Stanford University

Honors students explore challenges of policy implementation, assessment in Washington, D.C.

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In mid-September, honors students from the Interschool Honors Programs convened by FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Center for International Security and Cooperation traveled to Washington, D.C., with their faculty advisors for senior-level meetings and policy briefings. They met with senior U.S. government officials from the White House, State Department, Homeland Security, and the intelligence community, with representatives of international organizations such as the World Bank, and NGOs, think tanks and other policy forums engaged in international affairs.

CDDRL Policy Briefings

Led by CDDRL Director and FSI Senior Fellow Larry Diamond, Deputy Director and FSI Senior Fellow Kathryn Stoner, and FSI's %people5%, CDDRL students engaged in policy discussions with the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, the World Bank, the National Security Council, the Center for International Private Enterprise, the Inter-American Dialogue and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.  Sessions were held at the Open Society Institute founded by George Soros and the Community of Democracies.  Students met at the U.S. State Department with Policy Planning staff and the Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs for frank discussions of U.S. policy priorities, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and the transformative effects that emerging economic powers, such as China, India and Brazil are exerting on trade, credit, investment, innovation and governance of major and political and economic institutions.

During these sessions, CDDRL students delved into efforts to advance and secure democracy, economic development, good governance, rule of law, corruption control, civil society, and a free media. In the current environment, marked by repression in many countries, multi-pronged efforts to help ensure that the pluralistic institutions of a vibrant civil society are allowed to prosper took on  particular importance.  Another key issue was the role of information technologies, in building and supporting democracy, by creating a robust network of activists and promoting collective action.

“It was eye-opening to see the diverse mechanisms through which one can effect positive social change. I learned that it is possible to successfully bridge the two worlds of policy and academe. The meetings made me think about the many different routes to a possible career in the dynamic world of Washington politics.”
 Kamil Dada ’11, CDDRL

"A key objective of the Washington trip is to expose these talented students to the challenges of policy formulation, implementation, and assessment, as they prepare to write their honors theses this academic year," said Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. For some students, it was a first exposure to the policy process in Washington. Others had interned in policy positions in the nation's capital and overseas, and used their opportunities in September to report back on findings of their previous work, renew contacts and glean new insight and information on evolving issues.

"The discussions we held with senior officials were full, frank, and often, off-the-record to give the students a firsthand opportunity to engage in candid exchange on major issues and to pose probing questions," said Larry Diamond, CDDRL Director. "The players, issues, and dilemmas that arise in the policy process are not always evident from the outside."

CISAC: Focus on Security Issues

The students in CISAC's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies-led in Washington by Martha Crenshaw, FSI Senior Fellow and professor (by courtesy) in the Political Science Department; Lynn Eden, Senior Research Scholar and CISAC Associate Director for Research; and teaching assistant Michael Sulmeyer, a CISAC pre-doctoral fellow and third-year Stanford law student-focused on major national and international security issues, including nuclear weapons policy like the new START Treaty to reduce nuclear arms and the Nuclear Posture Review, and counter-terrorism issues such as intelligence gathering and regional analysis. CISAC students first met with four veteran national security reporters at The New York Times, and later with members of the intelligence community, including the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, and the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Christopher Kojm.

“This was my first visit to Washington, and I could not have asked for a more comprehensive or enjoyable introduction to the nation’s capital. The broad array of institutions and people we experienced was a salient reminder of just how diverse this country truly is.” Devin Banerjee ’11, CISAC

Students also met with Paul Stockton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs. Prior to his government service, Stockton had been a scholar at CISAC and had taught CISAC honors students for three years. CISAC students met with Antony Blinken, who serves as National Security Adviser to Vice President Biden. The students also were exposed to research and publication think-tanks like the Brookings Institution, RAND Corporation, the Center for a New American Security and the New America Foundation. At the end of CISAC's first week in the capital, the students met a dozen Washington-based alumni of the program over dinner, where alumni provided valuable research resources and job advice to their younger counterparts.

