- This event is offered as a joint sponsorship with the Hoover Institution - 

Abstract: Russia’s interference in our election was part of an ongoing campaign to undermine democracy and its institutions. America’s justice system is already under fire from Russian propaganda. What else should we anticipate and what should we be doing about it?

Speaker bio: Suzanne E. Spaulding is senior adviser to the homeland security program and international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) where she leads the Project on Countering Adversary Attacks on America’s Justice System. This effort is focused on assessing and countering Russian activities that can undermine public faith and confidence in the justice system as an essential pillar of democracy. She is also on the boards of Harvard’s Defending Digital Democracy Project and George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, and is a member of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group. Ms. Spaulding was the Under Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security responsible for cybersecurity and infrastructure protection. She also served in the General Counsel’s office at CIA and as chief counsel for both Senate and House intelligence committees. She has been a lawyer and consultant in private practice, including Security Counsel for the Business Roundtable, and chaired the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security. 

Abstract: The conventional international approach to post-conflict intervention has fallen short of expectations despite the enormous resources devoted to the endeavor. In this talk, Naazneen H. Barma will offer her original analysis of the underlying problem, arguing that while international peacebuilders aim to build effective and legitimate government, post-conflict elites co-opt process-focused interventions to serve their own very different political ends. She will present the core findings of her book, The Peacebuilding Puzzle, which develops a historical institutionalist approach to understanding peacebuilding. Through a comparative analysis of UN peace operations in Cambodia, East Timor, and Afghanistan, she will illustrate how competing international and domestic visions of post-conflict political order shape outcomes at three critical peacebuilding phases: the peace settlement; the transformative peace operation; and the aftermath of intervention. The central implication emerging from this study is that international peacebuilders must abandon the notion that post-conflict institutions can be designed and transplanted in whole cloth. Barma will conclude the talk with suggestions for a more incremental and adaptive approach to better achieve robust political order in post-conflict countries.

Speaker bio: Naazneen H. Barma is Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. Her research and teaching focus on peacebuilding and political order, the political economy of development, and natural resource governance, with a regional specialization in East Asia and the Pacific. Her most recent book, The Peacebuilding Puzzle (Cambridge University Press 2017), argues that international peace operations fall short of achieving the modern political order sought in post-conflict countries because the interventions empower domestic elites to attain their own political ends. Barma received her PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MA in International Policy Studies and BA in International Relations and Economics from Stanford University. From 2007–2010, she was a Young Professional and Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank, where she conducted political economy analysis and worked on operational dimensions of governance and institutional reform in the East Asia Pacific Region. Barma is a founding member and co-director of Bridging the Gap, an initiative devoted to enhancing the policy impact of contemporary international affairs scholarship. 

Abstract: This talk will explore the historical roots of the modern concept of identity, and how it plays out in contemporary nationalism, Islamism, populism, and liberal multiculturalism.  It will be based on my forthcoming book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in September 2018.

Abstract: Humans and natural ecosystems are exposed to toxic metals from many sources and following many exposure pathways. In this seminar, Dr. Blum will explain how small variations in the isotopic compositions of lead and mercury are created and how they can be used to unravel many of the mysteries of the exposure of these metals to people and ecosystems.

Speaker bio: Joel Blum holds the MacArthur and Keeler Professorships in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan. He earned his B.A. from CWRU, M.S. from the University of Alaska, and Ph.D. from Caltech. Professor Blum’s research focuses on the sources, fate, and cycling of metals and on the application of stable and radiogenic isotopes across earth sciences, chemistry and ecology. He has studied topics that include granite petrogenesis, ore deposits, meteorites, impacts, soils, forest nutrient cycling, hydrogeochemistry, terrestrial and aquatic foodwebs, animal migration, atmospheric chemistry and chemical oceanography. Blum is a past editor of Chemical Geology and Elementa and is currently the editor of the American Chemical Society’s journal Earth and Space Chemistry. He is a Fellow of the Geochemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, and the AAAS. He was awarded the Patterson Medal of the Geochemical Society for his work on the application of mercury isotopes in the environment. 

Abstract: China’s participation in venture deals financing is at a record level of 10-16% of all venture deals (2015-2017) and has grown quite rapidly in the past seven years.  Technologies where Chinese firms are investing are foundational to future innovation:  artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, augmented/virtual reality, robotics and blockchain technology. Moreover, since these technologies are dual use--designed for commercial use but also equally applicable for military applications, these are some of the same technologies of interest to the U.S. Defense Department.  

Investing is itself only a piece of a larger story of massive technology transfer from the U.S. to China. China has a long-term, systematic effort to attain global leadership in many industries, partly by transferring leading-edge technologies from around the world.

U.S. military superiority since World War II has relied on both U.S. economic scale and technological superiority. If we allow China access to these same technologies concurrently, then not only may we lose our technological superiority but we may even be facilitating China’s technological superiority. 

Speaker bio: Michael Brown is a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow in the U.S. Defense Department. He is the co-author of a Pentagon study on China’s participation in the U.S. venture ecosystem which served as key input for the proposed Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) being reviewed with bipartisan support by both the House and Senate.

Michael is the former CEO of Symantec Corporation, the global leader in cybersecurity and the world’s 10th largest software company with revenues of $4 billion and more than 10,000 employees worldwide. During his tenure as CEO, Michael led a turnaround as the company developed a new strategy focusing on its security business.

Michael is the former Chairman & CEO of Quantum, a leader in the computer storage industry specializing in backup and archiving products. After leaving Quantum, Michael served as Chairman of EqualLogic, a storage array company. 

