FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.
They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.
FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.
FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
Workshop on Islam and Secularism in Contemporary Turkey
This workshop is sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Program, and co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, the Europe Center, and the Stanford Humanities Center
Stanford faculty, students, scholars and staff are welcome to attend. To RSVP, please contact medstudies@stanford.edu.
WORKSHOP SCHEDULE:
November 15th
10:30 am – Noon: Conceptual Explorations
Haldun Gulalp (Department Political Science, Yildiz Technical University)
“Rethinking Islam and Secularization in Turkey: A Durkheimian Perspective”
Ahmet Kuru (Department of Political Science, San Diego State University)
“Islamism, Secularism, and Democracy in Turkey”
2:00 pm- 3:30 pm: Managing the Difference
Aykan Erdemir (Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University)
“Faith-based Activism for Secularism: The Transformation of Alevi Collective Action Repertoire in Turkey”
Murat Somer (Department of International Relations, Koc University; Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University)
“Islamic-Conservative and Pro-Secular Values and the Management of Ethnic Diversity and Conflict”
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm: Claiming Secularism
Umit Kurt (Department of History, Clark University)
“Military’s Perceptions of Islam and Secularism in Contemporary Turkey”
Kabir Tambar (Department of Religion, University of Vermont)
“Staging Alevi Pasts in Secular Time”
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November 16th
10: 30 am- Noon: Turkey’s “Islamists” and “Secularists” Abroad
Betul Balkan (Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Northeastern University)
“Opinions of Turkish Immigrants in Houston About Secularism and Islam in Turkey”
Zeynep Atalay (Department of Sociology, University of Maryland-College Park; The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Stanford University)
“From the Neighborhood to Umma: Global Networks of Muslim Civil Society in Turkey”
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm: Contextualizing the Turkish Case
Hootan Shambayati (Division of Public Affairs, Florida Gulf Coast University)
“Controlled Democratization, Moderate Islam, and Radical Secularism: Lessons from Turkey and their Implications for the Middle East”
Nora Fisher-Onar (Department of Politics and International Relations, Bahcesehir University; Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford)
“Vision or Cacophony?: Mixing Liberal-Democratic, Religious-Conservative, Power Political, and Ottomanist Metaphors in Contemporary Turkey”
4:00 pm- 5:30 pm: Concluding Session
Riva Kastoryano (Center for International Studies and Research, Sciences Politique)
Larry Diamond (Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University)
Stanford Humanities Center, Board Room
Workshops
A New View on the Financial and Economic Crisis of 2007-2010
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The new book of Roland Benedikter, Visiting Scholar at The Europe Center, and European Foundation Professor of Sociology, with the title Social Banking and Social Finance: Answers to the Economic Crisis will be published in print and online in February 2011 by Springer and will be available worldwide. Social Banking and Social Finance: Answers to the Economic Crisis will be available worldwide, with a foreword by Professor Stefano Zamagni of Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities, and an introduction by Professor Karen S. Cook, Chair of the Sociology Department and Director of its Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at Stanford University.
The outcome of research carried out in the academic year 2009-10 at The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, in cooperation with the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the book was given the honor to be the very first of the new Springer Series called “Springer Briefs,” dedicated to concise texts on innovative, future-oriented topics for researchers, students, and the broader public.
The book presents an alternative analysis of the financial and economic crisis of 2007-10 from the viewpoint of social banking and social finance, and offers a complete introduction into contemporary social banking and social finance for readers with no previous knowledge. Written in a concise and accessible manner, it explains the history, the philosophy, the current state and the perspectives of social banking and social finance in the United States and Europe. It describes their place within the global economy, and the visions of their “global alliances” for the years to come. The book focuses on the basic mindset that gave birth to social banks about a century ago, and that still constitutes their main driving force in the age of globalization; and on the comparison of the current state of social banking in the United States and Europe. Since most social banks are found on both sides of the Atlantic, their interplay can be considered as crucial also for the world wide development of social banking and social finance.
The book aims to increase the financial literacy of students and of the average reader. Its 12 chapters can be used as 12 single lessons for college and university students and their teachers. Courses on social banking and social finance are being developed all over the world, especially in the United States and Europe, for example at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship of Oxford University and at the Center of Rethinking Capitalism of UC Santa Cruz. Civil society is also increasingly concerned with the topic, as more and more people begin to recognize the fundamental impact of the finance and banking sector on all aspects of contemporary life. This book is one of the first texts of its kind available in English.
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Technology Transfer Agreements in EU and U.S. Antitrust Law
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.
Edith Sheffer
Department of History 200-120
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esheffer@stanford.edu
Former Assistant Professor of Modern European History
Former Assistant Professor, by courtesy, of German Studies
Edith Sheffer joined the History Department faculty in 2010, having come to Stanford as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities in 2008. Her first book, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (Oxford University Press, 2011), challenges the moral myth of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War’s central symbol. It reveals how the barrier between East and West did not simply arise overnight from communism in Berlin in 1961, but that a longer, lethal 1,393 kilometer fence had been developing haphazardly between the two Germanys since 1945.
Her current book, Soulless Children of the Reich: Hans Asperger and the Nazi Origins of Autism, investigates Hans Asperger’s creation of the autism diagnosis in Nazi Vienna, examining Nazi psychiatry's emphasis on social spirit and Asperger's involvement in the euthanasia program that murdered disabled children. A related project through Stanford's Spatial History Lab, "Forming Selves: The Creation of Child Psychiatry from Red Vienna to the Third Reich and Abroad," maps the transnational development of child psychiatry as a discipline, tracing linkages among its pioneers in Vienna in the 1930s through their emigration from the Third Reich and establishment of different practices in the 1940s in England and the United States. Sheffer's next book project, Hidden Front: Switzerland and World War Two, tells an in-depth history of a nation whose pivotal role remains unexposed--yet was decisive in the course of the Second World War.
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Alternatives to Partition: New Visions for Israel/Palestine
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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
Will the State Survive the 3rd Millennium?
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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
Linkages between Services and Manufacturing;
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.
The Role of Multinational Companies and Supply Chains in Innovation
The study on the role of multinational companies and supply chains in innovation will summarize patterns of internationalisation of the knowledge-creating and knowledge-sourcing activities of multinational enterprises and provide new evidence on the complementarity or substitutability between the R&D activities of the headquarters and its foreign affiliates.
Yvonne Wolfmayr
Austrian Institute of Economic Research
1030 Vienna Austria, Arsenal, Objekt 20
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Yvonne.Wolfmayr@wifo.ac.at
Visiting Scholar
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.
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