International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Technological innovation and the transfer of the resulting intellectual property rights are indispensable to the economies of the European Union and the United States. Consequently, the antitrust treatment of IP licensing has gained increased significance. Currently, technology transfer is a fundamental incentive to innovation, enabling those who undertake major investments in research and development to achieve optimal financial gain from their goods and services.

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The logic of partitioning the land has dominated the various attempts to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Several developments in the last few years cast serious doubts regarding the feasibility of partition. This talk seeks to critically explore alternatives to partition in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More specifically, it seeks to examine feasible, reasonable, and fairly just alternatives to partition that would secure the national and individual rights, interests and identities of Arabs and Jews alike.

Bashir Bashir is a research fellow at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and a Civic Education and Leadership Fellow at Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University. He holds a Ph.D. and Master’s degree in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Bachelor’s degree in Politics, Sociology and Anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has taught Political Theory at the London School of Economics, Queen's University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  His primary research interests are democratic theories of inclusion, multiculturalism, civic education, conflict resolution and the politics of reconciliation, historical injustices, Palestinian nationalism, and Israeli politics.  Among Bashir's publications is: Will Kymlicka and Bashir Bashir (eds.), The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

CISAC Conference Room

Bashir Bashir Research Fellow, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute; Civic Education and Leadership Fellow at Maxwell School of Citizenship, Syracuse University Speaker
Seminars
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As exemplified by the recent election results from Sweden, immigration is one of the most important and heated topics of debate in contemporary Scandinavian society. Immigrants are accused of being unwilling to integrate and adopt Scandinavian cultural values and practices, while the countries themselves are often criticized for not realizing that they have, in fact, become multicultural. By comparison, Jewish immigration to Scandinavia is generally regarded as a success and a strategy for others to emulate. In her presentation, Vibeke Kieding Banik will highlight some key features of Scandinavian Jewish history (with a particular focus on Norway) and argue that the skepticism characterizing the current debate was also present when Jews were allowed to emigrate to Scandinavia, and especially during the arrival of Eastern European Jews in the early 1900s.

Vibeke Kieding Banik, a Norwegian national, received her PhD in history in 2009 from the University of Oslo, where she is currently affiliated as a part time lecturer. She teaches a course entitled "The Holocaust" and supervises and examines undergraduate and postgraduate students. Her research interests include gender studies, modern Jewish history and immigration, integration and identity in Scandinavia. During her Anna Lindh fellowship at The Europe Center, Vibeke will begin work on her new project, “Gendered integration? The Jewish Encounter with Scandinavia, 1900-1940."

 

Audio Synopsis:

Dr. Kieding Banik begins by outlining the historical context of the Jewish experience in Scandinavia. She describes how early Jewish immigrants faced a homogenous, largely Lutheran Scandinavian population with strong anti-Semitic prejudices, with Norway even banning Jewish immigration entirely until 1851, for fear Jews would "overflow" the country. Immigration in all parts of Scandinavia was greatly restricted between 1880 and the beginning of World War I, before and after which time Jews from Eastern Europe arrived in greater numbers, often en route to other destinations.

While by 1918 Jews had full legal rights in Scandinavia, the amount of assimilation of Jews into local society differed between countries. For example, Jews in Denmark demonstrated higher levels of cultural assimilation, and prominence in society, academia, politics and civil society than in Sweden or Norway.

Dr. Kieding Banik goes on to describe the challenges immigrants faced as they attempted to balance assimilation with their Jewish identity; the effects of the Holocaust on Jewish populations in Scandinavia; the response of established Jewish communities to new immigrants; and the differences of experience between present-day Jewish immigrants to Scandinavia and their predecessors.

