A buffet lunch will be available to those who RSVP by 12:00 p.m. Monday, May 3 to Debbie Warren at dawarren@stanford.edu. Douglas H. Paal is the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the unofficial instrument for U.S. relations with Taiwan. Previously, he was president of the Asia Pacific Policy Center (APPC), a nonprofit institution in Washington, DC, which advocated bipartisan policy in the promotion of trade and investment, as well as defense and security ties across the Pacific. Prior to forming the APPC, Mr. Paal was special assistant to President Bush for National Security Affairs and senior director for Asian Affairs on the National Security Council, where he also served in the Reagan Administration. Mr. Paal has worked in the State Department with the Policy Planning Staff and as a senior analyst for the CIA. He also served in the U.S. Embassies in Singapore and Beijing. He studied Asian history at Brown and Harvard Universities and the Japanese language in Tokyo. He has published frequently on Asian affairs and national security issues.

Dr. Nasr's talk will focus on the implications of change of the balance of power between Shi'as and Sunnis for regional politics in Iraq and for the emerging trends in Sunni militancy in the region.

Vali Nasr is a specialist on contemporary Islam and its relations to politics in the Muslim world. His recent work is focused on emerging patterns in Islamism, in particular with regard to Shi'i-Sunni sectarianism. He is the author of The Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (Oxford University Press, 2001); Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism (Oxford University Press, 1996); an editor of Oxford Dictionary of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2003). His works on political Islam and comparative politics of South Asia and the Middle East has been published in a number of journals including, the New York Times, Comparative Politics, Asian Survey, Daedalus, Middle East Journal, and International Journal of Middle East Studies, as well as in numerous edited volumes on the Middle East, South Asia, political Islam and comparative politics. His work has been translated into Arabic, Indonesian, Chinese, and Urdu. Dr. Nasr has been the recipient of fellowship grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council.

Dr. Nasr earned his degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1991), the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (MALD, 1984), and Tufts University (BA, 1983).

A buffet lunch will be available to those who RSVP by 12:00pm, Wednesday, April 21 to Rakhi Patel. In the last three years, partly as the result of the efforts of a burgeoning conservative movement, the issue of human rights in North Korea has attained greater prominence in the statements and policy positions of the U.S. government. The administration connects this shift in emphasis in U.S. policy to its calls for greater moral clarity in foreign policy. At the same time, the administration has clearly enunciated its desire for regime change in North Korea, and the human rights issue has served as a method of cultivating public support for this policy, both domestically and internationally. Toward this end, the administration has revived a Cold War foreign policy approach from the 1970s and 1980s that connected human rights to economic and security issues--exemplified in the Jackson-Vanik amendment linking trade to emigration levels for Soviet Jews and the inclusion of human rights issues in the 1975 Helsinki Accords. The application of this model to North Korea demonstrates a failure to understand the differences between Eastern Europe and East Asia in general and the nature of civil society under Soviet communism and North Korean juche. It also fails to draw any useful lessons from the experience of the European Union and South Korea in dealing with Pyongyang on human rights. The unquestionably dire human rights situation in North Korea--and the character of its government and society--requires a set of policy approaches that need updating from the Cold War period and adaptation to the North Korean and East Asian context. John Feffer's most recent book is North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven Stories, 2003). He is also the editor of the Foreign Policy in Focus book Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Policy after September 11 (Seven Stories, 2003). His other books include Beyond Detente: Soviet Foreign Policy and U.S. Options (Hill & Wang, 1990) and Shock Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions (South End, 1992). His other edited collections include Living in Hope: People Challenging Globalization (Zed Books, 2002) and (with Richard Caplan) Europe's New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict (Oxford University Press, 1996). His articles have appeared in The American Prospect, The Progressive, Newsday, Asiaweek, Asia Times, TomPaine.com, Salon.com, and elsewhere. He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal and has worked for the American Friends Service Committee, most recently as an international affairs representative in East Asia. He serves on the advisory committees of FPIF and the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea.

Japan is known as a "non-litigious" or a "harmonious" society for its extremely low litigation rates per capita as an industrial country. Yet the nation commenced a large-scale judicial reform project in the 1990s that triplicates the number of lawyers, establishes graduate law schools, adopts a jury-like system to the criminal trials, and more. What is the cause of this reform? Has the nation transformed into the litigious society? This presentation will analyze the political economic aspect of this reform process and identify the main reason for the nation to commence this reform project in the 1990s.

Kaori Daimon is currently an assistant judge of Tokyo District Court in Japan and a J.S.M. candidate at Stanford Law School (Stanford Program in International Legal Studies). She got her LL.B. from University of Tokyo in 1998 and joined the civil case division of Tokyo District Court in 2000. Prior to coming to Stanford, she earned her LL.M. degree from Yale Law School in 2003.

Singapore has become widely known as a successful experiment in multiracialism and meritocracy. The apparently successful management of ethnic relations in Singapore has been attributed to the ostensibly race-blind vision of its leaders. In his talk, Eugene Tan will challenge this orthodox interpretation. He will argue instead that Singapore's rulers have not only been acutely aware of ethnicity and its importance. They have intentionally mobilized race, culture, and language as key political resources to ensure that Singapore remains a sophisticated, authoritarian, developmental state.

Eugene Tan has been researching multiracialism in Singapore at Stanford on a Fulbright fellowship while on study leave from the Singapore Management University, where he is a lecturer in law.

This seminar is co-hosted by the Southeast Asia Forum at Shorenstein APARC and the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies, Stanford Law School. This is the eleventh SEAF seminar of the 2003-2004 academic year.

Mr. Siew began his civil service career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1962. He was soon appointed vice consul at the ROC?s Consulate General in Kuala Lumpur and then appointed Consul. He held the position of consul for 3 years. Once home, he became a section chief in the East Asian & Pacific Affairs Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1972 he rose to department director-general. Trade negotiations and market promotion were two areas to which he was particularly dedicated. As member of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), Mr. Siew was elected in July 1988 to the KMT Central Committee. In June 1990 a new premier was appointed and the cabinet was reshuffled. Mr. Siew was appointed Minister of Economic Affairs. In November 1992, he helped to secure formal observer status for the ROC in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization.) In August 1997, soon after the National Assembly had completed a revision of the Constitution, the government reorganized the cabinet. President Lee Teng-hui appointed Mr. Siew premier. He took office in September of that year and held the position until May 2000. Mr. Siew has since retired from government office and spends his time as an ordinary citizen devoting his efforts to education and social welfare.