The Payne Lectureship is named for Frank E. Payne and Arthur W. Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations. Their descendants endowed the annual lecture series at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in order to raise public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community today and to increase support for informed international cooperation.

The Payne Distinguished Lecturer is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader, with an emphasis on visionary thinking; a broad, practical grasp of a given field; and the capacity to clearly articulate an important perspective on the global community and its challenges.

About the event: Arms racing and future strategic stability assessments are largely focused on moving from the Cold War paradigm of two nuclear powers – the US and Russia, to the likely new reality of three nuclear peers – the US, Russia, and China.  However, there are technologies being matured that may be more important drivers of the new arms race than the increase in the number of Chinese nuclear weapon systems.  Emerging capabilities include adversary development of long-life and loitering delivery platforms, the US investment in Golden Dome and international improvements in integrated air and missile defense, the rapid advancement of AI and autonomous systems, and the potential resumption of nuclear testing.  These developments are as disruptive as the creation of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear-powered submarines in the 1950s and have the potential to drastically change the nuclear weapons landscape.  This talk will discuss the potential impact of these emerging technologies.

About the speaker: Jill Hruby served as the Under Secretary for Nuclear Security at the Department of Energy from 2021 to 2025. Prior to that, Hruby had a 34-year career at Sandia National Laboratories, retiring as the Director in 2017. Hruby was the inaugural Sam Nunn Distinguished Fellow at NTI. Currently, Hruby is on boards at Lawrence Livermore and the Atomic Weapon Establishment. She is a member of the Anthropic National Security Advisory Committee, the National Academy Committee for International Security and Arms Control, among other advisory roles. This quarter, she is the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford.

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About the event: Nuclear weapons are considered a prominent international status symbol that signal military strength, technological prowess, and a state’s association with the great power club. This idea of “nuclear prestige” has affected our understanding of proliferation, nonproliferation, and nuclear modernization. Debate rages on whether nuclear prestige still exists. I contribute to this debate by arguing that nuclear prestige has never been symbolically dominant in the international community’s understanding of the bomb. I offer a theory of status symbols and demonstrate that global opposition and divided superpower messaging prevented the rise of nuclear prestige. I test my argument with a case study of contestation over the meaning of the bomb and pair it with a discourse analysis of 10,000 hand-coded observations of nuclear mentions in United Nations General Debate speeches (1946 – 2025). I contribute to our understanding of nuclear symbolism, the effectiveness of the NPT, and to our understanding of international status.

About the speaker: Kevin Bustamante is the Macarthur Hennessey Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame where he earned his PhD in August 2024. His research agenda centers around questions of international security and racism, with a focus on nuclear politics. His work has been published in Security Studies and his book project examines the transformation of dominant racial ideas over the last two centuries.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

This event has been cancelled due to the power outage across campus. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your understanding. 

About the event: The 2011 Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear disaster was the worst industrial nuclear catastrophe to hit Japan. It was a major event, rated at the highest severity, which released radioactive elements into the power plant’s surrounding environment when back-up systems failed and could not sufficiently cool the nuclear reactors. At least 164,000 people were permanently or temporarily displaced. Radioactive Governance offers an ethnographic look at how the disaster was handled by Japan. Unlike prior nuclear-related narratives, such as those surrounding Chernobyl or Hiroshima, which focused on themes of harm, trauma, and victimization, the Japanese government consistently put forward a discourse of minimal or no radiation-related dangers, a gradual bringing home of former evacuees, a restarting of nuclear power plants, and the promotion of a resilient mindset in the face of adversity. This narrative worked to counter other understandings of recovery, such as those of worried citizens unsuccessfully fighting for permanent evacuation because they were afraid to go back to their homes. Providing a rich theorization of how both governments and citizens shape narratives about catastrophic events, Radioactive Governance not only displays how Fukushima became a story of hope and resilience rather than of victimization, but also how radioactive governance shifted from the nuclear secrecy that characterized the Cold War era to relying on international organizations and domestic citizens to co-manage the aftermath of disasters.