A discussion session addresses issues such as: the reasons for variety in the Jewish experience between Scandinavian countries; how post-war attitudes changed to facilitate increased Jewish integration; the relationship ofJews to other immigrant groups in Scandinavia; and the level of assistance for immigrant groups in Scandinavia today.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

616 Serra Street
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

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Visiting Scholar
Anna Linde Fellow
VKBanik.jpg PhD

Vibeke Kieding Banik is currently affiliated as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo. Her main focus of research is on the history of minorities in Scandinavia, particularly Jews, with an emphasis on migration and integration. Her research interests also include gender history, and her current project investigates whether there was a gendered integration strategy among Scandinavian Jews in the period 1900-1940. Dr. Banik has authored several articles on Jewish life in Norway, Jewish historiography and the Norwegian women’s suffragette movement. She has taught extensively on Jewish history and is currently writing a book on the history of the Norwegian Jews, scheduled to be published in 2015.

Vibeke Kieding Banik was a visiting scholar and Anna Lindh Fellow with The Europe Center in 2013-2014.

Vibeke Kieding Banik Speaker
Seminars
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Prince Hans-Adam II has dedicated his reign to bring Liechtenstein into the modern international community. Under his leadership Liechtenstein has joined the United Nations and the European Economic Area with the European Union.

In 2003 Prince Hans-Adam II was able to accomplish the monarchy’s constitutional reform, after the failure of parliamentary negociation, with a plebiscite outcome of a majority of voters in favor of the Princely House’s constitutional proposal.

Having appointed Hereditary Prince Alois his permanent deputy for exercising the duties of Head of State of the Principality of Liechtenstein, Prince Hans-Adam II has returned to devoting himself more to managing the assets of the Princely House.

 

Event Synopsis:

HRH Prince Hans-Adam II asserts that to survive, states must reflect a new model geared toward preventing wars, serving not only the privileged but the whole population, promoting democracy and the rule of law, and being globally competitive. To achieve this, the state must operate like a service company. It must avoid behaving like a monopoly, including with regards to its territory. The prince cites legislation he introduced to allow each of Liechtenstein's 11 communities to vote on whether to remain with or leave the principality and outlines other relevant examples from Europe. In the "service company" model of states, defense spending fueled by taxpayer money will be unnecessary. Many current government functions would be privatized or transferred to local communities, with the exception of foreign policy, law and order, education, and state finances. He details all four of these areas, discusses ways in which they intersect, and outlines suggested reforms to legislative systems to achieve these goals.

The prince makes a special case for private education funded by state vouchers to parents; for indirect taxation by the state and the opportunity for local communities to impose direct taxes; and for using tax surpluses and proceeds from selling unwanted state property to pay down the national debt. Above all, he emphasizes a "lean and transparent" state that can be financed by only a small fraction of GDP, with funds flowing directly to local communities. In conclusion, he predicts that the state - and even monarchies - will survive the millennium, but not in the traditional model or large, centralized states.


A discussion session raised such questions as: Who "owns" a state operating like a service company? What options exist to deal with the growing global imbalance of wealth? Should healthcare and waste disposal/natural resource management be provided by the state or privatized? Does Lichtenstein derive any direct benefits from its association with the European Economic Community? Is Liechtenstein large enough to have an impact on world politics with its foreign policy, or is foreign policy an area better handled at a higher level like that of the EU? What is the current situation of minorities in Europe?

Oksenberg Conference Room

HSH Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein Speaker
Seminars

History Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2024

(650) 723-9534
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Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History
Professor of History
priya_satia_headshot.jpg

Priya Satia specializes in modern British and British empire history.

Prof. Satia is a cultural historian of the material and intellectual infrastructure of the modern world in the age of empire. Her work examines the origins of state institutions, military technologies, ideas and practices of development, and the anti-colonial responses they inspired in order to understand how the imperial past has shaped the present and how the ethical dilemmas it posed were understood and managed.

