FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling.
FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world.
FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.
Countering Terrorism: What Works?
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2009-10 CISAC fellows and visiting scholars
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CISAC is pleased to announce fellows and visitors in residence at the Center during the 2009-10 academic year.
- Max Abrahms
University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Political Science
Strategic Logic of Terrorism - Undraa Agvaanluvsan
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Nuclear Experimental Group
Energy, Security, and Economic Implications of Nuclear Industry Development in Mongolia - Chaim Braun
CISAC
Nuclear Power Growth and its Nonproliferation Implications in India, the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula, and South America - Sarah Zukerman Daly
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science
Guns, Politics or Bankruptcy: Disentangling the Determinants of Armed Organizations Post-war Trajectories - Matthias Englert
Darmstadt University of Technology, Interdisciplinary Research Group in Science Technology and Security
Managing the Proliferation Risks of Gas Centrifuges - Technical and Political Measures - Andrea Everett
Princeton University, Department of Politics
Responding to Catastrophe: Democratic Society and the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention - Kelly Greenhill
Tufts University and Research Fellow, Harvard University
Fear Factor: Understanding the Origins and Consequences of Beliefs about National Security and the Threats We Face - Tom Isaacs
Director, Office of Planning and Special Studies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and the Role of the U.S. - Joseph Martz
Los Alamos National Laboratory - Katherine Marvel
University of Cambridge, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
Nuclear Energy in Africa: Utility, Feasibility, and Security - Emily Meierding
University of Chicago, Department of Political Science
Fueling Conflict, Facilitating Peace: Oil & International Territorial Disputes - Eric Morris
Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies
Civilian Capacity for Peace Operations - Charles Perrow
Yale University, Department of Sociology - Brenna Powell
Harvard University, Department of Government and Social Policy
Normalizing Security After Conflict: Jobs for the Boys and Justice for the Hoods - Arian Pregenzer
Sandia National Laboratories, Department of Cooperative International Programs
International Technical Cooperation to Support Arms Control and Nonproliferation: Review of Past Approaches, Identification of Lessons Learned, and Recommendations for the Future - William Reckmeyer
San Jose State University, Department of Anthropology
Systemic Connections: Developing an Integrated National Strategy to Promote International Security and Cooperation - Jefferey Richardson,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Science as a Tool for International Engagement - Robert Rosner
University of Chicago, Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, and Laboratory Director, Argonne National Laboratory - Jan Stupl
University of Hamburg, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy
Missile Technology Control Regime - Michael Sulmeyer
Stanford Law School - Phil Taubman
Former Associate Editor and Reporter, The New York Times - Jianqun Teng
China Arms Control and Disarmament Association
Nuclear Free World Initiative in the Context of Sino-U.S. Relations - John Vitacca
United States Air Force
Nuclear Policy Issues - Gang Zhao
Chinese Academy of S & T for Development (CASTED)
Deepening the China-U.S. Relationship through Collaboration in Science and Technology with Particular Attention to Alternative Energy Solutions - Yunhua Zou
General Armaments Department, People's Liberation Army, China
Space Arms Control; Security Cooperation with China; U.S.-China Relations
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Martha Crenshaw awarded $500,000 to study terrorist patterns
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Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has been awarded $500,000 by the National Science Foundation to identify patterns in the evolution of terrorist organizations and to analyze their comparative development.
The three-year grant is part of the Department of Defense's Minerva Initiative launched in 2008, which focuses on "supporting research related to basic social and behavioral science of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy."
Crenshaw's interdisciplinary project, "Mapping Terrorist Organizations," will analyze terrorist groups and trace their relationships over time. It will be the first worldwide, comprehensive study of its kind-extending back to the Russian revolutionary movement up to Al Qaeda today.
"We want to understand how groups affiliate with Al Qaeda and analyze their relationships," Crenshaw said. "Evolutionary mapping can enhance our understanding of how terrorist groups develop and interact with each other and with the government, how strategies of violence and non-violence are related, why groups persist or disappear, and how opportunities and constraints in the environment change organizational behavior over time."
According to Crenshaw, it is critical to understand the organization and evolution of terrorism in multiple contexts. "To craft effective counter-terrorism strategies, governments need to know not only what type of adversary they are confronting but its stage of organizational development and relationship to other groups," Crenshaw wrote in the project summary. "The timing of a government policy initiative may be as important as its substance."