About the speaker: Maxime Polleri is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Université Laval and a member of the Graduate School of International Studies. As an anthropologist of technoscience, he studies the governance of disasters, waste and misinformation, with a primary focus on nuclear topics and a regional expertise on Japan.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Why do democratic leaders politicize foreign policy bureaucracies? While existing scholarship recognizes that leaders and bureaucrats often clash, it usually attributes these conflicts to organizational pathologies, principal-agent problems, or policy disagreements. This project develops a theory that explains when leaders attack their foreign policy bureaucracies by installing loyalists, marginalizing or purging careerists, and creating parallel agencies, a strategy I call politicization. It argues that leaders tend to politicize instead of bypassing or coordinating with the bureaucracy when two forces come together: when leaders strongly distrust the bureaucracy, fueled by intense partisan, ideological, and social conflicts, and have enough domestic political power to reshape institutions in their own image.

About the speaker: Emily Tallo is the India-U.S. security studies postdoctoral fellow at CISAC. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago in August 2025. Emily’s research centers on the domestic politics of foreign policy, focusing on how leaders, bureaucracies, and political parties shape international politics with a regional emphasis on South Asia. Before academia, Emily was a researcher at the Henry L. Stimson Center’s South Asia program in Washington, DC, and an editor of the online magazine South Asian Voices. Her commentary has been featured in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, and War on the Rocks.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Following the failed 1959 Lhasa Uprising, tens of thousands fled Tibet. Most of these refugees (including the fourteenth Dalai Lama) settled in India, but others ended up in countries such as Australia, Canada, Nepal, Switzerland, and the United States. Drawing on newspapers, multinational archival sources, and assorted secondary works, this talk will explore how and why both governments and civil society assisted the Tibetans as well as the ways in which Cold War considerations shaped their decisions. This talk will also shed light on Chinese reactions to aid for Tibetans and how refugees have been perceived.

About the speaker: Reed Chervin is Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Motwani Jadeja Institute for American Studies at O. P. Jindal University. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow in the Strategy and Policy Department at the U.S. Naval War College. His first book, The Cold War in the Himalayas, was published with Amsterdam University Press/Routledge, and his other work has appeared in The China Quarterly, The Journal of Cold War Studies, and H-Diplo, among other venues. His current book project is on foreign support for Tibetan rebels and refugees from the 1950s through the 1970s.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: In the wake of conflict and the rise of authoritarian populist movements, national police are becoming more militarized across the globe. This is in spite of the consolidation of international norms for civilian policing. That state police are more militarized is not necessarily surprising since states are fundamentally concerned with domestic order. Like states, international organizations (IOs) are concerned with domestic security and often participate in domestic police reforms as a result. Do IO police reforms operate as a check on global trends toward police militarization? I argue that IOs, though they make determined attempts to institute civilian and democratic policing norms, often reinforce militarized policing. This occurs through institutional and individual mechanisms. First, IOs view order as a necessary condition for democratic or human rights-based policing. Second, individual bureaucrats reinforce this trend because they see insecure spaces as inherently prone to violence and recommend more militarized policing in response. I evaluate the theory using archival evidence from two United Nations (UN) policing missions in Namibia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and interviews with IO policing experts. I find that police militarization is a persistent problem that lacks clear reform solutions, even when implemented by a well-respected IO like the UN.

About the speaker: Before coming to CISAC, Maya was a Neubauer Family Distinguished Doctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago where she received her Ph.D. in Political Science in July, 2025. Maya holds an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and B.A. in Global and International Studies and Humanities from the University of Kansas. Maya's research combines critical and mainstream approaches to explore the legacies of empire in conflict dynamics and state-building. Specifically, she is interested in how international organizations and private firms collaborate with states for international security sector reforms in and outside of post-conflict contexts.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Because no nuclear weapon has been used to attack a target since 1945, a tendency to project existing trends into the future could lead people to expect this pattern of nuclear nonuse to continue. But is it possible to have confidence about whether and how far into the future the record of nonuse will continue? In this talk, Dr. Knopf will argue that confidence about avoiding nuclear use is not possible because the probability of a nuclear attack or nuclear exchange cannot be predicted. This unpredictability reflects the nature of strategy and the available evidence about nuclear deterrence. Strategy involves making a prediction that a chosen course of action will lead to outcomes desired by a state. But attempts to make forecasts about nuclear deterrence are beset by uncertainty and trade-offs and by the interaction of those two problems. Using a thought experiment to illustrate, Dr. Knopf will suggest that the problems of uncertainty and trade-offs make it impossible to reliably estimate the likelihood that any given nuclear strategy will prevent nuclear-weapons use. If this analysis is correct, it should motivate greater efforts to reduce the chance of nuclear-weapons use and to find alternatives to nuclear deterrence. Steps that could help advance those objectives include measures to strengthen inhibitions against nuclear use, as well as renewed efforts to move toward nuclear disarmament.