Prof. Satia has explored these questions in studies of British policing of the Middle East in the era of World War One, the invention of radio during the Boer War, the British Indian development of Iraq, state secrecy in mass-democratic Britain, the gun-making exploits of a Quaker family during the industrial revolution, the Partition of British India, the imperial consequences of the historical discipline itself, and other projects. Her work on aerial policing has also informed her analysis of American drone use in the Middle East. An essay on her formation as a historian is available here in the H-Diplo series "Learning the Scholar's Craft."

Her first book Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (OUP, 2008) won the 2009 AHA-Herbert Baxter Adams Book Prize, the 2009 AHA-Pacific Coast Branch Book Award, and the 2010 Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies Book Prize.

Her second book, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Penguin Press/Duckworth, 2018) won the 2019 Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies Book Prize, the Wadsworth Prize in Business History, and the AHA's Jerry Bentley Prize in world history. It was also a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in History and shortlisted for the Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize.

Prof. Satia's third book, Time's Monster: How History Makes History (Belknap HUP/Penguin Allen Lane, 2020) won the 2021 Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies Book Prize  and the 2021 Bronze Prize in History (World) from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. It was also listed in BBC History Magazine Books of the Year (2020) and the New Statesman's Best Books of the Year (2020).

Her work has also appeared in the American Historical Review, Past and Present, Technology and Culture, Humanity, Annales, History Workshop Journal, and other scholarly journals, as well as edited volumes across a range of fields (e.g. environmental history, Middle Eastern history, the Indian Ocean world, British politics, aerospatial theory, humanitarianism), and mainstream media (e.g. the Financial Times, the Nation, Times Literary Supplement, the Washington PostTime Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher EducationAeon, the Tribune, Slate.com, CNN.com, and more).

Prof. Satia is working on a new book project, The Lake of Liberation, on British colonialism in Punjab and its legacies.

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Date Label

More and more empirical research in international economics builds on the analysis of bilateral trade flows. Various different international statistical sources are available for researchers and commonly used. Unfortunately, the data happen to differ quite substantially across the different sources with little systematic knowledge on the nature of the differences and their sources as well as the consequences for empirical results.

This study will analyze intersectoral linkages via trade in intermediates across industries, and the changing industrial structure of the EU, with a view to identifying possible unexploited potentials of the interrelationship between manufacturing and services for European growth and implications for employment. It will further provide a comprehensive analysis of determinants of international outsourcing of services and its effects on firm productivity, employment and innovation in EU countries.

Austrian Institute of Economic Research
1030 Vienna Austria, Arsenal, Objekt 20

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Visiting Scholar
WolfamyrPhoto.jpg PhD

Yvonne Wolfmayr is a research fellow at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) in Vienna, which is one of the leading institutes for empirical and policy oriented research. She holds a masters degree in economics from the University of Vienna and completed her doctorate program at the University of Innsbruck with a major in International Economics in May 2010. In 1998 she was a visiting scholar at the UCLA.

Her main research interests are in the field of foreign direct investments and the theory of the multinational firm as well as trade in services and linkages between services and manufacturing trade. Most of her work focuses on questions related to the integration of Central and East European Countries and the impact of international outsourcing and FDI on employment in home countries, in specific. She has been involved in or has led several projects (both national and international (EU and OECD)) in the areas noted. Her publications in journals include: Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Empirica and several book chapters. In addition, she is an expert to and part of the organizing team at the Research Centre in International Economics (FIW) which provides support to the Austrian scientific community in the field of International Economics and offers expert analysis on a number of current policy related issues in International Economics. She has also been an expert to the Austrian Advisory Council for foreign trade policy and is a member of the Advisory Board on foreign trade statistics at the national statistical office (Statistics Austria).

Dr. Wolfmayr was a visiting scholar with the Forum on Contemporary Europe from June-August, 2010.

