Two Stanford graduates with close ties to FSI’s centers have been named 2012 Rhodes Scholars. A third was selected as a Mitchell Scholar.

Anand Habib was a graduate of the 2011 CISAC honors program in international security studies and a 2010 Dachs undergraduate intern. Habib and Katherine Niehaus – who is now a research assistant for a CHP/PCOR project evaluating whether HIV medication increases the risk of cardiovascular disease – will study at the University of Oxford in England under the Rhodes program. 

Philippe de Koning, who will study in Ireland as a Mitchell fellow, wrote a manuscript about Japan’s defense and financial crisis with Shorenstein APARC faculty member Phillip Lipscy. Lipscy, a political scientist, was de Koning’s advisor through his undergraduate career and also advised him on his senior thesis. De Koning was also a 2010 CISAC honors student.

More about the scholars:

Anand R. Habib, 22, of Houston, Texas, is a 2011 graduate of Stanford, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology, with honors in international security studies. He plans to pursue a master's degree in public policy and in medical anthropology at Oxford.

Habib is working on community health programs at St. Joseph's Clinic in Thomassique, Haiti, under a one-year global health fellowship awarded by Medical Missionaries. The nonprofit organization is a volunteer group of more than 200 doctors, nurses, dentists, and others who work to improve the health of the poor in the United States and throughout the world.

In 2011, he won a Deans' Award for Academic Accomplishment, which honors extraordinary undergraduate students for "exceptional, tangible" intellectual achievements. One of the professors who nominated him for the award described him as a "superb critical thinker" whose work is characterized by "creative genius" and "mature insights," adding that he "exemplifies exactly the kind of deeply informed, pragmatic and caring leadership that the world needs and Stanford enables."

As a Stanford student, Habib worked on behalf of politically and medically disenfranchised people in India, Mexico and Guatemala. His field research internship in Guatemala’s indigenous region during summer 2010 was carried out under the supervision of Paul Wise, professor of pediatrics and FSI senior fellow, as part of FSI’s Dachs mentored undergraduate research program.  On campus, he turned the Stanford tradition of the annual Dance Marathon into a vehicle dedicated to addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic by engaging not only Stanford students but also local communities and corporations, raising more than $100,000. His exceptional work was recognized by his participation in the Clinton Global Initiative University Conference in April, 2011.

Katherine "Kate" Niehaus, 23, of Columbia, S.C., earned a bachelor's degree in biomechanical engineering in 2010 and a master's degree in bioengineering in 2011 – both at  Stanford. Her class and research work focused on biomechanics and her interests lie in its applications to high technology entrepreneurship.

She plans to pursue a doctorate of philosophy in systems approaches to biomedical science at Oxford.

At Stanford, Niehaus captained Stanford's varsity track and cross country teams, won the Pac-10 5,000 meters, and won Academic-All American status. She also served as a mentor and tutor for students in low-income families.

Working with faculty in the Center for Health Policy, Kate led a project to evaluate how well newer HIV antiretroviral drugs work compared with older drugs.  Her work was among the first to evaluate comprehensively all of the trials of new drugs in treatment of experienced patients, and showed that these drugs have substantial benefits.

Philippe de Koning, 22, of Paris, France, earned a bachelor's degree in international relations at Stanford in 2010. He plans to pursue a master's degree in international security and conflict resolution at Dublin City University.

He is a Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, D.C. The nongovernmental organization works to prevent nuclear, chemical, and biological threats from materializing. De Koning is researching nuclear materials security and the U.S.-China dialogue on nuclear issues.

De Koning, who earlier was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, spent the 2010-2011 academic year at Hiroshima University in Japan. He examined various components of Japanese security policy, with emphasis on current evolution of Japanese Self-Defense Forces, policies on nuclear issues and approaches toward peacekeeping.

In 2009, he was a member of the Stanford delegation to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

Stepping into Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, a first-time visitor might wonder how the company’s employees ever accomplish anything. Wide-open work, meeting, and lounge spaces replace the traditional cubicle-office environment.

Corporate Affiliates Visiting Fellows recently toured the Facebook facility—a former Hewlett Packard building—and learned about the company’s open and creative work culture.

As the fellows walked through the complex, Facebook employee Melissa Traham explained that the social media giant’s key work values include:

• Open, collaborative teamwork
• Transparency in meetings and projects
• Trust to suggest and carry out ideas
• Connectedness through social and special interest activities

Traham also showed the fellows an enclosed space—the “war room”—where bugs are worked out before Facebook launches a new feature. Otherwise all work, meeting, and lounge spaces are open and airy.

“They must be doing something right,” says Corporate Affiliates program manager Denise Masumoto.

