Stanford University

Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

Catalonia, popular republicanism, and the crisis of Europe

Catalonia’s bid for independence seems to have involved a major political puzzle for considerable parts of the European public, including academia. In response to the puzzle, there has been a recurrent inclination to perceive Catalan sovereigntism as an additional symptom of the larger malaise which has in recent years entailed the rise of nationalism, populism, and welfare chauvinism all over the Continent. The paper will argue that such views are a blatant misinterpretation of the Catalan process. At the same time, it will hold that the significance of recent political developments in Catalonia goes way beyond the opening of a new round of the conflictual relationship between the Spanish state and an ever contentious periphery.

What is at stake today in Catalonia is not just finding an adequate response to the old question of how to accommodate particular national identities in liberal-democratic states by relying on some version of the minority-rights-cum-territorial- autonomy formula. The issue rather is how to find democratic ways to change the foundations of pre-democratic forms of statehood. Seen against this background, the Catalan process calls for a thorough re-assessment of the meaning of sovereignty in complex polities and thereby bears a great potential for democratic innovation. We are confronting a phenomenon that has little to do with an anachronistic resurgence of nationalism or with a particular version of South European populism. On the contrary, the driving force of Catalan sovereigntism has been and is a popular republicanism with a substantial transformative impact. That this impact is hardly appreciated at the level of the European Union is one of the tragic ironies of what is currently happening between Brussels, Madrid, and Barcelona. To the extent that it stands by the side of the Spanish government in the conflict, thereby prioritizing the Europe of the states vis-à-vis the Europe of the citizens, the Union is ultimately undermining the very normative promises that once sustained its constitution.

Peter Kraus

Peter A. Kraus is a full professor of political science (comparative politics) and the director of the Institute for Canadian Studies at the University of Augsburg (Germany). He has been the chair of ethnic relations at the University of Helsinki, an associate professor of political science at Humboldt University in Berlin, a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and a visiting professor at the New School for Social Research and at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He has published widely and in several languages on cultural diversity and identity politics, ethnicity, nationalism, and migration, the dilemmas of European integration, as well as problems of democratization and democratic theory. He is the author of A Union of Diversity: Language, Identity, and Polity-Building in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2008). His most recent publications include The Catalan Process: Sovereignty, Democracy and Self-Determination in the 21st Century (edited w. J. Vergés, Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis de l’Autogovern, 2017) and The Politics of Multilingualism: Europeanisation, globalization and linguistic governance (edited with F. Grin, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2018). Kraus has been the Chair of the Research Networking Programme “Responding to Complex Diversity in Europe and Canada” (RECODE, www.recode.info), funded by the European Science Foundation, and a member of the steering committee of the European Commission’s Seventh Framework project “Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe” (MIME, www.mime-project.org).

Goldman Conference Room (E409)
Encina Hall, East Wing, 4th floor
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA

Peter A. Kraus Speaker University of Augsburg

Global Populisms and their International Diffusion (2-day conference)

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Open to Stanford faculty, students, staff and visting scholars.

This conference aims to examine the international aspects of the rise of populism across the globe: the role of international alliances, disinformation and propaganda campaigns, and the use of hacking, international institutions, and ideology as ways of building the new "illiberal international."

For more information, please visit the Conference Website.
RSVP required by email to sj1874@stanford.edu.  Please specify which date(s) you plan to attend.

Conference Poster
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Conference Program
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Seawell Family Boardroom
Bass Center
Knight Management Center (Graduate School of Business)

Anna Grzymała-Busse

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA  94305

 

(650) 723-4270
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies
Professor of Political Science
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Anna Grzymała-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

In her first book, Redeeming the Communist Past, she examined the paradox of the communist successor parties in East Central Europe: incompetent as authoritarian rulers of the communist party-state, several then succeeded as democratic competitors after the collapse of these communist regimes in 1989.

Rebuilding Leviathan, her second book project, investigated the role of political parties and party competition in the reconstruction of the post-communist state. Unless checked by a robust competition, democratic governing parties simultaneously rebuilt the state and ensured their own survival by building in enormous discretion into new state institutions.

Anna's third book, Nations Under God, examines why some churches have been able to wield enormous policy influence. Others have failed to do so, even in very religious countries. Where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gained great moral authority, and subsequently covert and direct access to state institutions. It was this institutional access, rather than either partisan coalitions or electoral mobilization, that allowed some churches to become so powerful.

Anna's most recent book, Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State argues that the medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation.