"Mapping Terrorist Organizations" will incorporate research in economics, sociology, business, biology, political science and history. It will include existing research to build a new database using original language sources rather than secondary analyses. The goal is to produce an online database and series of interactive maps that will generate new observations and research questions, Crenshaw said.
The results, for example, could reveal the structure of violent and non-violent opposition groups within the same movements or conflicts, and identify patterns that explain how these groups evolve over time. Such findings could be used to analyze the development of Al Qaeda and its Islamist or jihadist affiliates, including the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, she said.
The findings may also shed light on what happens when a group splits due to leadership quarrels or when a government is overturned, Crenshaw said. "Analysis that links levels of terrorist violence to changes in organizational structures and explains the complex relationships among actors in protracted conflicts will break new ground," the summary noted.
Extensive information on terrorist groups already exists, but it has been difficult to compile and analyze. Despite such obstacles, Crenshaw said, violent organizations can be understood in the same terms as other political or economic groups. "Terrorist groups are not anomalous or unique," she wrote. "In fact, they can be compared to transnational activist networks."
Crenshaw should know. Widely respected as a pioneer in terrorism studies, the political scientist was one of a handful of scholars who followed the subject decades before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She joined CISAC in 2007, following a long career at Wesleyan University, where she was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought. In addition to her research at Stanford, Crenshaw is a lead investigator at START, the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.
End goal
Crenshaw wants to use the findings to better analyze how threats to U.S. security evolve over time. "Terrorist attacks on the United States and its allies abroad often appear to come without warning, but they are the result of a long process of organizational development," she wrote. "Terrorist organizations do not operate in isolation from a wider social environment. Without understanding processes of development and interaction, governments may miss signals along the way and be vulnerable to surprise attack. They may also respond ineffectively because they cannot anticipate the consequences of their actions." The project seeks to find patterns in the evolution of terrorism and to explain their causes and consequences. This, in turn, should contribute to developing more effective counter-terrorism policy, Crenshaw said.
Conflicts to be mapped
- Russian revolutionary organizations, 1860s-1914.
- Anarchist groups in Europe and the United States, 1880s-1914. (Note: although the anarchist movement is typically regarded as completely unstructured, there was more organization than an initial survey might suppose, and the transnational dispersion of the movement is frequently cited as a precedent for Al Qaeda.)
- Ireland and Northern Ireland, 1860s-present.
- Algeria, 1945-1962 and 1992-present
- Palestinian resistance groups, 1967-present.
- Colombia, 1960s-present.
- El Salvador, 1970s-1990s
- Argentina, 1960s-1980s
- Chile, 1973-1990
- Peru, 1970-1990s
- Brazil, 1967-1971
- Sri Lanka, 1980s-present
- India (Punjab), 1980-present
- Philippines, 1960s-present
- Indonesia, 1998-present
- Italy, 1970s-1990s
- Germany, 1970s-1990s
- France/Belgium, 1980-1990s
- Kashmir, 1988-present
- Pakistan, 1980-present
- United States, 1960s-present (especially far right movement)
- Spain, 1960s-present
- Egypt, 1950s-present
- Turkey, 1960s-present
- Lebanon, 1975-present
- Al Qaeda, 1987-present
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12th Annual United Nations Association Film Festival Session VI
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The United Nations Association Film Festival was originally conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 12th UNAFF will be held from October 17-25, 2009 in Palo Alto, Stanford University, East Palo Alto and San Francisco. This year, the theme is Energy and the World, reflecting the myriad of problems we encounter saving energy around the world and to seek awareness and solutions — through film — to better our lives and save our planet.
This year's festival also features a powerful film on the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Launched in 2002, the ICC is the first international tribunal of its kind, a permanent criminal court created to prosecute individuals, no matter how powerful, for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The Reckoning follows the dynamic and charismatic Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and Senior Trial Attorney Christine Chung as they issue arrest warrants for the Lord’s Resistance Army leaders in Uganda, put four Congolese warlords on trial at The Hague, challenge the UN Security Council to support the Court’s call for an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan on charges of genocide, and shake up the Colombian justice system. As the Prosecutor tells us, he has to take this tiny court, created by dreamers, and turn it into reality. He has a mandate to prosecute perpetrators around the world for the worst crimes imaginable, whether they are warlords or military brass or heads of state, even as they continue to wreak havoc. But he has no police force—he needs to pressure the international community to follow through, to muster political will. Will it succeed? How will the world make sure that the Prosecutor can fulfill his mandate?