"The Washington component of CISAC's honors program provides an invaluable opportunity for our students to learn how the policy-making process works, explore the complexities of international security, and test their preliminary ideas about the topic they have chosen for their honors thesis," said Martha Crenshaw. "In turn, the officials we meet invariably wish to spend longer with our students, some even rearranging their schedules (or trying!) to continue a fascinating and candid conversation."

Highlight: The National Security Council

A major highlight of this year's trip, for both the CISAC and the CDDRL students, was a policy discussion at the National Security Council with two leading Stanford political scientists and foreign policy experts serving in the Obama administration. Political Science Professor Michael A. McFaul, former director of CDDRL and deputy director of FSI, is now Senior Director for Russia on the National Security Council and the president's top advisor on Russia, and Assistant Professor Jeremy M. Weinstein, an affiliated CISAC and CDDRL faculty member, serves as Director for Democracy on the National Security Staff.  Students engaged in a lively discussion of U.S. foreign policy priorities, U.S.-Russian relations, democracy, human rights and economic development.

"Our honors students are fortunate to have the chance to engage in high-level policy discussions, especially with Stanford faculty members serving in Washington," said Coit D. Blacker, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, who directs the CISAC honors program with Martha Crenshaw and who, under President Clinton, served as special assistant to the President and  Senior Director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council. "Direct exposure to the policymaking process, with all its promise and pitfalls, will make them better scholars and future thought leaders."

"I was struck by the innovative ways in which certain agencies approach democracy promotion," said CDDRL honors student Ayeesha Lalji '11. "I think the struggle is often in packaging programs in the right way so that an impervious nation becomes more open to a vital component of social, political, or economic development."

"The discussions with prominent policy thinkers and current and former senior officials made a deep impression on our students," said Larry Diamond, CDDRL Director.  "These young people--who will go on themselves to be leaders in these fields-- got a vivid sense of how the policy process really works, and why service in government and public affairs is, despite the frequent frustrations, an exciting and noble mission."

"CISAC's ten days in Washington provide our students exceptional access to practitioners of various types and at all levels of the policy world, as well as inside knowledge of today's critical issues," said Martha Crenshaw. "The experience also establishes a solid foundation for a year-long intellectual experience in a weekly research seminar devoted to producing a thesis that makes an original contribution to the field of international security."

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George Packer in Conversation with Tobias Wolff and Debra Satz

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George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. That book, which traced America's entry into the Iraq war and the subsequent troubled occupation, won the Overseas Press Club's 2005 Cornelius Ryan Award and the Helen Bernstein Book Award of the New York Public Library, was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and was named by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of the 2005.

Packer's articles, essays, and reviews on foreign affairs, American politics, and literature have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Dissent and other publications. He received the 2006 Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting from Georgetown and his magazine reporting has won three Overseas Press Club awards.

Packer will be in conversation with Tobias Wolff (English, Stanford) and Debra Satz (Philosophy, Stanford). Wolff has written several books including Our Story Begins, winner of the 2008 Story Prize, The Barracks Thief, Old School and This Boy's Life. He has also been the editor of Best American Short Stories and The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories. His work appears regularly in "The New Yorker," "The Atlantic," "Harper's," and other magazines and literary journals.

Debra Satz is the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Center on Ethics. Her research focuses on the ethical limits of markets, the place of equality in political philosophy, theories of rational choice, democratic theory, feminist philosophy, and issues of international justice. Her work has appeared in Philosophy & Public Affairs, Ethics, Journal of Philosophy, and World Bank Economic Review.

On Friday, May 20 Rush Rehm (Drama and Classics, Stanford) will direct a performance of Packer's 2008 play Betrayed.

For more information, please visit Stanford's Ethics and War Series website.

Annenberg Auditorium
435 Lasuen Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA, 94305

Tobias Wolff English Commentator Stanford
George Packer Journalist, novelist and playwright Speaker
Debra Satz Philosophy Commentator Stanford University
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

Film: "Fog of War"

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The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 film about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The film, directed by Errol Morris, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (2003) and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature (2003).

