Stanford University

Democracy

Honors students explore challenges of policy implementation, assessment in Washington, D.C.

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

In mid-September, honors students from the Interschool Honors Programs convened by FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Center for International Security and Cooperation traveled to Washington, D.C., with their faculty advisors for senior-level meetings and policy briefings. They met with senior U.S. government officials from the White House, State Department, Homeland Security, and the intelligence community, with representatives of international organizations such as the World Bank, and NGOs, think tanks and other policy forums engaged in international affairs.

CDDRL Policy Briefings

Led by CDDRL Director and FSI Senior Fellow Larry Diamond, Deputy Director and FSI Senior Fellow Kathryn Stoner, and FSI's %people5%, CDDRL students engaged in policy discussions with the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, the World Bank, the National Security Council, the Center for International Private Enterprise, the Inter-American Dialogue and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.  Sessions were held at the Open Society Institute founded by George Soros and the Community of Democracies.  Students met at the U.S. State Department with Policy Planning staff and the Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs for frank discussions of U.S. policy priorities, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and the transformative effects that emerging economic powers, such as China, India and Brazil are exerting on trade, credit, investment, innovation and governance of major and political and economic institutions.

During these sessions, CDDRL students delved into efforts to advance and secure democracy, economic development, good governance, rule of law, corruption control, civil society, and a free media. In the current environment, marked by repression in many countries, multi-pronged efforts to help ensure that the pluralistic institutions of a vibrant civil society are allowed to prosper took on  particular importance.  Another key issue was the role of information technologies, in building and supporting democracy, by creating a robust network of activists and promoting collective action.

“It was eye-opening to see the diverse mechanisms through which one can effect positive social change. I learned that it is possible to successfully bridge the two worlds of policy and academe. The meetings made me think about the many different routes to a possible career in the dynamic world of Washington politics.”
 Kamil Dada ’11, CDDRL

"A key objective of the Washington trip is to expose these talented students to the challenges of policy formulation, implementation, and assessment, as they prepare to write their honors theses this academic year," said Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. For some students, it was a first exposure to the policy process in Washington. Others had interned in policy positions in the nation's capital and overseas, and used their opportunities in September to report back on findings of their previous work, renew contacts and glean new insight and information on evolving issues.

"The discussions we held with senior officials were full, frank, and often, off-the-record to give the students a firsthand opportunity to engage in candid exchange on major issues and to pose probing questions," said Larry Diamond, CDDRL Director. "The players, issues, and dilemmas that arise in the policy process are not always evident from the outside."

CISAC: Focus on Security Issues

The students in CISAC's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies-led in Washington by Martha Crenshaw, FSI Senior Fellow and professor (by courtesy) in the Political Science Department; Lynn Eden, Senior Research Scholar and CISAC Associate Director for Research; and teaching assistant Michael Sulmeyer, a CISAC pre-doctoral fellow and third-year Stanford law student-focused on major national and international security issues, including nuclear weapons policy like the new START Treaty to reduce nuclear arms and the Nuclear Posture Review, and counter-terrorism issues such as intelligence gathering and regional analysis. CISAC students first met with four veteran national security reporters at The New York Times, and later with members of the intelligence community, including the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, and the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Christopher Kojm.

“This was my first visit to Washington, and I could not have asked for a more comprehensive or enjoyable introduction to the nation’s capital. The broad array of institutions and people we experienced was a salient reminder of just how diverse this country truly is.” Devin Banerjee ’11, CISAC

Students also met with Paul Stockton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs. Prior to his government service, Stockton had been a scholar at CISAC and had taught CISAC honors students for three years. CISAC students met with Antony Blinken, who serves as National Security Adviser to Vice President Biden. The students also were exposed to research and publication think-tanks like the Brookings Institution, RAND Corporation, the Center for a New American Security and the New America Foundation. At the end of CISAC's first week in the capital, the students met a dozen Washington-based alumni of the program over dinner, where alumni provided valuable research resources and job advice to their younger counterparts.

