Security

FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.

Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions. 

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On Thursday, Dec. 3, Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Ca., presented Scott Sagan an award for his "Outstanding Contribution to Nonproliferation Education" at the center's 20th anniversary conference. Mukhatzhanova described Sagan as "truly one of the rock stars of our field."

The text of Mukhatzhanova's remarks follows:

"There are different kinds of distinguished people within the nonproliferation and disarmament community: some commit to government work and excel at policy making; others become career diplomats and negotiate treaties to advance international peace and security, and then there are those who devote themselves to academia and teaching.

"While we admire the work of policymakers and diplomats, it is the last category - the educators - who influence most directly the younger generations of specialists. Through their articles, their classes, and advising, they play a great role in shaping the future of disarmament and nonproliferation. This award honors an outstanding educator.

"Each of us became involved in this field for different reasons, and was affected by various works. But for me personally, the fascination and love of the subject began with the three models in search of a bomb. (You probably now know who I'm talking about.) I was lucky to subsequently meet our award recipient, have him review my paper, and even work with him on the same book project. I knew I reached a certain milestone in my career when he said I could call him Scott.

With almost 25 years of teaching experience, having taught 16 different courses and chaired eight PhD dissertation committees (that's not to mention his head-spinning list of publications), he is truly one of the rock stars of our field. And you can tell that he is a teacher when at a busy conference full of big shots, you'll find him talking to younger people, discussing their papers, their research interests and their plans.

Dr. Sagan, we, the new generation, greatly appreciate your advice and attention. And we cheer for you in the debate on the spread of nuclear weapons and the no-first-use policy.

So today, it is my honor to present the CNS Award for Outstanding Contribution to Nonproliferation Education to Dr. Scott Sagan, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation."

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Article Highlights

  • The economic crisis has quieted talk of a nuclear renaissance, but that doesn't mean the need to manage nuclear energy's potential global spread has lessened.
  • Discussions by some states to pursue dual-use nuclear technologies may push rivals to develop them as well.
  • The flawed institutions from the first nuclear expansion must be fixed to prevent further nuclear proliferation.
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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Karthika Sasikumar
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Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at FSI's Center for International Security and Cooperation, testified Thursday, November 19, before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment on the subject of "Reassessing the Evolving al-Qa'ida Threat to the Homeland." Crenshaw, who recently launched a three-year effort to build a global database of terrorist 'family trees,' was joined by three terrorism experts at the hearing in Washington, D.C.

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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

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Representing the United States Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel John Vitacca is a national defense fellow for 2009-2010 at CISAC. 

John holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Marketing from Texas A&M University, a Master of Business Administration degree in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Master of Arts degree in Military Operational Art and Science from Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Alabama.  He is a command pilot with over 3,400 flight hours in the B-2 and B-52, qualified as both an instructor and evaluator pilot.  Prior to coming to CISAC, John served in various assignments including a tour at the Pentagon as the Chief of the Global Persistent Attack Branch and the B-2/Next Generation Bomber subject matter expert.   Most recently, he was the Commander of the 393d Bomb Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base, one of only two operational B-2 stealth bomber squadrons in the USAF.  His research at CISAC will focus on nuclear weapons policy issues.

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Representing the United States Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel John Vitacca is a national defense fellow for 2009-2010 at CISAC. 

John holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Marketing from Texas A&M University, a Master of Business Administration degree in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Master of Arts degree in Military Operational Art and Science from Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Alabama.  He is a command pilot with over 3,400 flight hours in the B-2 and B-52, qualified as both an instructor and evaluator pilot.  Prior to coming to CISAC, John served in various assignments including a tour at the Pentagon as the Chief of the Global Persistent Attack Branch and the B-2/Next Generation Bomber subject matter expert.   Most recently, he was the Commander of the 393d Bomb Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base, one of only two operational B-2 stealth bomber squadrons in the USAF.  His research at CISAC focused on nuclear weapons policy issues.

Colonel (Select) John Vitacca CISAC Visiting Scholar Speaker
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CISAC Senior Fellow Martha Crenshaw joined three other terrorism experts at a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment.

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Dr. Stephen Flynn served as a senior policy advisor on homeland security during the Obama campaign and during the presidential transition. Since May 2009, he has been supporting the Department of Homeland Security in drafting of the first Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) that will be presented to Congress by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in Jan 2010. In addition, he has been assisting the newly created National Security Council Directorate for Resilience Policy on integrating the concept of resilience into presidential guidance on national preparedness. He will discuss how the homeland security mission is being recalibrated by the Obama Administration to place greater emphasis on building national capacity to withstand, quickly recover from, and adapt to man-made and natural disasters.

