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb (2012),  In the Nation's Service: The Life and Times of George P. Shultz (2023), as well as co-author (with his brother, William Taubman) of McNamara at War: A New History (2025).

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Philip Taubman CISAC Consulting Professor Speaker
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Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has been awarded $500,000 by the National Science Foundation to identify patterns in the evolution of terrorist organizations and to analyze their comparative development.

The three-year grant is part of the Department of Defense's Minerva Initiative launched in 2008, which focuses on "supporting research related to basic social and behavioral science of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy."

Crenshaw's interdisciplinary project, "Mapping Terrorist Organizations," will analyze terrorist groups and trace their relationships over time. It will be the first worldwide, comprehensive study of its kind-extending back to the Russian revolutionary movement up to Al Qaeda today.

"We want to understand how groups affiliate with Al Qaeda and analyze their relationships," Crenshaw said. "Evolutionary mapping can enhance our understanding of how terrorist groups develop and interact with each other and with the government, how strategies of violence and non-violence are related, why groups persist or disappear, and how opportunities and constraints in the environment change organizational behavior over time."

According to Crenshaw, it is critical to understand the organization and evolution of terrorism in multiple contexts. "To craft effective counter-terrorism strategies, governments need to know not only what type of adversary they are confronting but its stage of organizational development and relationship to other groups," Crenshaw wrote in the project summary. "The timing of a government policy initiative may be as important as its substance."

"Mapping Terrorist Organizations" will incorporate research in economics, sociology, business, biology, political science and history. It will include existing research to build a new database using original language sources rather than secondary analyses. The goal is to produce an online database and series of interactive maps that will generate new observations and research questions, Crenshaw said.

The results, for example, could reveal the structure of violent and non-violent opposition groups within the same movements or conflicts, and identify patterns that explain how these groups evolve over time. Such findings could be used to analyze the development of Al Qaeda and its Islamist or jihadist affiliates, including the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, she said.

The findings may also shed light on what happens when a group splits due to leadership quarrels or when a government is overturned, Crenshaw said. "Analysis that links levels of terrorist violence to changes in organizational structures and explains the complex relationships among actors in protracted conflicts will break new ground," the summary noted.

Extensive information on terrorist groups already exists, but it has been difficult to compile and analyze. Despite such obstacles, Crenshaw said, violent organizations can be understood in the same terms as other political or economic groups. "Terrorist groups are not anomalous or unique," she wrote. "In fact, they can be compared to transnational activist networks."

Crenshaw should know. Widely respected as a pioneer in terrorism studies, the political scientist was one of a handful of scholars who followed the subject decades before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She joined CISAC in 2007, following a long career at Wesleyan University, where she was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought. In addition to her research at Stanford, Crenshaw is a lead investigator at START, the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.

End goal

Crenshaw wants to use the findings to better analyze how threats to U.S. security evolve over time. "Terrorist attacks on the United States and its allies abroad often appear to come without warning, but they are the result of a long process of organizational development," she wrote. "Terrorist organizations do not operate in isolation from a wider social environment. Without understanding processes of development and interaction, governments may miss signals along the way and be vulnerable to surprise attack. They may also respond ineffectively because they cannot anticipate the consequences of their actions." The project seeks to find patterns in the evolution of terrorism and to explain their causes and consequences. This, in turn, should contribute to developing more effective counter-terrorism policy, Crenshaw said.

Conflicts to be mapped

  • Russian revolutionary organizations, 1860s-1914.
  • Anarchist groups in Europe and the United States, 1880s-1914. (Note: although the anarchist movement is typically regarded as completely unstructured, there was more organization than an initial survey might suppose, and the transnational dispersion of the movement is frequently cited as a precedent for Al Qaeda.)
  • Ireland and Northern Ireland, 1860s-present.
  • Algeria, 1945-1962 and 1992-present
  • Palestinian resistance groups, 1967-present.
  • Colombia, 1960s-present.
  • El Salvador, 1970s-1990s
  • Argentina, 1960s-1980s
  • Chile, 1973-1990
  • Peru, 1970-1990s
  • Brazil, 1967-1971
  • Sri Lanka, 1980s-present
  • India (Punjab), 1980-present
  • Philippines, 1960s-present
  • Indonesia, 1998-present
  • Italy, 1970s-1990s
  • Germany, 1970s-1990s
  • France/Belgium, 1980-1990s
  • Kashmir, 1988-present
  • Pakistan, 1980-present
  • United States, 1960s-present (especially far right movement)
  • Spain, 1960s-present
  • Egypt, 1950s-present
  • Turkey, 1960s-present
  • Lebanon, 1975-present
  • Al Qaeda, 1987-present
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The United Nations Association Film Festival was originally conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 12th UNAFF will be held from October 17-25, 2009 in Palo Alto, Stanford University, East Palo Alto and San Francisco. This year, the theme is Energy and the World, reflecting the myriad of problems we encounter saving energy around the world and to seek awareness and solutions — through film — to better our lives and save our planet.

