April 9th, 2012

Researchers call for policy, aid and innovation to help world’s poorest

Bill Gates spoke to a Stanford audience about the importance of foreign aid and product innovation in the fight against chronic hunger, poverty and disease in the developing world. FSI senior fellows Larry Diamond, Jeremy Weinstein, Paul Wise and Walter Falcon share their own ideas about how to secure the most fragile nations. Read more »

November 1st, 2011

Stanford's Weinstein reflects on shaping Obama's foreign policy

After two years as President Barack Obama’s director for development and democracy at the National Security Council, Jeremy Weinstein is back at Stanford as an associate professor of political science. Read more »

September 5th, 2011

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar becomes CISAC co-director

On September 1, 2011, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar (MA ’96, PhD ’00), a lawyer, scholar, and former official in the Clinton and Obama administrations, assumed the position of co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Read more »

August 26th, 2011

Examining the violence in Mexico

More than 40,000 people have died in drug-related homicides in Mexico since 2006, and the violence is causing concern throughout the hemisphere. In an attempt to understand and develop potential solutions to these problems, a group of researchers, policy-makers, and military experts from around the world will visit Stanford this October for a private, two-day conference. Read more »

July 21st, 2011

Using data to fight political violence

Joseph Felter will join CISAC in September as a senior research scholar, bringing his expertise in counterinsurgency, special operations, terrorism and conflict to bear on research conducted alongside scholars from Stanford and other major universities across the country. Read more »

January 27th, 2011

Ethics and War: How Writers Think About Conflict

In reflections on war there are feelings of incomprehension and anger. There is also valor and pride. But most of all, there is silence. Author Tim O’Brien has devoted his career to breaking the speech barrier. In 1979, he received critical acclaim with his first book, Going after Cacciato, which confronted the atrocities of the Vietnam War. In 2005, O’Brien’s eighth novel, The Things They Carried was named by the New York Times as one of the twenty best books of the last quarter-century. On Jan. 24, he was invited by the Stanford Humanities Center to discuss the relationship between writing and war at the annual Raymond Fred West Memorial Lecture. With frank honesty, he conversed with fellow veteran, the author Tobias Wolff, on his experiences in Vietnam. The event was the latest in the year-long Ethics and War series, cosponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Read more »

January 3rd, 2011

Thomas Fingar: The view from Beijing

In the January/February issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Thomas Fingar, the former deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, examines Chinese President Hu Jintao's assessment of the economic and political challenges his nation faces. China's "growth has bolstered national pride and earned the respect of people around the world," Fingar writes in an imagined memo from Hu. "But it has also raised expectations at home and reinforced foreign concerns about China's rise. Our successes have made it even more important to make progress on corruption, perceived injustice, and other long-standing problems." Read more »