About the speaker:

In December 2009, Dr. Stephen Flynn becomes the fifth President of the Center for National Policy (www.cnponline.org), founded in 1981.  Prior to being selected to lead CNP, he spent a decade as a senior fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Following the election of President Barack Obama, he served as the lead policy advisor on homeland security for the presidential transition team.  He is a member of the bipartisan National Security Preparedness Group, co-chaired by former 9/11 commissioners, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton.

Dr. Flynn is the author of the critically acclaimed The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (Random House, 2007), and the national bestseller, America the Vulnerable (HarperCollins 2004).  He is a Consulting Professor at the Center of International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School's Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania.  Since 9/11 he has provided testimony on twenty-two occasions on Capitol Hill.  Dr. Flynn is also a member of the Marine Board of the National Research Council. Prior to September 11, 2001, he served as an expert advisor to U.S. Commission on National Security (Hart-Rudman Commission), and following the 9/11 attacks he was the principle advisor to the bipartisan Congressional Port Security Caucus, and advised the Bush Administration on maritime and homeland security issues. 

He is a frequent media commentator and has appeared on Meet the Press, 60 Minutes, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The Today Show, the Charlie Rose Show, CNN and on National Public Radio.  Four of his articles have been published in the prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs.  Excerpts of his books have been featured in Time, as the cover story for U.S. News & World Report, and as the subject of two CNN documentaries.

A 1982 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Dr. Flynn served in the Coast Guard on active duty for 20 years, including two tours as commanding officer at sea, received several professional awards including the Legion of Merit, and retired at the rank of Commander.  As a Coast Guard officer, he served in the White House Military Office during the George H.W. Bush administration and as a director for Global Issues on the National Security Council staff during the Clinton administration. 

Dr. Flynn received the M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. degrees in International Politics from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in 1990 and 1991.  He was a Guest Scholar in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution from 1991-92, and in 1993-94 he was an Annenberg Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.   He has been a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations since 1999.

Dr. Flynn is the principal for Stephen E. Flynn Associates LLC, where he provides independent advisory services on improving enterprise resiliency and critical infrastructure protection, and transportation and maritime security.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1960, Dr. Flynn lives in Connecticut with his wife JoAnn and their daughter Christina.

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Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe is to be nominated U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the White House announced Nov. 9

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, an affiliated scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), is expected to be nominated as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the White House reported Nov. 9.

Donahoe must appear in a hearing before a Senate subcommittee before the Senate votes on the nomination, a process that could take several weeks. If confirmed, Donahoe would be responsible for advancing U.S. policies on the council to ensure protection of universally agreed human rights standards.

"I'm really pleased that President Obama has chosen Eileen Donahoe to be the ambassador to the Human Rights Council in Geneva," CISAC Co-Director Scott Sagan said. "Her scholarly research and work has focused on the ethical and legal dilemmas involving the political uses of military force in human intervention. I can't think of anyone more qualified to help reinvigorate the Human Rights Council to meet the challenges it must face today."

Donahoe, 50, was a CISAC visiting scholar in 2006-07 after earning a doctorate in ethics from the University of California's Graduate Theological Union. Her dissertation, "Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Moral Imperative Versus the Rule of Law," addressed the sometimes conflicting ethical and legal justifications for humanitarian military intervention, as well as the basis for authorization of the use of force by the UN Security Council. Her research has also focused on U.N. reform and the international rule of law.

Donahoe has worked with various human rights organizations, including The Lawyer's Committee for Human Rights, where she did research on the connection between U.S. foreign policy and human rights, and Amnesty International's Ginetta Sagan Fund, where she did strategy work related to human rights concerns of women and children.

Donahoe, a resident of Portola Valley, chaired the National Women for Obama Finance Committee during Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Previously, Donahoe was a litigation associate at Fenwick & West in Palo Alto, where she served technology clients in intellectual property and commercial disputes. Prior to that, she was a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School and a law clerk to the Hon. William H. Orrick in San Francisco.

In addition to her doctorate, Donahoe earned a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College, a master's in theology from Harvard, and both a law degree and master's in East Asian Studies from Stanford University.

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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.

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David Hamburg President Emeritus, Carnegie Corporation of New York Speaker
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