"The Washington component of CISAC's honors program provides an invaluable opportunity for our students to learn how the policy-making process works, explore the complexities of international security, and test their preliminary ideas about the topic they have chosen for their honors thesis," said Martha Crenshaw. "In turn, the officials we meet invariably wish to spend longer with our students, some even rearranging their schedules (or trying!) to continue a fascinating and candid conversation."

Highlight: The National Security Council

A major highlight of this year's trip, for both the CISAC and the CDDRL students, was a policy discussion at the National Security Council with two leading Stanford political scientists and foreign policy experts serving in the Obama administration. Political Science Professor Michael A. McFaul, former director of CDDRL and deputy director of FSI, is now Senior Director for Russia on the National Security Council and the president's top advisor on Russia, and Assistant Professor Jeremy M. Weinstein, an affiliated CISAC and CDDRL faculty member, serves as Director for Democracy on the National Security Staff.  Students engaged in a lively discussion of U.S. foreign policy priorities, U.S.-Russian relations, democracy, human rights and economic development.

"Our honors students are fortunate to have the chance to engage in high-level policy discussions, especially with Stanford faculty members serving in Washington," said Coit D. Blacker, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, who directs the CISAC honors program with Martha Crenshaw and who, under President Clinton, served as special assistant to the President and  Senior Director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council. "Direct exposure to the policymaking process, with all its promise and pitfalls, will make them better scholars and future thought leaders."

"I was struck by the innovative ways in which certain agencies approach democracy promotion," said CDDRL honors student Ayeesha Lalji '11. "I think the struggle is often in packaging programs in the right way so that an impervious nation becomes more open to a vital component of social, political, or economic development."

"The discussions with prominent policy thinkers and current and former senior officials made a deep impression on our students," said Larry Diamond, CDDRL Director.  "These young people--who will go on themselves to be leaders in these fields-- got a vivid sense of how the policy process really works, and why service in government and public affairs is, despite the frequent frustrations, an exciting and noble mission."

"CISAC's ten days in Washington provide our students exceptional access to practitioners of various types and at all levels of the policy world, as well as inside knowledge of today's critical issues," said Martha Crenshaw. "The experience also establishes a solid foundation for a year-long intellectual experience in a weekly research seminar devoted to producing a thesis that makes an original contribution to the field of international security."

All News button
1

Who Should Fight? The Ethics of the Draft

-
  • Should citizens be required to serve their country by fighting for it?
  • Do we think differently about the decision to go to war when only a small number of citizens will fight it?
  • Do volunteer armies and draft armies fight differently in combat?

This panel discussion focuses on the draft versus the volunteer army in the U.S. Our distinguished panelists examine "who should fight" in a democracy, focusing on the ethical dimension of a state's system of military service.

Panelists are:

David Kennedy (History, Emeritus, Stanford). Kennedy's scholarly focus is on the integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. A prolific historian, he won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in History for Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, which recounts the history of the United States in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II, and was a 1981 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in History for Over Here: The First World War and American Society, which uses the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system.

Eliot Cohen (Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies). Cohen's work focuses on diplomacy, international relations, irregular warfare, military history, military power and strategy, as well as strategic and security issues. He has served as Counselor of the U.S. Department of State, a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the Secretary of Defense, and a member of the Defense Policy Board. He also directed the U.S. Air Force's Gulf War Air Power Survey.

Jean Bethke Elshtain (Social and Political Ethics, Divinity School, The University of Chicago). Regularly named as one of America's foremost public intellectuals, Elshtain writes frequently for journals of civic opinion and lectures widely in the United States and abroad on themes of democracy, ethical dilemmas, religion and politics, and international relations. Elshtain has authored many books including Women and War; Democracy on Trial (a New York Times' notable book for 1995); and Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (named one of the best nonfiction books of 2003 by Publishers Weekly.