Using archival footage, United States Cabinet conversation recordings, and an interview of the eighty-five-year-old Robert McNamara, The Fog of War depicts McNamara's life, from his birth during the First World War remembering the time American troops returned from Europe, to working as a WWII Whiz Kid military officer, to being the Ford Motor Company's president, to his being employed as Secretary of Defense and the Cuban Missile Crisis, to managing the American Vietnam War, as defense secretary for presidents Kennedy and Johnson — emphasizing the war's brutality under their regimes, and how he was hired as secretary of defense, despite limited military experience.

According to Morris, hearing McNamara raise all of these ethical issues and questions about a war which most of us see as morally unambiguous is very, very powerful. What Morris especially liked about the film was that it proved it was possible to make a movie about events – events that are removed from us by 40, 50, 60 years but which are very much about today. Many of the issues that McNamara is talking about in the movie are relevant to what's going on right now, and there's this surreal sense that nothing has changed.

» Watch the trailer.

Faculty talk back led by Scott Sagan (Co-Director of Center for International Security and Cooperation / Political Science, Stanford)

Annenberg Auditorium, 435 Lasuen Mall
Stanford University

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
0
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

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: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

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Who Should Fight? The Ethics of the Draft

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  • Should citizens be required to serve their country by fighting for it?
  • Do we think differently about the decision to go to war when only a small number of citizens will fight it?
  • Do volunteer armies and draft armies fight differently in combat?

This panel discussion focuses on the draft versus the volunteer army in the U.S. Our distinguished panelists examine "who should fight" in a democracy, focusing on the ethical dimension of a state's system of military service.

Panelists are:

David Kennedy (History, Emeritus, Stanford). Kennedy's scholarly focus is on the integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. A prolific historian, he won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in History for Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, which recounts the history of the United States in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II, and was a 1981 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in History for Over Here: The First World War and American Society, which uses the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system.

Eliot Cohen (Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies). Cohen's work focuses on diplomacy, international relations, irregular warfare, military history, military power and strategy, as well as strategic and security issues. He has served as Counselor of the U.S. Department of State, a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the Secretary of Defense, and a member of the Defense Policy Board. He also directed the U.S. Air Force's Gulf War Air Power Survey.

Jean Bethke Elshtain (Social and Political Ethics, Divinity School, The University of Chicago). Regularly named as one of America's foremost public intellectuals, Elshtain writes frequently for journals of civic opinion and lectures widely in the United States and abroad on themes of democracy, ethical dilemmas, religion and politics, and international relations. Elshtain has authored many books including Women and War; Democracy on Trial (a New York Times' notable book for 1995); and Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (named one of the best nonfiction books of 2003 by Publishers Weekly.

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David Kennedy History, Emeritus Speaker Stanford
Eliot Cohen Strategic Studies Speaker Johns Hopkins
Jean Bethke Elshtain Social and Political Ethics Speaker University of Chicago Divinity School

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
0
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

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: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

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Scott D. Sagan (Moderator) Political Science Moderator Stanford
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Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

The Ethics of Violence in War

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Richard Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-three books including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award; Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, which was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize in History; Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race; and The Twilight of the Bomb (Aug 2010). Rhodes has received numerous fellowships for research and writing, including grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation Program in International Peace and Security and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

In addition, Rhodes has been a visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT and a host and correspondent for documentaries on public television's Frontline and American Experience series. He is also an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford.

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Richard Rhodes Author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb Speaker
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

The Changing Face of Photojournalism, The Changing Face of War

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Susie Linfield is author of The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (University of Chicago Press). She directs the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University, where she is an associate professor of journalism. Her articles and essays on politics and culture have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Washington Post Book World, the New York Times, Dissent, the Nation, Guernica, Bookforum, Salmagundi, and the Boston Review. For six years she was a contributing writer to the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and she was formerly an editor at American Film, the Village Voice, and the Washington Post.