- 3:00 p.m. Film screening, "The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court" (1993, Director: Pamela Yates)
- 4:30 p.m. Panel, "From Dream to Reality: International Criminal Court"
- 5:30 p.m. Reception with the filmmakers
Bechtel Conference Center
Helen Stacy
Principal Investigator, Program on Human Rights; Senior Fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute, Senior Lecturer, School of Law and 2009-2010 Faculty Fellow, Clayman Institute for Gender Research
Panelist
Conferences
Screening of documentary about physicist Joseph Rotblat at UN Film Festival
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The United Nations Association Film Festival was originally conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 12th UNAFF will be held from October 17-25, 2009 in Palo Alto, Stanford University, East Palo Alto and San Francisco. This year, the theme is Energy and the World, reflecting the myriad of problems we encounter saving energy around the world and to seek awareness and solutions — through film — to better our lives and save our planet.
When the U.S. government brought the world’s greatest scientists together to build the first atomic bomb, nuclear physicist Joseph Rotblat was among them. But his conscience would not allow him to continue, and he became the only member of the Manhattan Project to leave on moral grounds. Branded a traitor and spy, Rotblat went from designing atomic bombs to researching the medical uses of radiation. Together with Bertrand Russell he helped create the modern peace movement, and eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Strangest Dream tells the story of Joseph Rotblat, the history of nuclear weapons, and the efforts of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs—an international movement Rotblat co-founded—to halt nuclear proliferation. The first Pugwash conference took place in the small Nova Scotia fishing village from which it draws its name. This film brings to light the group’s behind-the-scenes role in defusing some of the tensest moments of the Cold War. The story takes us from the site of the first nuclear test, in New Mexico, to Cairo, where contemporary Pugwash scientists meet under the cloud of nuclear proliferation, and to Hiroshima, where we see survivors of the first atomic attack. The Strangest Dream demonstrates the renewed threat represented by nuclear weapons, while encouraging hope through the example of morally engaged scientists and citizens.
- 3:00 p.m. Film screening, "The Strangest Dream" (1989, Director: Eric Bednarski)
- 4:30 p.m. Panel, "The Ethics of Nuclear Technology"
- 5:30 p.m. Reception with filmmakers
Bechtel Conference Center
Burt Richter
Panelist
Martin Hellman
Professor Emeritus, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
Panelist
Conferences
Nuclear Power Without Nuclear Proliferation?
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The global nuclear order is changing. Concerns about climate change, the volatility of oil prices, and the security of energy supplies have contributed to a widespread and still-growing interest in the future use of nuclear power. Thirty states operate one or more nuclear power plants today, and according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), some 50 others have requested technical assistance from the agency to explore the possibility of developing their own nuclear energy programs. This surge of interest in nuclear energy - labeled by some proponents as ‘the renaissance in nuclear power' - is occurring simultaneously with mounting concerns about the healthy of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, the regulatory framework that constrains and governs the world's civil and military- related nuclear affairs. The question then arises: is it possible to have nuclear power without nuclear proliferation? The answer is not clear, for the technical, economic, and political factors that will determine whether future generations will have more nuclear power without more nuclear proliferation are exceedingly complex and interrelated. Dr. Sagan will outline the current state of nuclear power and nuclear proliferation, before examining the weaknesses and promise of existing research on the subject. He argues that a key aspect of ensuring a safe nuclear future will be the strengthening of the NPT through "shared responsibility" for disarmament.
Scott Sagan is a professor of political science and co-director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989), The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993), and with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (W.W. Norton, 2002). He is the co-editor of Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James L. Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000) and the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009). His most recent publications include "The Case for No First Use," Survival (June 2009) and "Good Faith and Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations" in George Perkovich and James A. Acton (eds.) Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (Carnegie Endowment, 2009).
Allen S. Weiner is senior lecturer in law and co-director of the Stanford Program in International Law at Stanford Law School. He is also the co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. His expertise is in the field of public international law and the foreign relations law of the United States. He is a seasoned international lawyer with experience in such wide-ranging fields as national security law, the law of war, international dispute resolution, and international criminal law. His current scholarship focuses on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. For more than a decade he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State, serving as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser and as legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. In those capacities, he advised government policy-makers, negotiated international agreements, and represented the United States in litigation before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and the International Court of Justice. He teaches courses in public international law, international conflict resolution, and international security matters at Stanford Law School. He received a BA from Harvard College and a JD from Stanford Law School.
