Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar  (MA ’96, PhD ’00), a lawyer, scholar, and former official in the Clinton and Obama administrations, will assume the position of co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at the conclusion of the current academic year, FSI Director Coit D. Blacker and Law School Dean Larry Kramer have announced.

An expert in administrative law, international security, and public health and safety, Cuéllar is Professor and the Deane F. Johnson Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, and is also professor (by courtesy) of political science in the School of Humanities and Sciences. He is a longtime affiliated faculty member at CISAC, where he currently serves on the executive committee. He has collaborated with or served on the boards of several civil society organizations, including the Haas Center for Public Service, Asylum Access, and the American Constitution Society.

“I’m delighted that Tino has agreed to serve as co-director of FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation,” says Coit D. Blacker, FSI’s director and the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies. “He will bring to the job just the right combination of skills, talents, and sensibilities to assure the Center’s continuing relevance and future success. Tino is an acclaimed scholar, an outstanding teacher, and an experienced policymaker who thinks hard and very creatively about the most pressing national and international security issues of our time – including problems of executive power and accountability, public health, and migration. Finding someone to take the reins at CISAC following Scott D. Sagan’s long and successful tenure as co-director was never going to be easy. But with Siegfried S. Hecker and now Tino Cuéllar at the helm, I think we’ve put together a winning team.”

Cuéllar has had an extensive record of public service since joining Stanford Law School faculty in 2001. Recently, he served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy at the White House. In that role, he led the Domestic Policy Council’s work on criminal justice and drug policy, public health and food safety, regulatory reform, borders and immigration, civil rights, and rural and agricultural policy.  Among other responsibilities, he represented the Domestic Policy Council in the development of the first-ever Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, and coordinated the President’s Food Safety Working Group.

"Tino's decision to become co-director of CISAC is good for everyone,” said Larry Kramer, Richard E. Lang Professor and Dean of Stanford Law School. “It's a great opportunity for him to pursue and build on his expertise in national security. It adds an innovative and forward-thinking mind and voice to CISAC. And it will generate tremendous new opportunities for collaboration between the Law School and CISAC, to the great benefit of our students and faculty."

In July 2010, when Cuéllar left the Obama administration to return to Stanford, he also accepted an appointment from the President of the United States to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a non-partisan agency charged with recommending improvements in the efficiency and fairness of federal regulatory programs.  Before joining the White House staff, Cuéllar co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition’s Immigration Policy Working Group.  Earlier in his career, during the second term of the Clinton Administration, Cuéllar worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Enforcement, focusing on countering financial crime, improving border coordination, and enhancing anti-corruption measures.

Cuéllar graduated from Calexico High School in rural Southern California, going on to receive a BA magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1993, a JD from Yale Law School in 1997, and a PhD in political science from Stanford University in 2000. Cuéllar clerked for Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2000 to 2001.

Cuéllar will join current CISAC co-director Siegfried Hecker, professor (research) of management science and engineering and FSI senior fellow, in leading one of the country’s preeminent university-based research centers on international security and cooperation. He will succeed longtime co-director Scott Sagan, who has been leading the Center since 1998. “I am extremely pleased that Tino Cuéllar will be joining me,” said Hecker.  “He will build on the extraordinary leadership that Scott Sagan has provided over the last 12 years, and his outstanding academic credentials and deep experience in Washington crafting security policy will be a tremendous asset to CISAC."

Sagan, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science and FSI senior fellow, will continue as an important presence at CISAC and FSI, with plans to focus on policy-related research for the American Academy of Arts and Science's Global Nuclear Future Initiative, where he serves as the co-chair with Harvard’s Steven Miller. Sagan has been instrumental in building CISAC’s capacity as an international leader in interdisciplinary university-based research and training aimed at tackling some of the world's most difficult security problems. “CISAC is a small national treasure inside this great university: a multidisciplinary research institution that consistently produces rigorous policy-relevant scholarship and creatively trains the next generation of international security specialists,” said Sagan. “I am proud to have helped lead the Center for the past 12 years, and am equally excited to be staying on at CISAC as a faculty member in residence."