CV

616 Serra Street
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

0
Visiting Scholar
Anna Linde Fellow
VKBanik.jpg PhD

Vibeke Kieding Banik is currently affiliated as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo. Her main focus of research is on the history of minorities in Scandinavia, particularly Jews, with an emphasis on migration and integration. Her research interests also include gender history, and her current project investigates whether there was a gendered integration strategy among Scandinavian Jews in the period 1900-1940. Dr. Banik has authored several articles on Jewish life in Norway, Jewish historiography and the Norwegian women’s suffragette movement. She has taught extensively on Jewish history and is currently writing a book on the history of the Norwegian Jews, scheduled to be published in 2015.

Vibeke Kieding Banik was a visiting scholar and Anna Lindh Fellow with The Europe Center in 2013-2014.

Berggasse 7
A-1090 Vienna
Austria

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Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair Professor, 2001-2002
Visiting Scholar, FSI, 2008 and 2012
Heinz_Gaertner.jpg PhD

Prof. Heinz Gärtner is academic director (since 2013) at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip) in Vienna, Austria and senior scientist at the University of Vienna. He is Lecturer at the National Defense Academy and at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the World Policy Institute as well as the Visiting Austrian Chair at Stanford University in 2001-2002. In 2008 he held again a Fulbright Professorship at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). In 2012 he was Visiting Professor at the FSI. Heinz Gärtner was visiting Professor at St. Hugh's College, Oxford (1992), and at the Institute for International Relations, Vancouver, Canada (1993), and at the University of Erlangen (Germany) (1994/95). He lectures often at other American, European, and Asian universities and research institutes. Heinz Gärtner has received international recognition for his work on European, international security, and arms control. He is also a frequent commentator on European and Austrian television, radio, and print media, including CNN Europe and the BBC. He also acts as a Special Adviser to the Austrian Ministry of Defense. He was academic member of the Austrian delegation of the Wassenaar arms export control arrangement in the framework of the Austrian presidency (2005). He supervised several large projects on NATO, and comprehensive security, and arms control. Heinz Gärtner received the Bruno Kreisky (legendary former Austrian Chancellor) Award for most outstanding Political Books: “Models of European Security“ (1998). Gärtner holds several international, and European, and Austrian academic memberships.

Heinz Gärtner is the author of numerous academic articles and books.

Some of his books are:

  • Die neue Rolle der USA und Europa (America’s New Role and Europe), (lit-Verlag: Münster), 2012.
  • Obama and the Bomb: The Vision of a World free of Nuclear Weapons (ed.), (Peter Lang publisher: Frankfurt-New York- Vienna; 2011).
  • USA – Weltmacht auf neuen Wegen: Die Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik Barack Obamas, (America - World Power breaks New Ground), third updated edition, (lit-Verlag: Münster), 2010.
  • Internationale Sicherheit - Definitionen von A-Z (International Security - Definitions from A-Z), second revised and extended edition, (Nomos: Baden-Baden), 2008.
  • European Security and Transatlantic Relations after September 11 and the Iraq War, editor together with Ian Cuthbertson, (Palgrave-MacMillan: Houndmills), 2005.
  • Small States and Alliances, editor together with Erich Reiter, (Springer: Berlin) 2001, 300 pages.
  • Europe’s New Security Challenges, editor together with Adrian Hyde-Price and Erich Reiter, (Lynne Rinner: Boulder/London) 2001, 470 pages.

Heinz Gärtner also is editor of the books series “International Security” (Publisher: Peter Lang).

Some of his recent academic articles are:

  • Deterrence and Disarmament, Europe’s World online, 26 02 2012.
  • The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Libya,” Europe’s World online, 02 07 2011.
  • A Nuclear-Weapon Zone in the Middle East, Europe’s World online, 24 05 2011.
  • A year of Amano's leadership in IAEA, Bulletin of American Atomic Scientists, December, 2011.
  • Non-proliferation & Engagement: Iran & North Korea should not let the opportunity slip by, Defense & Security Analysis, Volume 26 edition 3, September 2010.
  • Towards a Theory of Arms Export Control, International Politics, Vol. 47, 1, January 2010, 125–143.
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