CISAC Conference Room
Scott D. Sagan
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
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ssagan@stanford.edu
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.
Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).
Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).
In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.
Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Allen S. Weiner
Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Neukom Faculty Office Building, Room N238
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
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aweiner@stanford.edu
Senior Lecturer in Law
Director, Stanford Program in International Law
Co-Director, Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation
CISAC Core Faculty Member
Europe Center Affiliated Faculty
Allen S. Weiner is senior lecturer in law and director of the Stanford Program in International Law at Stanford Law School. He is also the co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. He is an international legal scholar with expertise in such wide-ranging fields as international and national security law, the law of war, international conflict resolution, and international criminal law (including transitional justice). His scholarship focuses on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and situations of widespread humanitarian atrocities. He also explores the relationship between international and domestic law in the context of asymmetric armed conflicts between the United States and nonstate groups and the response to terrorism. In the realm of international conflict resolution, his highly multidisciplinary work analyzes the barriers to resolving violent political conflicts, with a particular focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Weiner’s scholarship is deeply informed by experience; for more than a decade he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State, serving as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser and as legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. In those capacities, he advised government policy-makers, negotiated international agreements, and represented the United States in litigation before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Court of Justice. He teaches courses in public international law, international conflict resolution, and international security matters at Stanford Law School.
Weiner is the author of "Constitutions as Peace Treaties: A Cautionary Tale for the Arab Spring” in the Stanford Law Review Online (2011) and co-author (with Barry E. Carter) of International Law (6th ed. 2011). Other publications include “The Torture Memos and Accountability" in the American Society of International Law Insight (2009), "Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is It War?", in Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture: Contemporary Challenges to Just War Theory (Steven P. Lee, ed.) (2007), ”Enhancing Implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540: Report of the Center on International Security and Cooperation” (with Chaim Braun, Michael May & Roger Speed) (September 2007), and "The Use of Force and Contemporary Security Threats: Old Medicine for New Ills?", Stanford Law Review (2006).
Weiner has worked on several Supreme Court amicus briefs concerning national security and international law issues, including cases brought involving "war on terror" detainees. He has also submitted petitions before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of Vietnamese social and political activists detained by their governing for the exercise of free speech rights.
Weiner earned a BA from Harvard College and a JD from Stanford Law School.
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Working Toward a World Without Nuclear Weapons: Sidney Drell and George Shultz in Conversation with Philip Taubman
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Drell Lecture Recording: NA
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Sidney D. Drell
Professor at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Emeritus and Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Hoover Institution
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George P. Shultz
Former U.S. Secretary of State; Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Philip Taubman
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Philip Taubman is affiliated with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Before joining CISAC in 2008, Mr. Taubman worked at the New York Times as a reporter and editor for nearly 30 years, specializing in national security issues, including United States diplomacy, and intelligence and defense policy and operations. He served as Moscow bureau chief and Washington bureau chief, among other posts. He is author of Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage (2003), The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb (2012), In the Nation's Service: The Life and Times of George P. Shultz (2023), as well as co-author (with his brother, William Taubman) of McNamara at War: A New History (2025).
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CISAC goes to Washington
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Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation may be far from Washington, D.C., but its influence inside the Beltway has been underscored by five scholars tapped to serve in the Obama administration. Paul Stockton, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Michael McFaul, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall and Jeremy Weinstein have all been closely affiliated with the center, known by its acronym CISAC, in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).
"I just can't tell you how often I've been in government meetings where the connection I have to people is CISAC," said McFaul, who was FSI's deputy director until he was named special assistant to President Barack Obama and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council (NSC). McFaul, who also served as director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), is a former CISAC scholar. "You know, CISAC is thick in the U.S. government," he said.
CISAC is an interdisciplinary research center that focuses on tackling some of the world's toughest security issues through developing innovative, policy relevant research and providing independent advice to governments. It also trains the next generation of security specialists through its undergraduate honors program and by offering fellowships for graduate students and mid-career experts.
Sherwood-Randall, a special assistant to Obama and the NSC's senior director for European affairs, works closely with McFaul. At Stanford, she participated in the Preventive Defense Project (PDP), which former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry jointly heads at CISAC. "When I wrote my doctoral dissertation in the early 1980s, one of my conclusions was that relationships among the key players made a decisive difference in the practice and outcomes of statecraft," Sherwood-Randall said. "Nothing could be truer today. At the NSC, I work for National Security Advisor James L. Jones, whom I initially met while working on a PDP project."