Other areas of interest include informal institutions, the impact of European Union membership on politics in newer member countries, and the role of temporality and causal mechanisms in social science explanations.

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Anna Grzymala-Busse

Michael A. McFaul

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and served as FSI Director from 2015 to 2025. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.

McFaul 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).

McFaul has authored ten books and edited several others, including, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, as well as From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, (a New York Times bestseller) Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

He is a recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary PhD from Montana State University; the Order for Merits to Lithuania from President Gitanas Nausea of Lithuania; Order of Merit of Third Degree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. In 2015, he was the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

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. 

International Working Group on Russian Sanctions

The International Working Group on Russian Sanctions aims to provide expertise and experience to governments and companies around the world by assisting with the formulation of sanctions proposals that will increase the cost to Russia of invading Ukraine, and support democratic Ukraine in the defense of its territorial integrity and national sovereignty.
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Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Conferences

The Future of Europe

To listen to the audio recording of this talk, please visit our multimedia page.

 
Brexit, the migrant crisis, the rise of authoritarian regimes, and the eurozone’s calamities have called into question the EU’s very existence. Thinking about the EU in comparative historical terms, however, shows that such challenges are nothing new when governing power is centralized. Examining the role of war, markets, and culture in the rise of nation-states provides a useful, and surprising, analysis for teasing out the key factors that might determine the EU's future.
 
 

Kathleen R. McNamara
Kathleen R. McNamara is Professor of Government and Vice Dean of Faculty & Graduate Affairs in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  Her work focuses on markets, culture, and politics in the European Union and the United States, and her books include The Politics of Everyday Europe: Constructing Authority in the European Union, and The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union. McNamara has served as Director of the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown, and taught at Princeton University and Sciences Po (Paris).  She has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, a German Marshall Fund Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow, and is the International Studies Association’s 2018 Distinguished Scholar in International Political Economy. Her public engagement includes work with the National Intelligence Council, writing for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, appearances on a variety of media outlets, and on Twitter @ProfKMcNamara. McNamara received her PhD from Columbia University and her BA from McGill University. 

 
Kathleen R. McNamara Georgetown University
Lectures

Brexit, Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration

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To listen to the audio recording of this talk, please visit our multimedia page.

 

The European Union (EU) is facing one of the rockiest periods in its existence. Not often in its history has it looked so economically fragile, so unsecure about how to protect its borders, so divided over how to tackle the crisis of legitimacy facing its institutions, and so under assault of Eurosceptic parties. The unprecedented levels of integration in recent decades have led to increased public contestation, yet at the same the EU is more reliant on public support for its continued legitimacy than ever before. Eurosceptic parties are expected to increase their vote share in the upcoming European Parliamentary elections, and the outcome of the Brexit vote provides glimpse of what could happen when Euroscepticism hardens.

In this talk, I discuss the role of public opinion in the European integration process. Based on my 2018 book Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration, I outline a novel theory of public opinion that stresses the deep interconnectedness between people’s views about European and national politics. It suggests that public opinion cannot simply be characterized as either Eurosceptic or not, but rather consists of different types. This is important because these types coincide with fundamentally different views about the way the EU should be reformed and which policy priorities should be pursued. These types also have very different consequences for behaviour in elections and referenda. Euroscepticism is such a diverse phenomenon because the Eurozone crisis has exacerbated the structural imbalances within the EU. As the economic and political fates of member states diverged, people’s experiences with and evaluations of the EU and national political systems also grew further apart. The heterogeneity in public preferences has implications for the European project, as it makes a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing Euroscepticism unlikely to be successful.

 


 

Catherine de Vries photo

Catherine E. De Vries is a Westendijk Chair and Professor of Political Behaviour in Europe at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she also acts as the Director of the VU Interdisciplinary Center for European Studies. In addition, she is an Associate Member of Nuffield College, University of Oxford and an affiliated Professor of Political Science at the University of Essex. Finally, she serves a scientific advisor the eupinions project of the Bertelsmann Foundation and as a board member of the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

 

Co-sponsored by the Hoover Institution

 

Catherine De Vries Professor of Political Behaviour in Europe, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Speaker Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Seminars
European Governance
European Governance Seminar Series

Coalition-Directed Economic Vote and the Finance Minister

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Recent experimental evidence finds that the decision maker in a collective decision making entity with proposal power attracts a disproportionate amount of the blame or reward by those materially affected by these decisions. In the case of coalition governments evidence suggests that voters have heuristics for assigning responsibility for economic outcomes to individual parties and that they tend to disproportionately direct the economic vote toward the Prime Minister party. This essay demonstrates that voters also identify the Finance Minister party as an agenda setter on economic issues depending on whether the coalition context exaggerates or mutes its perceived agenda power. We define cabinet context as the extent to which coalition parties take issue ownership for particular policy areas. We find that when decision making is compartmentalized, voters perceive the finance minister as having agenda power and hence it receives a relatively larger economic vote; in more “diffuse” cabinet contexts it is the PM Party that is attributed responsibility for the economy.

