What happens to armed organizations after they sign peace accords? Why do they dissolve, return to war, or form non-violent political parties? This seminar addresses and seeks to explain this empirical variation in former armed groups’' trajectories, using extensive micro-level data on the Colombian paramilitaries. In so doing, it seeks to contribute an organizational-level study of peace-building. The trajectories explored in this seminar fundamentally shape prospects for peace, state-building, and democratization, influence post-war patterns of human rights abuses, and impact the legalization of war economies.

Sarah Zukerman Daly is a 2009-2010 Predoctoral Fellow and Visiting Scholar.  She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sarah holds a BA (2003) with Distinction in International Relations from Stanford University and a MS (2004) with Distinction in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. She is also an alumna of the 2002-2003 CISAC Undergraduate Honors Program.

Sarah's dissertation analyzes variation in demilitarized groups' post-war trajectories. Specifically, it asks, why, in the aftermath of peace agreements, do armed actors form political parties, remilitarize, or go out of business? Her other current projects seek to explain sub-national variation in insurgency onset in Colombia; state strategies towards ethnic minorities in the former Soviet Union; and the role of emotions in transitional justice.

This talk will address alternative options for European ballistic missile defense, including the now cancelled Polish-Czech option and the recently announced Obama plan for a phased deployment of Standard Missile 3 interceptors in and around Europe. This talk will also address recent Iranian progress in developing medium-range ballistic missiles and possible missile defense cooperation with Russia.

Dean Wilkening is a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University and worked at the RAND Corporation prior to coming to Stanford. His major research interests include nuclear strategy and policy, arms control, the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons, bioterrorism, ballistic missile defense, and energy and security. His most recent research focuses on the broad strategic and political implications of ballistic missile defense deployments in Northeast Asia, South Asia and Europe. Prior work focused on the technical feasibility of boost-phase ballistic missile defense interceptors. His recent work on bioterrorism focuses on understanding the scientific and technical uncertainties associated with predicting the outcome of hypothetical airborne biological attacks and the human effects of inhalation anthrax, with the aim of devising more effective civil defenses. He has participated in, and briefed, several US National Academy of Science committees on biological terrorism and consults for several US national laboratories and government agencies.

"I think that, by and large, the managers wouldn't know a good technique if it hit them in the face." The prominent computer scientist Alan Perlis spoke these words at a second NATO-sponsored Software Engineering conference in 1969. He underscored a conflict that would persist in the decade that followed that ill-tempered meeting, as computer professionals organized in the name of "software engineering," many sponsored by the U.S. defense department. Yet software cost overruns are frequent, and glitches occasionally turn deadly, leading many to argue that "software engineering" is not yet worthy of the name.
 
How should we understand the emergence of software engineering: the agendas of its proponents, sources of controversy, and its relationship to diverse defense department interests, including security, reliability, and timeliness, and costs? This chapter-in-progress addresses this question using both qualitative historical materials and social network data. The Defense Department's interest in software research was nurtured by budgetary cuts that followed anti-war protests in the early 1970, making economics a dominant, if controversial theme in "software engineering" research. Debates about the meaning and direction of software engineering often invoked binary divisions, between managers and technical people, industrialists and academics, pragmatists and theoreticians. After describing these debates from the ground up, I use network analysis to provide bird's eye view: to what extent were commonly evoked dualisms reflected in practices of publication, and how did this change as the field became institutionalized? More broadly, can network analysis contribute meaningfully to a historical account employing "thick description," and if so how?

Rebecca Slayton is a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Stanford University and a CISAC affiliate. In 2004-2005 she was a CISAC science fellow. Her research examines how technical judgments are generated, taken up, and given significance in international security contexts. She is currently working on a book which uses the history of the U.S. ballistic missile defense program to study the relationships between and among technology, expertise, and the media. Portions of this work have been published in journals such as History and Technology and have been presented at academic conferences. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2004 she completed an NSF-funded project entitled Public Science: Discourse about the Strategic Defense Initiative, 1983-1988.

As a physical chemist, she developed ultrafast laser experiments in condensed matter systems and published several articles in physics journals. She also received the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship in 2000, and has worked as a science journalist for a daily paper and for Physical Review Focus. She earned her doctorate in chemistry from Harvard University in 2002.

Eric Roberts, after receiving his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1980, taught at Wellesley College from 1980-85, where he chaired the Computer Science Department. From 1985-90, he was a member of the research staff at Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, California, where he conducted computer science research, focusing on programming tools for multiprocessor architectures. In September 1990, Roberts joined the Stanford faculty, where he is now Professor of Computer Science and the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.

From 1990 to 2002, Professor Roberts was Associate Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Computer Science. In that capacity, he was the principal architect of Stanford’s introductory programming sequence, which for many years held the distinction of being the largest course at Stanford. He has also written four computer science textbooks that are used at many colleges and universities throughout the world. His research focuses on computer science education, particularly for underserved communities. From 1998 to 2005, Roberts was Principal Investigator for the Bermuda Project, which developed the computer science curriculum for Bermuda’s public secondary schools.

Martha Crenshaw will present a research project, "Mapping Terrorist Organizations," recently funded by NSF.

The purpose of the project is to identify patterns in the evolution of organizations that practice terrorism, specify the causes and consequences of these patterns, and analyze the development of Al Qaeda and its cohort in a comprehensive comparative framework.

The project analyzes the organizational structure of different families of organizations and traces their relationships over time. It will produce a series of dynamic maps of the architecture of violent and non-violent opposition groups operating in the same conflict theater.

It will also identify common patterns of organizational evolution, as groups form, split, merge, collaborate, compete, shift ideological direction, adopt or renounce terrorism, grow, shrink, and decline. Models based on comparisons of historical genealogies of terrorism will be applied to the case of Al Qaeda and its affiliates and associates, including the Afghani and Pakistani Taliban. Theories generated from the study will thus shed light on an important and constantly evolving national security threat.

The project will also identify or develop computer software to assemble, organize, and display information about organizations and their interactions over time.

Martha Crenshaw is a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI and a professor of political science by courtesy. She was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought and professor of government at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., from 1974 to 2007. Her current research focuses on innovation in terrorist campaigns, the distinction between "old" and "new" terrorism, why the United States is the target of terrorism, and the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies.

She has written extensively on the issue of political terrorism; her first article, "The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism," was published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1972. Her recent work includes "Terrorism, Strategies, and Grand Strategies," in Attacking Terrorism (Georgetown University Press), "Terrorism and Global Security," in Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World (United States Institute of Peace Press), and "Explaining Suicide Terrorism: A Review Essay," in the journal Security Studies. She is also the editor of a projected volume, The Consequences of Counterterrorist Policies in Democracies, for the Russell Sage Foundation in New York.

She served on the Executive Board of Women in International Security and chaired the American Political Science Association (APSA) Task Force on Political Violence and Terrorism. She has also served on the Council of the APSA and is a former President and Councilor of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). In 2004 ISPP awarded her its Nevitt Sanford Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution and in 2005 the Jeanne Knutson award for service to the society. She serves on the editorial boards of the journals International Security, Orbis, Political Psychology, Security Studies, and Terrorism and Political Violence. She coordinated the working group on political explanations of terrorism for the 2005 Club de Madrid International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security. She is a lead investigator with the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, funded by the Department of Homeland Security. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2005-2006. She served on the Committee on Law and Justice and the Committee on Determining Basic Research Needs to Interrupt the Improvised Explosive Device Delivery Chain of the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science. She was a senior fellow at the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City for 2006-2007.