Seo-Hyun Park (speaker) is a PhD candidate in the Government Department at Cornell University and a predoctoral fellow at CISAC. Her dissertation project explores how the hierarchical regional order in East Asia has conditioned conceptions of state sovereignty and domestic identity politics in historical and contemporary Japan and Korea, with both countries alternating between deferential and defiant security strategies vis-a-vis regional hegemons such as China and the United States. Park has been a recipient of the Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Mellon Fellowship, and the Cornell University Einaudi Center's Carpenter Fellowship. She has also conducted research in Japan and Korea as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University. Her research interests include the politics of sovereignty and national identity, globalization and regionalization, anti-Americanism, and territorial disputes as well as general issues in East Asian security and politics.

Phillip Lipscy (discussant), a specialist on Japanese political economy and international relations, is a center fellow at FSI and an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University. His fields of research include international and comparative political economy, international security, Japanese politics, U.S.-Japan relations, and regional cooperation in East and South East Asia. Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, Lipscy pursued his doctoral studies in government at Harvard University. He received his MA in international policy studies and BA in economics and political science at Stanford University. Lipscy has been affiliated with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, The Institute for Global and International Studies at The George Washington University, the RAND Corporation, and the Institute for International Policy Studies in Tokyo. Lipscy's most recent research investigates negotiations over representation in international organizations such as the United Nations Security Council, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. He is also researching the causes and implications of the rapid accumulation of international reserves in East and Southeast Asia.

Ron E. Hassner (speaker) is an assistant professor of political science at University of California, Berkeley. He returns to CISAC as a visiting professor, having served as predoctoral fellow from 2000 to 2003. His research revolves around symbolic and emotive aspects of international security with particular attention to religious violence, Middle Eastern politics and territorial disputes. His publications have focused on the role of perceptions in entrenching international disputes, the causes and characteristics of conflicts over sacred places, the characteristics of political-religious leadership and political-religious mobilization and the role of national symbols in conflict.

Hassner was a fellow of the MacArthur Consortium on Peace and Security in 2000-2003. In 2003-2004 he was a postdoctoral scholar at the Olin Institute for International Security, Harvard University. He is a graduate of Stanford University with degrees in political science and religious studies.

Jacob Shapiro (discussant) is a CISAC postdoctoral fellow. His primary research interest is the organization of terrorism and insurgency. His other research interests include international relations, organization theory, and security policy. Shapiro's ongoing projects study the balance between secrecy and openness in counterterrorism, the impact of international human rights law on democracies' foreign policy, the causes of militant recruitment in Islamic countries, and the relationship between public goods provision and insurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. His research has been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Foreign Policy, and a number of edited volumes. Shapiro is a Harmony Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy. As a Naval Reserve officer he was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Naval Warfare Development Command. He served on active duty at Special Boat Team 20 and onboard the USS Arthur W. Radford (DD-968). He holds a PhD in political science and an MA in economics from Stanford University and a BA in political science from the University of Michigan.

Jacob Shapiro (speaker) is a CISAC postdoctoral fellow. His primary research interest is the organization of terrorism and insurgency. His other research interests include international relations, organization theory, and security policy. Shapiro's ongoing projects study the balance between secrecy and openness in counterterrorism, the impact of international human rights law on democracies' foreign policy, the causes of militant recruitment in Islamic countries, and the relationship between public goods provision and insurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. His research has been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Foreign Policy, and a number of edited volumes. Shapiro is a Harmony Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy. As a Naval Reserve officer he was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Naval Warfare Development Command. He served on active duty at Special Boat Team 20 and onboard the USS Arthur W. Radford (DD-968). He holds a PhD in political science and an MA in economics from Stanford University and a BA in political science from the University of Michigan.

Jeremy Weinstein (discussant) is an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University and an affiliated faculty member at CDDRL and CISAC. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he directed the bi-partisan Commission on Weak States and US National Security. While working on his PhD, with funding from the Jacob Javits Fellowship, a Sheldon Fellowship, and the World Bank, he conducted hundreds of interviews with rebel combatants and civilians in both Africa and Latin America for his forthcoming book, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. He has also worked on the National Security Council staff; served as a visiting scholar at the World Bank; was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and received a research fellowship in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. He received his BA with high honors from Swarthmore College, and his MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.

Jessica Weeks is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, the 2007-2008 Zukerman Fellow and a pre-doctoral fellow at CISAC, and the Teaching Assistant for the CISAC Honors Program. Her dissertation, "Leaders, Accountability, and Foreign Policy in Non-Democracies" studies how different levels of domestic accountability affect leaders' decisions about international conflict. Additional research investigates the effectiveness of military interventions, and the escalation and resolution of international military crises.

Jessica graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Political Science from The Ohio State University in 2001, and received an MA in International History and Politics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.