Ray Duch

Raymond Duch is an Official Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and the Director of the Nuffield Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS), which currently has centres in Oxford (UK), Santiago (Chile), Tianjin (China) and Pune (India). Prior to assuming these positions, he was the Senator Don Henderson Scholar in Political Science at the University of Houston. He received his BA (Honours) from the University of Manitoba in Canada and his MA and PhD from the University of Rochester. In addition, he has held visiting appointments at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona; the Hoover Institute and the Graduate School of Management, Stanford University; the Institute for Social Research Oslo; the Université de Montréal; and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. He is currently the Long Term Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Toulouse School of Economics.

He draws on theory, experiments and public opinion analysis to understand how citizens solve decision-making challenges. This includes looking at how citizens use information shortcuts to make decisions. For example in ‘Context and Economic Expectations: When Do Voters get it Right?’ (British Journal of Political Science, 2010), he demonstrates how information shortcuts result in quite accurate expectations regarding price fluctuations in 12 European countries. One of his current areas of interest is the micro-foundations of cheating and unethical behaviour. He has run real effort tax compliance experiments designed to understand who cheats at taxes, the results of which are summarized in ‘Why We Cheat?’ (currently under review). An extension of this project examines tax compliance in different tax regimes.

Ray has served as Associate Editor of the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Experimental Political Science. He is one of the founders of the European Political Science Association and the International Meeting on Behavioural Science (IMESBESS), and he is currently Vice President of the Midwest Political Science Association. In 2015, Ray was selected as a member of the UK Cabinet Office Cross-Whitehall Trial Advice Panel to offer Whitehall departments technical support in designing and implementing controlled experiments to assess policy effectiveness. He was recently nominated to the Evidence in Governance and Politics network.

This event is co-sponsored by the Hoover Institution.

 

Raymond Duch speaker Nuffield College, University of Oxford
Lectures

Populism and Innovation: Twin Challenges for Europe?

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Matteo Renzi, former Prime Minister of Italy


Matteo Renzi was born in Florence in January 1975. In 2004 he was elected president of the province of Florence; five years later, in 2009, he was elected Mayor of Florence. In 2012 he ran in the primary elections for the centre-left, losing in the run-off. In 2013 he stood once again in the primaries, this time for leader of the Italian Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD), winning with 67.5% of the vote.

On February 22, 2014, following the resignation of Enrico Letta and after a vote by a large majority within the PD, he became President of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister of Italy), the youngest in the history of Italy. After the negative result of the constitutional referendum on December 4, 2016, Matteo Renzi resigned as Prime Minister. 
 
In April 2017, almost two million voters took part in the primary elections for Secretary of the PD. Renzi was re-elected with 69% of the votes cast. Following the results of the Italian parliamentary election, in March 2018 he resigned as Leader of the PD.
 
Matteo Renzi is currently Senator for the Electoral College of Florence, Scandicci, Signa, Lastra a Signa and Impruneta. His activity as a politician has been accompanied by his writing, which includes the books Fuori! (2011), Stilnovo (2012), Oltre la rottamazione (2013), and Avanti! Perché l’Italia non si ferma (2017). He has also taught at Stanford's Florence campus in recent years. 
Matteo Renzi, former Prime Minister of Italy speaker
Lectures

Voting Behavior in the Council of the European Union: The Effect of the Trio Presidency

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This paper examines the Trio Presidency and its impact on voting behavior in the Council of the European Union. Trios of Member States cooperate for 18-month periods, with each member holding the Presidency for six months. We study whether belonging to the Trio increases the probability that a Member State votes in favor of a measure. We analyze roll call votes on 1038 legislative acts from January 2007 till June 2014. Conducting probit analyses we present evidence that Member States are indeed more likely to vote in favor during their participation in Trios. We show that this results mainly from the Trio’s agenda-setting powers. Moreover, holding the Presidency itself does not further increase the probability of voting in favor.

