LIVESTREAM | A Discussion with President of Finland Sauli Niinistö
The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies is honored to host President of Finland Sauli Niinistö and his visiting delegation.
President Niinistö will deliver remarks on the war in Ukraine, Finland's bid for NATO membership, and strategic cooperation between the U.S. and Finland.
A discussion with a panel of scholars and security experts from the university's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Hoover Institution will follow the president's remarks. Michael McFaul, the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, will moderate the discussion.
President Niinistö will be accompanied by a business delegation with representatives from a wide range of industries.
A question-and-answer session for invited guests, Stanford students, and the business delegation will follow the discussion.
This event is available to the public via the livestream below.
Meet the Panelists
Anna Grzymala-Busse is the director of The Europe Center, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She is also a senior fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics. Her most recent book is "Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State."
Oriana Skylar Mastro is a center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies where she works primarily in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Center for International Security and Cooperation. She is an international security expert with a focus on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination and coercive diplomacy. Her research addresses critical questions at the intersection of interstate conflict, great power relations and the challenge of rising powers. She also serves in the United States Air Force Reserve as a strategic planner.
Michael McFaul is director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller “From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia.”
H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is also a former Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute. McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army for thirty-four years. He retired as a lieutenant general in June 2018 after serving as the twenty-sixth assistant to the U.S. president for the Department of National Security Affairs.
Steven Pifer is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation and The Europe Center, both at the Freeman Spogli Institute, and a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. He served for more than twenty-five years as a Foreign Service officer, including as a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, an ambassador to Ukraine, and as a senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council. His research focuses on nuclear arms control, Ukraine, Russia and European security.
Risto Siilasmaa is the founder of F-Secure and WithSecure Corporations and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of WithSecure, having served as President and CEO of the company in 1988-2006. He is also an active venture capital investor with over 30 active investments via First Fellow Partners, a fund management company where he is both a general partner and the only limited partner.
In addition, Mr. Siilasmaa is the Chairman of the Technology Advisory Board appointed by the Finnish Government in 2020 and a Senior Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group. Since 2017 he has served also as a Finnish Chairman of the China-Finland Committee for Innovative Business Cooperation. Mr. Siilasmaa is simultaneously a member of the Global Tech Panel, an initiative of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and he was a member of the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) in 2012–2020.
Risto Siilasmaa
Alex Stamos is director of the Stanford Internet Observatory at the Cyber Policy Center. He is a cybersecurity expert, business leader, and entrepreneur working to improve the security and safety of the Internet through his teaching and research. Alex previously served as the chief security officer of Facebook, where he led the company’s investigation into manipulation of the 2016 U.S. election and helped pioneer new several protections against this abuse.
Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution. In addition to her extensive research and writing on contemporary Russia, she also studies democracy, autocracy, and the conditions that lead to transitions from one to the other. She is the author of many books, including the recent "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order.”
Kathryn Stoner
Michael A. McFaul
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Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995.
Dr. McFaul also is as an International Affairs Analyst for NBC News and a columnist for The Washington Post. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).
He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. Earlier books include Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (eds. with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.
His current research interests include American foreign policy, great power relations, and the relationship between democracy and development. Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. He is currently writing a book on great power relations in the 21st century.
International Working Group on Russian Sanctions
Global Populisms
Steven Pifer
Steven Pifer is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation as well as a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. He was a William J. Perry Fellow at the center from 2018-2022 and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin from January-May 2021.
Pifer’s research focuses on nuclear arms control, Ukraine, Russia and European security. He has offered commentary on these issues on National Public Radio, PBS NewsHour, CNN and BBC, and his articles have been published in a wide variety of outlets. He is the author of The Eagle and the Trident: U.S.-Ukraine Relations in Turbulent Times (Brookings Institution Press, 2017), and co-author of The Opportunity: Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Arms (Brookings Institution Press, 2012).
A retired Foreign Service officer, Pifer’s more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs with responsibilities for Russia and Ukraine, ambassador to Ukraine, and special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council. In addition to Ukraine, he served at the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Moscow and London as well as with the U.S. delegation to the negotiation on intermediate-range nuclear forces in Geneva. From 2000 to 2001, he was a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Institute for International Studies, and he was a resident scholar at the Brookings Institution from 2008 to 2017.
Pifer is a 1976 graduate of Stanford University with a bachelor’s in economics.
Oxana Shevel is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University and current Vice President of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) and the American Association of Ukrainian Studies (AAUS). Her work explores nation building and identity politics in the post-Soviet region. Her book, Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2011) won the American Association for Ukrainian Studies prize for best book in the fields of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture. Her recent work has focused on the sources of citizenship policies in the post-Communist states, comparative memory politics, and religious politics in Ukraine. With Maria Popova, she is currently writing a book on the root causes of the Russo-Ukrainian war, entitled Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States, scheduled to be released in late 2023. 
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