Download pdf

Oak Lounge

David Kennedy History, Emeritus Speaker Stanford
Eliot Cohen Strategic Studies Speaker Johns Hopkins
Jean Bethke Elshtain Social and Political Ethics Speaker University of Chicago Divinity School

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
0
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

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
CV
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
Scott D. Sagan (Moderator) Political Science Moderator Stanford
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

Civilians in War Zones

-

Richard Goldstone served on South Africa's Transvaal Supreme Court from 1980 to 1989 and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court from 1990 to 1994. During the transition from apartheid to multiracial democracy, Goldstone headed the Goldstone Commission investigations into political violence in South Africa. He was credited with playing an indispensable role in the transition and became a household name in South Africa, attracting widespread international support and interest. Goldstone's work investigating violence led to him being nominated to serve as the first chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. On his return to South Africa he took up a seat on the newly-established Constitutional Court of South Africa. In 2009, Goldstone led an independent fact-finding mission created by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the Gaza War.

James Campbell's research focuses on African American history and the wider history of the black Atlantic. He is particularly interested in the long history of interconnections and exchange between Africa and America, a history that began in the earliest days of the transatlantic slave trade and continues into our own time.  In recent years, his research has moved in the direction of so-called “public history," the ways in which societies tell stories about their pasts, not only in textbooks and academic monographs but also in historic sites, museums, memorials, movies, and political movements.

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. He is cofounder and director of the Israel Program on Constitutional Government, a member of the Policy Advisory Board at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and served as a senior consultant to the President's Council on Bioethics. His scholarship focuses on the interplay of law, ethics, and politics in modern society. His current research is concerned with the material and moral preconditions of liberal democracy in America and abroad.

CISAC Conference Room

Richard Goldstone Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa Keynote Speaker
James Campbell Professor of History Panelist Stanford University
Peter Berkowitz Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow Speaker Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

When is an "Oil War" Not about Oil?: The Bakassi Dispute

-

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that oil causes international contention by explaining how the high costs of petroleum conquest deter territorial aggression. In oil-rich territories, interstate violence is inspired by other factors. The claim is tested through an examination of Nigeria and Cameroon's dispute over the Bakassi Peninsula, drawing on the author's fieldwork in both countries.

Emily Meierding is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a predoctoral fellow at CISAC. Her dissertation examines how the presence of petroleum resources affects the initiation and escalation of international territorial disputes. She has conducted dissertation research and language study in Syria, Morocco, Nigeria and Cameroon. Meierding holds a BA in History from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a MA in Political Science from the University of Chicago.

Jessica Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the Political Science Department at Stanford University.  Her research is on the relationship between democracy and development, particularly in her region of interest, francophone West Africa.  She studies the impact of decentralization and local democracy on political accountability and public goods outcomes.   She received her BA in Political Science from Yale University and has also spent time in Washington, DC working at the Center for Global Development. 

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Emily Meierding Zukerman Fellow; CISAC Predoctoral Fellow Speaker
Jessica Gottlieb Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, Stanford University Commentator
Seminars

The Regional Context of Turkey's Foreign Policy

-

Co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum

Taking a contemporary policy-focused approach, this presentation will focus on the changes in Turkey's neighborhood and the concomitant transformation of Turkey's foreign policy since the demise of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the competition for the energy resources in the Caspian region. How and under which conditions can Turkey's transatlantic obligations, EU membership objectives, and regional aspirations can be reconciled?

Ahmet Evin is Professor of Political Science and the founding dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University (Istanbul, Turkey). He received his Ph.D. in Middle East Studies and Cultural History from Columbia University. He has taught at New York University, Harvard University, Hacettepe University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Hamburg, Bilkent University and Sabanci University. His research interests include theories of the State and elites; Turkish political development; and democracy and civil society. Prof. Evin currently works on current foreign policy issues related to the European enlargement, its significance for Turkey and the region as well as its effect on Transatlantic relations. Prof. Evin has initiated, with the European Commission's support, a policy dialogue on the future European architecture, EU's eastward expansion, its Mediterranean policy, and the customs union agreement with Turkey. Among his publications are "Turkish foreign policy: limits of engagement" (New Perspectives on Turkey, 2009), "The Future of Greek-Turkish relations" (Journal of Southeast European & Black Sea Studies, 2005), Towards Accession Negotiations: Turkey's Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges Ahead (2004), Politics in the Third Turkish Republic (1998), State Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s (1988), Origins and Development of the Turkish Novel (1984), and Modern Turkish Architecture(1984).