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Susie Linfield Director of Cultural Reporting & Criticism Program Speaker NYC
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

Film: "War Photographer"

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War Photographer is director Christian Frei's 2001 film that followed photojournalist James Nachtwey. Natchtwey started work as a newspaper photographer in New Mexico in 1976 and in 1980, he moved to New York to begin a career as a freelance magazine photographer. His first foreign assignment was to cover civil strife in Northern Ireland in 1981 during the IRA hunger strike. Since then, Nachtwey has devoted himself to documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues. He has worked on extensive photographic essays in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil and the United States.

The film received an Academy Award Nomination for "Best Documentary Feature" and won twelve International Filmfestivals.

Annenberg Auditorium

Brendan Fay Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities Speaker Stanford University
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

Rodney C. Ewing

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E203
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-8641
0
1946-2024
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security
Professor of Geological Sciences
rodewingheadshot2014.jpg MS, PhD

      Rod Ewing was the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. He was also the Edward H. Kraus Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, where he had faculty appointments in the Departments of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences and Materials Science & Engineering.  He was a Regents' Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico, where he was a member of the faculty from 1974 to 1997. Ewing received a B.S. degree in geology from Texas Christian University (1968, summa cum laude) and M.S. (l972) and Ph.D. (l974, with distinction) degrees from Stanford University where he held an NSF Fellowship.    His graduate studies focused on an esoteric group of minerals, metamict Nb-Ta-Ti oxides, which are unusual because they have become amorphous due to radiation damage caused by the presence of radioactive elements. Over the past thirty years, the early study of these unusual minerals has blossomed into a broadly-based research program on radiation effects in complex ceramic materials.  In 2001, the work on radiation-resistant ceramics was recognized by the DOE, Office of Science – Decades of Discovery as one of the top 101 innovations during the previous 25 years. This has led to the development of techniques to predict the long-term behavior of materials, such as those used in radioactive waste disposal.

      He was the author or co-author of over 750 research publications and the editor or co-editor of 18 monographs, proceedings volumes or special issues of journals. He had published widely in mineralogy, geochemistry, materials science, nuclear materials, physics and chemistry in over 100 different ISI journals. He was granted a patent for the development of a highly durable material for the immobilization of excess weapons plutonium.  He was a Founding Editor of the magazine, Elements, which is now supported by 17 earth science societies. He was a Principal Editor for Nano LIFE, an interdisciplinary journal focused on collaboration between physical and medical scientists. In 2014, he was named a Founding Executive Editor of Geochemical Perspective Letters and appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of Applied Physics Reviews.

      Ewing had received the Hawley Medal of the Mineralogical Association of Canada in 1997 and 2002, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Dana Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2006, the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006, a Honorary Doctorate from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2007, the Roebling Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2015, Ian Campbell Medal of the American Geoscience Institute, 2015, the Medal of Excellence in Mineralogical Sciences from the International Mineralogical Association in 2015, the Distinguished Public Service Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2019, and was a foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He was also a fellow of the Geological Society of America, Mineralogical Society of America, Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, American Geophysical Union, Geochemical Society, American Ceramic Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Materials Research Society. He was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering in 2017.

      He was president of the Mineralogical Society of America (2002) and the International Union of Materials Research Societies (1997-1998). He was the President of the American Geoscience Institute (2018). Ewing had served on the Board of Directors of the Geochemical Society, the Board of Governors of the Gemological Institute of America and the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

      He was co-editor of and a contributing author of Radioactive Waste Forms for the Future (North-Holland Physics, Amsterdam, 1988) and Uncertainty Underground – Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste (MIT Press, 2006).  Professor Ewing had served on thirteen National Research Council committees and board for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that have reviewed issues related to nuclear waste and nuclear weapons. In 2012, he was appointed by President Obama to serve as the Chair of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which is responsible for ongoing and integrated technical review of DOE activities related to transporting, packaging, storing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste; he stepped down from the Board in 2017.

https://profiles.stanford.edu/rodney-ewing

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