Although Facebook has only resided at its current location for a few short years, it leaves its Palo Alto home sometime in 2012 for the old Sun Microsystems campus in nearby Menlo Park.

Through their visit, the fellows walked the halls of history in a young company continually moving forward.

When Siyan Yi was a medical student in Cambodia 12 years ago, he volunteered with a collaborative government-NGO project to provide young women at high risk for HIV/AIDS—the victims of sexual exploitation—with housing, vocational training, medical care, and psychological support. Cambodia at that time had one of Asia’s highest HIV-infection rates.

That rate has dropped by half, thanks to government policy measures, international NGO support, and the efforts of medical professionals like Yi. Cambodia’s government must now find ways to curb HIV infection in new segments of the population, says Yi, who is the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center’s inaugural Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow. Sustaining funding for the long-term care of HIV-infected individuals also poses a future challenge, he explains, and new health issues associated with development are beginning to crop up.

Cambodia’s first HIV case was detected in 1991 in a blood donor, and the rate of HIV/AIDS increased dramatically throughout the decade. HIV/AIDS hit Thailand slightly earlier, and was spread through the commercial sex trade. The epidemic reached an even greater scale there than it ever did in Cambodia.

Thailand’s government struck back with a 100-percent condom use promotion program, which Cambodia successfully adopted in the late 1990s. Brothels are illegal in Cambodia, but the government worked cooperatively with owners to provide basic HIV/AIDS education to sex workers. These efforts significantly reduced the transmission of HIV.

Since then, a more indirect form of prostitution has sprung up in places such as karaoke halls, massage parlors, restaurants, and even in factories. HIV prevalence remains high among some sentinel groups such as female sex workers, beer promoters, men who have sex with men (MSM), injected-drug users, and migrant workers.

Yi advocates that the government expand the scope of its HIV/AIDS prevention programs to encompass these new at-risk populations. He even suggests that the government consider creating a system of licensed brothels such as previously existed in Hong Kong and Taiwan. “It would provide the government with an easier means of controlling prostitution, and allow it to work with brothel owners to control HIV-infection rates,” states Yi.

HIV increases the risk of contracting or developing symptoms of tuberculosis; a large proportion of Cambodia’s population carries the disease but shows no signs of it. Tuberculosis went largely undetected during the decades of the Khmer Rouge regime, but with the advent of HIV/AIDS it has become more prevalent. Yi has been involved in government-NGO projects to provide tuberculosis screening for HIV patients, including a tuberculosis control project with the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

Tuberculosis screening and HIV treatment advances may greatly prolong the life—and even improve the health—of patients. But heartening as Cambodia’s success against HIV/AIDS has proven in the past decade, the government largely bears the responsibility for funding the expensive treatment and care for the low-income individuals most affected by it. A critical portion of government funding for its HIV/AIDS prevention programs comes from external organizations. 

“I think that the main issue for the government of Cambodia in the battle against HIV and AIDS is financial sustainability,” says Yi, who worries that donor agencies will withdraw support as the HIV-infection rate continues to improve. Prevention is less expensive, he explains, but long-term care is costly to a developing country such as Cambodia.

Yi, however, feels less concerned now about the HIV/AIDS epidemic and speaks hopefully of working to help the government find ways to measure and treat non-communicable diseases associated with economic development, such as diabetes and hypertension. While he is at Stanford, he will collaborate with Asia Health Policy Program researchers to move his work toward solving Cambodia’s new health challenges.

STANFORD, Calif.—Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) is pleased to announce China’s Caixin Media as the recipient of the 2011 Shorenstein Journalism Award. Caixin was selected for its commitment to integrity in journalism, and for its path-breaking role as a leader in establishing an independent media in China.

The Shorenstein Journalism Award was launched in 2002 to recognize the contributions of Western journalists in deepening our understanding of Asia. In 2011, the recipients of the award have been broadened to encompass Asian journalists who are at the forefront of the battle for press freedom in Asia and who have played a key role in constructing a new role for the media, including the growth of social media and Internet-based journalism. The award will also identify those Asian journalists who, from that side of the Pacific Ocean, have aided the growth of mutual understanding between Asia and the United States.

Asia has served as a crucible for the role of the press in democratization in places such as South Korea, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. It has also figured greatly in the emergence of social media and citizen journalism. New tests of the role of the media are emerging in China, Vietnam, and other authoritarian societies in Asia. The Shorenstein Journalism Award aims to encourage the understanding of key issues facing the media in Asia, among them whether the Internet will be a catalyst for change or an instrument of authoritarian control.