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Ahmet Evin Professor of Political Science and the founding dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University (Istanbul, Turkey) Speaker
Seminars

Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11

Paragraphs

From Princeton University Press:

In this pathbreaking book, Amy Zegart provides the first scholarly examination of the intelligence failures that preceded September 11. Until now, those failures have been attributed largely to individual mistakes. But Zegart shows how and why the intelligence system itself left us vulnerable.

Zegart argues that after the Cold War ended, the CIA and FBI failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism. She makes the case by conducting painstaking analysis of more than three hundred intelligence reform recommendations and tracing the history of CIA and FBI counterterrorism efforts from 1991 to 2001, drawing extensively from declassified government documents and interviews with more than seventy high-ranking government officials. She finds that political leaders were well aware of the emerging terrorist danger and the urgent need for intelligence reform, but failed to achieve the changes they sought. The same forces that have stymied intelligence reform for decades are to blame: resistance inside U.S. intelligence agencies, the rational interests of politicians and career bureaucrats, and core aspects of our democracy such as the fragmented structure of the federal government. Ultimately failures of adaptation led to failures of performance. Zegart reveals how longstanding organizational weaknesses left unaddressed during the 1990s prevented the CIA and FBI from capitalizing on twenty-three opportunities to disrupt the September 11 plot.

Spying Blind is a sobering account of why two of America's most important intelligence agencies failed to adjust to new threats after the Cold War, and why they are unlikely to adapt in the future.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Books
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Princeton University Press
Authors
Amy Zegart
Number
9780691141039
External URL

The Politics of Militancy: Evidence from Pakistan

-

Combating militant violence-particularly within South Asia and the Middle East-stands at the top of the international security agenda. Despite the extensive literature on the determinants of political attitudes, little is known about who supports militant organizations and why. To address this gap we conducted a 6000-person, nationally-representative survey of Pakistanis that measures affect towards four important militant organizations. We apply a novel measurement strategy to mitigate social desirability bias and item non-response, which plagued previous surveys due to the sensitive nature of militancy. Our study reveals key patterns of support for militancy. First, Pakistanis exhibit negative affect toward all four militant organizations, with those from areas where groups have been most active disliking them the most. Second, personal religiosity does not predict support, although views about what constitutes jihad do. Third, wealthy Pakistanis and those who support core democratic rights are more supportive of militant organizations than others. Longstanding arguments tying support for violent political organizations to individuals' economic prospects or attitudes towards democracy-and the subsequent policy recommendations-may require substantial revision.

Jacob N. Shapiro is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His primary research interests are the organizational aspects of terrorism, insurgency, and security policy. Shapiro’s ongoing projects study the causes of support for militancy in Islamic countries and the relationship between aid and political violence. His research has been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Military Operations Research, and a number of edited volumes. Shapiro co-directs the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. He is a member of the editorial board of World Politics, is a former Harmony Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy, and served in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserve. Ph.D. Political Science, M.A. Economics, Stanford University. B.A. Political Science, University of Michigan.

Jon Krosnick received a B.A. degree in psychology from Harvard University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in social psychology from the University of Michigan.

Prior to joining the Stanford faculty in 2004, Dr. Krosnick was professor of psychology and political science at Ohio State University, where he was a member of the OSU Political Psychology Program and co-directed the OSU Summer Institute in Political Psychology.

He has taught courses on survey methodology around the world at universities, for corporations, and for government agencies, including at IBM, Pfizer, the National Opinion Research Center, RTI International, the White House Office of Management and Budget, Total Research Corporation, the American Society of Trial Consultants, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. General Accounting Office, the Office for National Statistics, London, UK, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Johannesburg, the Australian Market and Social Research Society's Professional Development Program, and ZUMA (in Mannheim, Germany). He has provided expert testimony in court and has served as an on-air election-night television commentator.

Dr. Krosnick has served as a consultant to such organizations as Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, the CBS Office of Social Research, ABC News, the National Institutes of Health, Home Box Office, NASA, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute, and Google.

From 2005 through 2009, he is Principal Investigator of the American National Election Studies.