"Tino Cuéllar will be a spectacular co-director for CISAC,” he added. “His joint legal and political science training brings new perspectives to international and national problems and his research on the security implications of U.S. immigration law, on efforts to combat terrorist financing, and on the politics of transnational law enforcement places new and important subjects directly onto the CISAC global policy agenda."

With a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and anticipation building in Beijing for a change in leadership in 2012, domestic politics in both countries are playing a major role in the bilateral relationship. On the eve of his own milestone—his 80th birthday—John W. Lewis, one of the world’s foremost China scholars and the director of CISAC's Project on Peace and Cooperation in the Asian-Pacific Region, discussed the direction of the U.S.-China relationship, the importance of dialogue between the two powers, and the potentially rocky road ahead. Excerpts:

CISAC: The conventional wisdom seems to be that relations between the two countries are not very good and getting worse. Can you provide some context?

Lewis: There have been many, many times when the relationship has been worse. The fundamentals in U.S.-China relations, in my view, have over time gradually gotten better. Both sides recognize that there is a complementarity in their relations in the Pacific. There is a kind of synergy that is very important, and when things get bad, as they are now certainly—or not good—both sides try to keep the genie in the bottle. Several things are important: even though the Chinese think we made the Taiwan problem worse with the sale of $6.4 billion worth of advanced weapons, the Cross-Strait relationship is actually pretty good. That ingredient in our relationship with China is not a serious problem. The issues that we have are not abnormal in big power relationships.

What is so sad at this point is that the militaries on both sides—the Pentagon and the People's Liberation Army—they both want to have a serious engagement with each other. They want to have a security relationship with us, but we have these constant issues such as the South China Sea and the Yellow Sea. It changes every day, but now they say they want to put the USS George Washington in the Yellow Sea, or what the Koreans call the West Sea. It's stupid militarily and it's provocative from the Chinese point of view, and you can't defend it other than that the South Koreans want it. And from the Chinese point of view, they cannot imagine why during the calm periods with North Korea, for example, we don’t try to take advantage of that, why we don’t try to make progress in the Six-Party talks. So they see this constant set of problems that project into China that do affect U.S.-China relations. Add into that the political rhetoric in this country, the loss of jobs to China, for instance. It's a big political deal in the United States now. With China, there are endless things we could do. But politically Obama will not do it because he’s going to take a hit domestically. The anger against China is so strong in Washington, and perhaps in the rest of the country, whether it’s because of human rights or questions related to their currency exchange rate. But again, the fundamentals are quite different. They are actually pretty sound.

CISAC: China is gearing up for a major transition of power. How will this affect the relationship?

L: Now that Xi Jinping has been made vice chairman of the Central Military Commission it’s pretty clear that the jockeying is already moving in the direction [that he will succeed President Hu Jintao]. Can something happen? The Chinese always worry, as any politician would, about the next round. So they’re not going to make any mistakes, and they’re not going to do anything that gets themselves off track. They cannot back down [on foreign policy]. No one can back down against the United States or anyone else, particularly now with the Japanese. They’re going to come right at the Japanese.

CISAC: So the transition makes things more difficult?

L: Absolutely, and it’s true in the United States. Obama's looking at the election and he's going to do everything he can to move to the right and look like he’s really tough on all the things the Republicans can hammer him on. That’s going to shape how the Chinese pick their leadership in 2012. Their selection will come at about the same time as ours in 2012—the campaigns will be simultaneous—and it’s too bad. If we become very nationalistic, it’s going to look very hostile to them. And we’re going to be wagged by the Japanese and South Korean dog, and this great power, the United States, is going to look helpless to them. China is offering opportunities to solve problems and we are not prepared to take them, and they're saying, ‘are you not willing to talk to us?’?