When the U.S. government brought the world’s greatest scientists together to build the first atomic bomb, nuclear physicist Joseph Rotblat was among them. But his conscience would not allow him to continue, and he became the only member of the Manhattan Project to leave on moral grounds. Branded a traitor and spy, Rotblat went from designing atomic bombs to researching the medical uses of radiation. Together with Bertrand Russell he helped create the modern peace movement, and eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Strangest Dream tells the story of Joseph Rotblat, the history of nuclear weapons, and the efforts of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs—an international movement Rotblat co-founded—to halt nuclear proliferation. The first Pugwash conference took place in the small Nova Scotia fishing village from which it draws its name. This film brings to light the group’s behind-the-scenes role in defusing some of the tensest moments of the Cold War. The story takes us from the site of the first nuclear test, in New Mexico, to Cairo, where contemporary Pugwash scientists meet under the cloud of nuclear proliferation, and to Hiroshima, where we see survivors of the first atomic attack. The Strangest Dream demonstrates the renewed threat represented by nuclear weapons, while encouraging hope through the example of morally engaged scientists and citizens.

  • 3:00 p.m. Film screening, "The Strangest Dream" (1989, Director: Eric Bednarski)
  • 4:30 p.m. Panel, "The Ethics of Nuclear Technology"
  • 5:30 p.m. Reception with filmmakers

Bechtel Conference Center

Burt Richter Panelist
Martin Hellman Professor Emeritus, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University Panelist
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Ambivalent nuclear technologies use or have a potential to produce nuclear weapon relevant materials like highly enriched uranium (HEU), plutonium, tritium and U233. It is important to assess the proliferation potential and measures to strengthen the proliferation resistance of these technologies as early as possible (preventively) to find alternative more proliferation resistant designs or at least to identify sensitive parameters or even critical parts that should trigger international safeguards and export controls.

The conclusions of different case studies investigating the proliferation resistance of nuclear technologies such as spallation neutron sources, tokamak fusion reactors and plutonium fuels will be briefly presented. The main part of the talk will focus on the minimization or elimination of civil HEU usage and the role of research reactor conversion to the use of low enriched uranium, which is intrinsically more proliferation resistant. The conversion of the German high flux research reactor FRM-II will serve as an example for the complex political and technological challenges and problems one has to face, especially, if proliferation concerns are not taken seriously in the research and design phase. These case studies of relatively disparate nuclear technologies have in common that they are neutron producing technologies and some questions regarding their proliferation potential can be addressed using neutronic codes.

Finally, the talk will briefly outline the future research of the next year addressing centrifuge technology as another case study to explicate on exemplary basis general criteria for the proliferation resistant use of nuclear technologies.


Matthias Englert
is a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC. Before joining CISAC in 2009, Matthias was a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Group Science Technology and Security (IANUS) and a PhD student at the department of physics at Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany. 

His major research interests include nonproliferation, disarmament, arms control, nuclear postures and warheads, fissile material and production technologies, the civil use of nuclear power and its role in future energy scenarios and the possibility of nuclear terrorism.  His research during his stay at CISAC focuses primarily on the technology of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment, the implications of its use for the nonproliferation regime and on technical and political measures to manage the proliferation risks. 

Matthias has been participating in projects investigating technical aspects of the concept of proliferation resistance with topics spanning from conversion of research reactors, uranium enrichment with gas centrifuges, reducing plutonium stockpiles with reactor based options,  spallation neutron sources and fusion power plants. Further research topics included fissile material stockpiles, fuel-cycles and accelerator  driven systems. Although a substantial part of his professional work of the last years was quite technical he is equally interested in and actively studies the historical, social and political aspects of the use of nuclear technologies. Research interests include the dispute about Article IV of the NPT, the future development of the NPT regime, possibilities for a nuclear weapon free world, preventive arms control, and history and development of proliferation relevant programs. By studying contemporary theory in philosophy of the interaction of science, technology and society, Matthias acquired analytical tools to reflect on approaches describing or addressing the problem of ambivalent technology.

Matthias is a vice speaker of the working group Physics and Disarmament of the German Physical Society (DPG) and a board member of the  German Research Association for Science, Disarmament and Security (FONAS).

 

Michael May is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000. May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971. May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards. His current research interests are in the area of nuclear and terrorism, energy, security and environment, and the relation of nuclear weapons and foreign policy.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Matthias Englert Postdoctoral Fellow, CISAC Speaker
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Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
FSI Senior Fellow
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Michael May is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000.

May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971.

May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the International Institute on Strategic Studies, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards.

His current research interests are nuclear weapons policy in the US and in other countries; nuclear terrorism; nuclear and other forms of energy and their impact on the environment, health and safety and security; the use of statistics and mathematical models in the public sphere.

May is continuing work on creating a secure future for civilian nuclear applications. In October 2007, May hosted an international workshop on how the nuclear weapon states can help rebuild the consensus underlying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Proceedings and a summary report are available online or by email request. May also chaired a technical working group on nuclear forensics. The final report is available online.

In April 2007, May in cooperation with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and Professor Ashton Carter of Harvard hosted a workshop on what would have to be done to be ready for a terrorist nuclear detonation. The report is available online at the Preventive Defense Project. A summary, titled, "The Day After: Action Following a Nuclear Blast in a U.S. City," was published fall 2007 in Washington Quarterly and is available online.

Recent work also includes a study of nuclear postures in several countries (2007 - 2009); an article on nuclear disarmament and one on tactical nuclear weapons; and a report with Kate Marvel for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on possible game changers in the nuclear energy industry.

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Michael M. May Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus; FSI Senior Fellow; CISAC Faculty Member Commentator
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