The decision to name Caixin Media as the first recipient of this award in Asia is a recognition of the leadership role of a group of young journalists, led by a visionary editor, since their founding of Caijing magazine in 1998. The core group moved on in November 2009 to found Caixin Media in an effort to preserve their independence in a media environment dominated by the state in China. The company is based in Beijing and is guided by an independent advisory board of noted Chinese and foreign intellectuals and academics. The Caixin team has achieved renown for its coverage of the profound economic and social changes taking place in China and its willingness to dig into the darker corners of that change. In recent months, Caixin has probed into the errors that led to the crash of a high-speed train in China, and investigated the seizure and sale of children by family planning officials in Hunan province.

Hailed by the Economist as “one of China’s more outspoken media organizations,” Caixin is internationally recognized for its tough-minded investigative reporting. In 2011, Caixin editor-in-chief Hu Shuli was named one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Influential People, and managing editor Wang Shuo was ranked among China’s top 10 young editors.

Caixin publishes several leading print and online publications, including the weekly business and finance magazine Caixin Century, the monthly periodical China Reform, the bimonthly journal Comparative Studies, and the English-language Caixin Weekly: China Economics and Finance. Caixin’s numerous other offerings include a Chinese- and English-language news portal Caixin.cn, a publication series, video programming, an international journalism fellowship program, and extensive use of social media.

On December 7, Hu and Wang will visit Stanford to accept the Shorenstein Journalism Award. They will participate in a daytime public panel discussion on the future of China’s independent media, joining acclaimed China historian and former Pulitzer Prize jury member Orville Schell, Shorenstein APARC associate director for research Daniel C. Sneider, and other noted Asia specialists. That evening, Hu and Wang will receive a cash prize of $10,000 during a dinner and award ceremony.

Hu’s distinguished career spans both print and broadcast journalism. She is a former Stanford Knight Journalism Fellow (1994), and, in addition to her role as Caixin’s editor-in-chief, currently serves as dean of the School of Communications and Design at Sun Yat-sen University. A recipient of the 2007 Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism, Hu is frequently named on annual Who’s Who lists by publications such as Foreign Policy.

Wang is a former international editor for People’s Daily, a Chinese government-run newspaper published nationally. Recognized as one of the brightest rising stars in his field, Wang was named as a Young Leader in 2007 and 2008 by the Boao Forum for Asia, and as a media leader by the World Economic Forum. He has led the investigative journalism teams at Caixin.

About the Award

Established in 2002, the Shorenstein Journalism Award carries a cash prize of $10,000 and honors a journalist not only for a distinguished body of work, but also for the particular way that work has helped American readers to understand the complexities of Asia. The award was named after Walter H. Shorenstein, the philanthropist, activist, and businessman who endowed two institutions that are focused respectively on Asia and on the press: Shorenstein APARC in the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

The award was originally designed to honor distinguished American journalists for their work on Asia, including veteran correspondents for leading American media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, NBC News, PBS, and the Wall Street Journal. Past recipients include Stanley Karnow, Orville Schell, Don Oberdorfer, Nayan Chanda, Melinda Liu, John Pomfret, Ian Buruma, Seth Mydans, and Barbara Crossette.

Shorenstein APARC believes that it is vital to continue the Shorenstein Journalism Award, not only to honor the legacy of Walter H. Shorenstein and his twin passions for Asia and the press, but also to promote the necessity of a free and vibrant media for the future of relations between Asia and the United States. Moreover, as we have seen recently in the Middle East, a free press, not only in its traditional forms of print and broadcast but now also via the Internet and new avenues of social media, remains the essential catalyst for the growth of democratic freedom. The award is given annually based on the deliberations and decision of a distinguished jury whose members include:

Ian Buruma, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College, is a noted Asia expert who frequently contributes to publications including the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker. He is a recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award and the international Erasmus Prize (both in 2008). 

Nayan Chanda, director of publications at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, served for nearly 30 years as editor, editor-at-large, and correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review. He was honored with the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2005.

Susan Chira, assistant managing editor for news and former foreign editor of the New York Times, has extensive Asia experience, including serving as Japan correspondent for the Times in the 1980s. During her long tenure as foreign editor, the Times twice won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (2009 and 2007).

Donald K. Emmerson, a well-respected Indonesia scholar, serves as director of Shorenstein APARC’s Southeast Asia Forum and as a research fellow for the prestigious National Asia Research Program (NARP). Frequently cited in the international media, Emmerson also contributes op-eds to leading publications such as the Asia Times.

Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director at the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations, and is also a former jury member for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. He has written extensively on China, and was awarded the 1997 George Peabody Award for producing the groundbreaking documentary the Gate of Heavenly Peace. He received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2003.

Daniel C. Sneider serves as the associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC and also as a NARP research associate. He frequently contributes articles to publications such as Foreign Policy, Asia Policy, and Slate and had three decades of experience as a foreign correspondent and editor for publications including the Christian Science Monitor and the San Jose Mercury News.