He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, received his BA degree in economics from Harvard University in 1980 and his MBA degree from Stanford University in 1984.  

Abstract: 

1. What do some of America’s adversaries think about U.S. scientists, engineers and technical specialists they meet?
2. What is it really like to be an intelligence officer (IO) abroad? What are some of the stresses IO’s experience in their work?
3. What is Counterintelligence (CI)?

Abstract: Founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists who “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists aimed to chronicle the dawn of the nuclear age through the words of the men and women who built the atomic bomb. In 1947, Bulletin supporters—including a veritable Who’s Who of nuclear physics, from Einstein and Fermi to Szilard and Oppenheimer—expanded their four-page newsletter into a magazine that featured a minimalist clock, ticking toward the midnight of nuclear Armageddon, on its cover. More than 70 years later, the now-famous Doomsday Clock is set each January to reflect the world’s security situation. That event is now covered by thousands of media outlets around the world, and today’s Bulletin is hardly your grandfather’s niche magazine. It has become a global multimedia platform that deals with a host of manmade threats to civilization—from nuclear weapons to climate change and on to a host of emerging technologies—and reaches a worldwide digital audience of millions each year.     

Speaker bio: John Mecklin is the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Miller-McCune (since renamed Pacific Standard), an award-winning national magazine that focuses on research-based solutions to major policy problems, and the top editor of High Country News, a nationally acclaimed magazine that reports on the politics, environment, and culture of the American West. Writers working at his direction have won many major journalism prizes, including the George Polk Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors certificate, and the Sidney Hillman Award for social justice journalism. Beyond his columns for the magazines he has edited, Mecklin’s writing has been published by Foreign Policy, The Columbia Journalism Review, and the Reuters international news service, among other media outlets. Before his magazine work, Mecklin was an investigative newspaper reporter and covered the Persian Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He holds a master in public administration degree from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Abstract: In this talk, I will describe a a body of mathematical work trying to quantify the extent to which a redistricting plan is a partisan gerrymander. 

Speaker bio: Jonathan  Mattingly grew up in Charlotte, NC where he graduated from the NC School of Science and Mathematics and received a BS is Applied Mathematics with a concentration in physics from Yale University. After two years abroad with a year spent at ENS Lyon studying nonlinear and statistical physics on a Rotary Fellowship, he returned to the US to attend Princeton University where he obtained a PhD in Applied and Computational Mathematics in 1998. After 4 years as a Szego Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University and a year as a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, he moved to Duke University in 2003. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics and of Statistical Science. He is the recipient of a Sloan Fellowship, a PECASE CAREER award, and is a fellow of the IMS and the AMS. 

About the event: Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Joseph S. Nye, Jr. will speak to an audience of Stanford faculty, students, affiliates and staff during a talk titled, Will the liberal international order survive? The event will be chaired by Amy Zegart, co-director, Center for International Security & Cooperation, and Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. A Q&A will follow.

Speaker bio: Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is University Distinguished Service Professor and former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, studied at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, and earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard where he joined the faculty in 1964. In 2008, a poll of  2700 international relations scholars listed him as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy, and in 2011 Foreign Policy listed him among the 100 leading global thinkers. 

From 1977-79, Nye was a deputy Undersecretary of State and chaired the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In 1993-94 he chaired the National Intelligence Council which prepares intelligence estimates for the president, and in 1994-95 served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He won Distinguished Service medals from all three agencies.

Nye has published fourteen academic books, a novel, and more than 150 articles in professional and policy journals.  Recent books include Soft Power, The Powers to Lead, The Future of Power, and Is the American Century Over?

He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and an honorary fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He is the recipient of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Award, the Charles Merriam Award from the American Political Science Association, France’s Palmes Académiques, Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, and numerous honorary degrees. 

This talk is co-sponsored by the Precourt Institute for Energy and will take place in the Engineering Quad (see address above) from 4:30 - 5:20 PM

Abstract: The U.S. nuclear waste management program is stymied on multiple fronts – from the disposal of the high-level and transuranic wastes of defense programs, to the spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants, and even, the disposition of fissile material from dismantled nuclear weapons. In 2002, Congress approved President George W. Bush’s decision that the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada be selected as the nation’s repository for high-activity radioactive wastes. In 2008, the Department of Energy submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct that facility. Two years later, the administration concluded that developing a repository at Yucca Mountain was “unworkable.” Today a stalemate prevails between those who continue to maintain that the Yucca Mountain project is “unworkable“ and those who believe that the choice of the site is the “law.“

Against this background, the Precourt Institute for Energy and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies sponsored a series of five meetings to identify the critical issues that must be addressed in ordert to move the U.S. program forward. The issues identified, which will be discussed in the presentation, include:

• New nuclear waste management organization
• Consent-based sitting process
• Integration of the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle
• Revision of regulations and a new approach to the assessment of safety
• Analysis of the risk of a status quo approach for the United States

Speaker bio: Rod Ewing is 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. Rod has written extensively on issues related to nuclear waste and is a co-editor of Radioactive Waste Forms for the Future (1988) and Uncertainty Underground – Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste (2006).  He received the Lomonosov Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006 for his work on issues of the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is a Principal Editor for Nano LIFE, an interdisciplinary journal focused on collaboration between physical and medical scientists and is a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In 2012, he was appointed by President Obama to chair the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which provides scientific and technical reviews of the U.S. Department of the Energy’s programs for the management and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. He stepped down in 2017.