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Political Science Research and Methods
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Christophe Crombez
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Translating Cultures: Multilingualism and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World -- Stanford CMEMS Primary Source Symposium (Day 2 of 2)

Annual Stanford Primary Source Symposium

 

For further information, including the speakers and talk titles, please visit https://cmems.stanford.edu/primary-source-symposium

 

Co-sponsored by the Europe Center, the Department of Religious Studies, the Department of History, the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, the Department of Art & Art History, the Stanford Humanities Center, and Stanford University Libraries.

Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.

Symposiums

Translating Cultures: Multilingualism and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World -- Stanford CMEMS Primary Source Symposium (Day 1 of 2)

Annual Stanford Primary Source Symposium

 

For further information, including the speakers and talk titles, please visit https://cmems.stanford.edu/primary-source-symposium

 

Co-sponsored by the Europe Center, the Department of Religious Studies, the Department of History, the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, the Department of Art & Art History, the Stanford Humanities Center, and Stanford University Libraries.

Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.

Symposiums

Three new center directors look to the future at FSI

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Like a lot of people, Colin Kahl long thought of Washington, D.C. as the place to be when it comes to matters of international security. Today, Kahl, who served as national security adviser to former Vice President Joseph Biden, has a different opinion.

"A lot of the most cutting-edge policy questions and international security challenges of this century are, in a strange way, west coast issues," said Kahl, who took over as co-director of social sciences for Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in early September. He points to the role of technology in reshaping the global balance of power, the increasing importance of the Asia-Pacific region to the U.S. economy and security, and the country's changing demographics.

Kahl is one of three new directors at research centers run by The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Also in September, Anna Grzymala-Busse took over as director of The Europe Center (TEC) and David Lobell became the Gloria and Richard Kushel Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE).

In separate interviews, the incoming directors outlined goals that differed in substance, but had similar objectives: to focus on issues that have historically been important to their centers while advancing work on new and emerging challenges. All three also talked about further leveraging Stanford's interdisciplinary approach to education and research.

"The centers within FSI all address research and policy challenges that are constantly changing," said Lobell, a professor of earth system science who joined FSE in 2008, three years after it was formed. "As part of FSI, we have unique opportunities to better understand the interplay of our specific area within the broader context of international security."

Michael McFaul, FSI's director, said the new leaders take over at an exciting time for their respective centers — and for FSI.

"Coming into a new academic year, I am excited about the tremendous momentum within FSI and its six research centers," said McFaul, who is also the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies. "Our ability to generate interdisciplinary, policy-oriented research, to teach and train tomorrow's leaders, and to engage policymakers has never been stronger."

Big Data & Food

As FSE's director and a researcher himself, Lobell says he's excited about the potential for technology to solve longstanding questions surrounding food security and world hunger. Satellite imagery of small-scale farming around the globe, for instance, is rapidly advancing efforts to improve crop productivity. "Historically it's been really hard to get good data," said Lobell, whose recent projects include using machine learning to identify poverty zones in rural Africa and map yields of smallholder farms in Kenya. 

"The measurement possibilities from new and different data technologies are going to be really important going forward," said Lobell, who is also looking to add expertise in water management and micronutrients, either by funding new graduate fellowships or hiring new faculty.

Europe and Beyond

For her part, Grzymala-Busse's primary goals at The Europe Center are to develop its international intellectual networks and strengthen its long-term institutional footing. "I am excited to build on our existing strengths and bring together even more historians, anthropologists, economists, and sociologists," said Grzymala-Busse, who joined Stanford faculty in 2016 and teaches political science and international studies. "Europe is ground zero for a lot of what's happening in the world, whether the rise of populism or the economic crises, and you can’t understand these developments without understanding the history, cultures, and economics of the region."

A Third Nuclear Revolution

For CISAC, international security is no longer just about nuclear security, says Kahl, who is one of two co-directors at the center; Rodney Ewing serves as the center's co-director of science and engineering, while Kahl oversees the social sciences.

Kahl says that nuclear weapons will remain a key focus for the center as North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China move to build or modernize arsenals. But, the center will also look at emerging technologies that are becoming serious threats. He cites as examples the rapid rise of cyberattacks, pandemics and biological weapons, and artificial intelligence and machine learning.

"My plan is to ensure that Stanford continues to play a profound leadership role in the most critical security issues facing the world today," said Kahl, who came to Stanford last year as the inaugural Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow, an endowed faculty chair at FSI.

Said McFaul, "We welcome three remarkable individuals with the skills and vision to guide their respective centers into the future."

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