About the speaker: Jeff Knopf is a professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he serves as chair of the MA program in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies. Dr. Knopf received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford, and in 2018-19 he spent a sabbatical year at CISAC. Dr. Knopf has published extensively on topics related to deterrence, arms control, nonproliferation, and the defense industry. His most recent book is Coercing Syria on Chemical Weapons, published earlier this year by Oxford University Press in its Bridging the Gap Series.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world’s most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage.

Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing.

About the speaker: Magdalena Stawkowski is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina. She earned her PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2014 and has held roles at the Danish Institute for International Studies; the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, as a MacArthur and Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow. Specializing in cultural and medical anthropology, Stawkowski focuses on militarized and nuclear spaces, the political economy of health, and the socio-cultural legacies of Soviet era nuclear testing in Kazakhstan, where she has conducted more than a decade of fieldwork. She has collaborated on international projects examining Cold War radioactive legacies in Kazakhstan, the Marshall Islands, and French Polynesia. Currently, she is engaged in collaborative and comparative research on tritium bioaccumulation and biomagnification in the Semipalatinsk Test Site region and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

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About the event: Amidst momentous geopolitical shifts, changing leaderships, and evolving domestic priorities, the United States and Iran have maintained an antagonistic relationship for nearly half a century. Standard explanations pin the blame for this enduring hostility on Iran and its leaders’ revolutionary ideology and policies at odds with the United States and the West. While Iran bears significant blame for a deeply adversarial relationship—the country often engages in dangerous and repressive activities—this book demonstrates that “it’s them, not us” accounts cannot alone explain America’s posture toward this complicated but critically important country. Dassa Kaye's book explores how America’s Iran policy is made, the people who make it, and the underlying ideas and perceptions that inform it. Dassa Kaye looks back at U.S. policy toward Iran over the past four decades to help us look ahead, offering wider lessons for understanding American foreign policymaking and providing critical insights at a pivotal time of heightened military tensions in and around the Middle East.

About the speaker: Dr. Dalia Dassa Kaye is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and director of its Initiative on Regional Security Architectures. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dalia is an internationally recognized expert on geopolitics and Middle East policy. During her fifteen years at the RAND Corporation, Dalia served as a senior political scientist and the director of the Center of Middle East Public Policy.

She has received numerous awards and held previous positions at an array of research and public policy institutions, including as a Fulbright Schuman visiting scholar at Lund University, a fellow at the Wilson Center, an advisor at the Foreign Ministry of The Netherlands, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill.

She is a frequent public speaker and contributor to leading media outlets, including BBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, and Foreign Affairs. She is the author of dozens of articles and policy reports, as well as three books, including most recently Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy (Stanford University Press, 2026).

Dalia holds her BA, MA, and PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: “Less autonomy, more humanity.” That is the motto of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of 250 human-rights organizations working to negotiate an international treaty that would effectively prohibit states from developing and using autonomous weapons systems. The Campaign’s motto captures the primary legal objection to autonomous weapons: namely, that “killer robots” will never be able to comply with international humanitarian law as well as human soldiers because such compliance requires the kind of judgment, situational awareness, and ability to interpret emotions that only humans possess. This lecture challenges that objection. It begins by showing that those uniquely human traits are far less necessary to IHL compliance than commonly assumed. It then explains why the legal critique of autonomous weapons depends on an idea of “the human” – as fundamentally rational, self-determining, and capable of self-control – that is believed by decades of research into how humans actually make decisions, particularly in dangerous and stressful situations such as combat. And finally, it concludes that the real objection of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is not that autonomous weapons will make worse soldiers than humans – but that they will make better ones.

About the speaker: Kevin Jon Heller is Professor of International Law and Security at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Military Studies and Distinguished RecurringVisiting Professor of Law at Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires. He is an Academic Member of Doughty Street Chambers in London and currently serves as Special Advisor on War Crimes to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, where he led the development of the Office's recently issued Policy on Addressing Environmental Damage Through the Rome Statute. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Opinio Juris, the world's oldest blog dedicated to international law.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.