Longstanding relationships continue with Weinstein, an associate professor of political science and CISAC and CDDRL faculty member working as the NSC's director for democracy. They also continue with Stockton, a CISAC senior research scholar and now assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and Americas' security affairs. "The brain drain of Stanford scholars to Washington hurts CISAC from a narrow perspective," Stockton said. "On the other hand, it populates D.C. with people who are committed to serve in the administration and make a difference in U.S. security." Stockton said he looks forward to working with Cuéllar, another CISAC faculty member and Stanford Law School professor serving as special assistant to Obama on the White House Domestic Policy Council. "To be able to know someone of such terrific academic caliber but also a wonderful person who cares deeply about the challenges the United States faces is a gift," Stockton said.
In addition to colleagues, the five scholars said they bring the center's interdisciplinary intellectual rigor with them to Washington. "Working on CISAC projects and in the classroom, one learns the value of listening to different viewpoints and different ways of thinking," Cuéllar said. "You see what an anthropologist has to learn from and teach a physicist. That's profoundly relevant in this context, as lawyers, press secretaries, economists and policy analysts can sometimes cultivate - despite their best intentions - an enormous capacity to talk past one another." Cuéllar said doing CISAC policy-related work, law school research and teaching, and pro bono projects was good practice for the demands of his new job. "It helps prepare one for Washington," he said.
CISAC as a lab
For almost two decades, Lynn Eden, CISAC's associate director for research, has served as a mentor to scores of scholars, including those now in Washington. "I once asked Tino [Cuéllar], ‘Why are you here [at CISAC], spreading yourself thin?'" Eden recalled. "He said he just found it enormously stimulating."
According to Eden, CISAC aims to provide a stimulating academic environment. "But, we don't want to kid ourselves," she said about the Obama administration staffers. "They are terribly competent, exceedingly bright people. We have been thrilled to have them at CISAC. They would have been tremendously successful without being here. But it doesn't mean that their experience here hasn't enriched them."
Eden recalls that when McFaul returned from Oxford University in 1991 with a doctorate earned as a Rhodes scholar, he had to retool himself for U.S. academia. "I remember sitting with him in what was called the Annex, in Galvez House, which was a trailer," she said, referring to CISAC's former digs on Galvez Street. "We had a white board in the back. He went up to the board and I just peppered him. ‘What is your question? What is your argument? Do you mean this or this?'" Eden said. "I basically grilled him in an extremely friendly way so his argument made sense." Such conversations, a regular feature at CISAC, helped McFaul grow intellectually, Eden said. "In some ways, Mike is sui generis, but you do need a place to blossom," she added. "I think it was the right amount of support and challenge for him and it worked very well."
CISAC's value, according to those who move between the worlds of policymaking and academia, is that it allows people to accumulate intellectual capital. "There is no time to do policy development and intellectual exploration in D.C.," McFaul said. "Condi [Rice] told me two decades ago that you build up intellectual capital [in academia] and you spend it down in Washington."
Upon arrival at the NSC, McFaul said he was surprised at the role good analytical and scientific work plays in policy deliberations. "I've encountered CISAC's work in my job," he said. Big ideas, such as the Getting to Zero project to eliminate nuclear weapons that Perry jointly heads, have had a "profound influence" on the president, McFaul noted. "That's where the rubber hits the road."
Relevance in a changing world
Looking to the future, Washington's new residents said CISAC should continue to encourage scholars to think in innovative ways to help tackle complicated problems. "Doing that successfully is invaluable both for universities and for the policy world, and it's all too rare," Cuéllar said.
Stockton, who participated in CISAC's 25th anniversary celebration on May 29, said the center must remain committed to its three-part mission of producing policy-relevant research, influencing policymaking, and training the next generation of security specialists. "I hope that not just for the next 25 years but for many years beyond CISAC will maintain its leading role in combining those three initiatives," he said. "It also needs to look over the horizon to understand the emerging challenges to security and then attract the very best people to address them."
Sherwood-Randall, who previously served in the Clinton administration, said CISAC also should create more incentives for policy-oriented scholars to get real-world experience. "Nothing really prepares you for the first time you enter the Oval Office to brief the president of the United States," she said. "It is a bracing experience - and one that instills in you the keenest appreciation of the fact that there are no dress rehearsals in these jobs. You have to get it right the first time."
A version of this article first appeared in "Encina Columns," published by FSI in Summer 2009
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