Download pdf

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Jacob N. Shapiro Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton Speaker
Jon Krosnick Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities & Social Sciences; Professor of Communication & Political Science; Senior Fellow at Woods Institute; Professor, by courtesy, of Psychology Speaker
Seminars

Responding to Catastrophe: Democratic Responses to Complex Humanitarian Emergencies

-

Why do Western democracies respond militarily to complex humanitarian emergencies when and as they do?  Why do they send peacekeepers or combat forces to some conflicts and not others?  When they do so, how do they choose the political goals, military strategies, and military resources that they contribute to these operations?  I will explain what I mean by the term ‘complex humanitarian emergency,' and lay out the humanitarian implications of different kinds of military responses.  To illustrate, I will provide a few examples of complex emergencies and Western responses to them.  I will also offer some ideas about the factors that influence these policy decisions, and demonstrate their importance with a few comparative examples of Australian responses to complex humanitarian emergencies in its region.

Andrea Everett is a 2009-2010 CISAC visiting scholar. A Ph.D candidate in international relations at the Department of Politics at Princeton University, she is also a 2004 CISAC Undergraduate Honors Program graduate.  After graduating from Stanford but before arriving at Princeton, Andrea spent a year studying transatlantic relations in Berlin, Germany on a Fulbright scholarship.

Andrea's research interests include international security and comparative democratic foreign policy. She is especially interested in the role of domestic political influences on democratic states' foreign policy decisions in the security arena. Her dissertation, "Responding to Catastrophe: Explaining Democratic Responsiveness to Complex Emergencies," seeks to explain why Western democracies respond to complex humanitarian emergencies abroad when and as they do. She focuses on understanding when and how these states decide to use military force in pursuit of positive humanitarian outcomes, and investigates the roles of public pressure, characteristics of complex emergencies, military capabilities, and national interests in these decisions.

Kenneth Schultz is an associate professor of political science at Stanford University and an affiliated faculty member at CISAC. His research examines how domestic political factors such as elections, party competition, and public opinion influence decisions to use force in international disputes and efforts to negotiate the end of international rivalries.

He is the author of Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge, 2001), as well as a number of articles in scholarly journals. He is the recipient of several awards, including the 2003 Karl Deutsch Award, given by the International Studies Association to a scholar under the age of 40 who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the study of international relations and peace research. Schultz received his BA in Russian and Soviet studies from Harvard University and his PhD in political science from Stanford University.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Andrea Everett CISAC Visiting Scholar Speaker

Kenneth A. Schultz

Department of Political Science
Stanford University
Encina Hall West
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

(650) 736-1998 (650) 723-1808
0
Professor of Political Science
CISAC Core Faculty Member
schultz.jpg PhD

Kenneth A. Schultz is professor of political science and a CISAC core faculty member at Stanford University. His research examines international conflict and conflict resolution, with a particular focus on the domestic political influences on foreign policy choices.  He is the author of Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy and World Politics: Interests, Interactions, and Institutions (with David Lake and Jeffry Frieden), as well as numerous articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. He was the recipient the 2003 Karl Deutsch Award, given by the International Studies Association, and a 2011 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, awarded by Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. He received his PhD in political science from Stanford University.

CV
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
Kenneth A. Schultz Associate Professor of Political Science; CISAC Faculty Member Commentator
Seminars

Why Democracy Matters

-

Condoleezza Rice is the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and professor of political science at Stanford University.

From January 2005 to 2009, she served as the 66th secretary of state of the United States. Before serving as America's chief diplomat, she served as assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security adviser) from January 2001 to 2005.

Rice joined the Stanford University faculty as a professor of political science in 1981 and served as Stanford University's provost from 1993 to 1999. She was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1991 to 1993 and returned to the Hoover Institution after serving as provost until 2001. As a professor, Rice won two of the highest teaching honors: the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

She has authored and coauthored several books, including Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995), with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986), with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984).

Rice served as a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the Transamerica Corporation, and the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan. She was a founding board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California, and was vice president of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula. In addition, she has served on several local and national boards of foundations and charitable organizations.

She currently serves as a member of the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In addition, she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.

CISAC Conference Room

Condoleezza Rice Speaker
Seminars

CISAC goes to Washington

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

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

Hero Image
white house logo
All News button
1
Subscribe to Democracy