The recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East represent one of the most dramatic global political developments since the fall of the Berlin Wall.  What factors and forces led to the sudden collapse of well-entrenched regimes and the emergence of democratic reform movements across a region long accustomed to hereditary succession and autocratic rule?  Does the current upheaval reflect unique circumstances in the Arab World?  Or should it be viewed in the wider context of governance issues and challenges that have arisen in Asian and other settings beyond North Africa and the Middle East?  As a governance specialist whose international career has spanned Arab and Asian societies, David Arnold will share his insights regarding these questions.  

David D. Arnold became the president of The Asia Foundation on January 1, 2011, after serving as the president of the American University in Cairo (AUC) for seven years. At AUC he superintended the construction of a new, state-of-the-art $400 million campus, including the region's largest English-language library; spearheaded a $125 million fundraising campaign, the largest in the University's history; and oversaw academic innovations including AUC’s first-ever PhD program and master’s programs in education, biotechnology, gender studies, digital journalism, and refugee studies.  Under his leadership, AUC also expanded its continuing education and community outreach activities and created new scholarship opportunities for its students.  Mr. Arnold’s earlier career included six years as executive vice president of the Institute of International Education and more than ten years of service in the Ford Foundation including stints in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.  He earned his Master’s in Public Administration at Michigan State University following a BA from the University of Michigan.

Please join us for two evenings, April 25–26, devoted to an examination of and conversation about the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake in northern Honshu, Japan, and the subsequent tsunami and nuclear accident. In talks and panel discussions, experts from the School of Earth Sciences and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies will focus on what happened, the impacts of the events, and what the future holds for Japan and other earthquake- and tsunami-zone regions of the world.

APRIL 26 PARTICIPANTS

Moderator:

Daniel Sneider is the associate director for research at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford.

Panelists:

Ross S. Stein earned his PhD from Stanford in 1980 and has been with the U.S. Geological Survey since 1981. He studies how earthquakes interact through the transfer of stress, in order to to develop better ways to make seismic hazard assessments and probabilistic forecasts. He co-founded and chairs the scientific board of the Global Earthquake Model (the GEM Foundation), a public-private partnership building a worldwide seismic risk model.

Laurie A. Johnson is the founder and principal of Laurie Johnson Consulting + Research, which works to apply the principles and technologies of urban planning and risk management to solve complex urban problems, including pre- and post-disaster recovery planning, management, and finance; geological hazards mitigation; and catastrophe risk management. She earned her Doctor of Informatics at Kyoto University, Japan.

Masahiko Aoki is the Henri and Tomoye Takahasi Professor Emeritus of Japanese Studies in the Department of Economics, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. A theoretical and applied economist, his preferred field covers the theory of institution, corporate governance, and the Japanese and Chinese economies.

For more information, please visit the symposium website.

Lyushun Shen earned his doctorate in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. He started his career at the School of Law, University of Maryland before deciding to become a professional diplomat.  He has enjoyed a distinguished career serving Taiwan in its overseas missions in America and Europe, including in Washington D.C., Kansas City, Geneva and Brussels.  Prior to his current appointment he was Taiwan’s representative to the European Union. His publications include:  “The Republic of China’s Perspective on the US Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1989), The Issue of US Arms Sales and Peking’s Policy toward Taiwan (Taipei, 1986), “Is Peking’s Claim over Taiwan Internationally Recognized?” Monograph Series of the Asia and World Forum (Taipei, 1984), “The Washington-Peking Controversy over US Arms Sales to Taiwan: Diplomacy of Ambiguity and Escalation” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1982), and “The Taiwan Issue in Peking’s Foreign Policy during the 1970’s, A Systematic Review” (The Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, 1981).

In this special event, Vice Foreign Minister Shen will reflect on the century-long relationship between the Republic of China and the United States, and address the future prospects and challenges of this relationship. 

In February 2011, Thai and Cambodian troops again clashed on their common border over the status of the ancient Temple of Preah Vihear. Both sides suffered casualties, including deaths.  Since it began in 2008, the dispute has envenomed Thai-Cambodian relations. In Thailand a key factor behind the conflict has been the nationalist claim by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) that the temple belongs to Thailand. PAD’s campaign over the issue must be seen in the context of its successful mobilization of mass opposition to the government in power at that time. Prof. Puangthong R. Pawakapan will explain how the dispute arose, how it was aggravated by political rivalry inside Thailand, and what its future outcome and implications could be.

Puangthong R. Pawakapan is an assistant professor in the Department of International Relations at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. Topics of her publications include Thai foreign policy and the Cambodia genocide. Her 1995 University of Wollongong PhD dissertation covered Thai-Cambodian relations in the 19th century. She has been a visiting scholar at Yale University, and has worked as a journalist and been active in non-governmental organizations in Thailand.

Social media—such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn—are increasingly being used for business purposes. The conference will discuss how social media promotes the globalization of ideas in the workplace, with a focus on the promotion of professional development and business development.

Two research papers, based on primary data, will form the core of the conference.

The first, a study done by NOVA, a federally funded agency to promote the employment of a skilled workforce in Silicon Valley, will look at how social media is used by Silicon Valley engineers for professional development and recruitment.

The second, a study done by Stanford University's Rafiq Dossani, examines corporate social media policy and practices for promoting innovation, project management, hiring, marketing and other business functions.

Please click here to read the Stanford Daily coverage of the conference.

Agenda

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