Climate change, Russia and Ukraine, China, the Middle East, global democracy: how are we doing on some of the biggest challenges facing the world today? Michael McFaul talks to a panel of experts to assess what progress has been made and what more can be done to tackle these issues.
This audio was originally recorded on October 26, 2024 during the event, “Global Threats Today: What's At Stake and What We Can Do About It,” held during Stanford University's annual Reunion and Homecoming weekend in affiliation with the Stanford Alumni Association.
Featuring:
Michael McFaul, 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; the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia.
Marshall Burke, Deputy Director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment; an associate professor in the Doerr School of Sustainability, and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Oriana Skylar Mastro, Center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and courtesy assistant professor of Political Science; active service in the United States Air Force Reserve, where she works at the Pentagon as deputy director of Reserve China Global Strategy
Didi Kuo, Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and associate director for research at its Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
Amichai Magen, the inaugural Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; In Israel, a senior lecturer (U.S. associate professor), head of the MA Program in Diplomacy & Conflict Studies, and director of the Program on Democratic Resilience and Development (PDRD) at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, Reichman University.
Steven Pifer, affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations; former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and member of the U.S. Foreign Service.
McFaul:You're listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. We bring you in depth expertise on international affairs from Stanford's campus straight to you.
I’m your host, Michael McFaul, the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute.
Every year during Stanford’s Reunion and Homecoming weekend, I have the opportunity to host a panel of some of our incredible scholars from here at FSI. This has become one of the most popular and well-attended sessions of Reunion weekend, and it provides an opportunity for us as scholars to share what the data and research says about the many complex and often interconnected challenges our world is facing.
We cover climate change, global democracy, Russia and Ukraine, China, and the Middle East all in about 30 minutes. It’s a lot of information, but it’s well worth the listen.
You’ll hear from Marshall Burke, who is an expert on climate change and sustainability; Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; Oriana Skylar Mastro, who specializes in China and the Chinese military; Didi Kuo, a scholar of democracy, democratic institutions, and political parties; and Amichai Magen, who teaches and researches on Israeli politics and civil society.
Here's the 2024 edition of “Global Threats Today: What's At Stake and What We Can Do About It.”
[BEGIN EVENT AUDIO]
McFaul: We have an all-star cast here covering the biggest, most important issues, from my perspective, in the world today. So I'm going to ask three sets of questions to everybody, and I want —we can all do elementary math — if you each answer each question with two minutes, we'll stay on time. If you go to two minutes and 20 seconds, we'll have no time for questions. I just did the math. So we're going to be punchy. We're going to be really punchy.
And Marshall, let's go this way for the first question. We'll go this way for the second one, and we'll start with Oriana for the last one.
So, first question: if you could tell this audience one thing that you think most people don't understand just diagnostically about your field, what do you want to tell this audience?
Marshall.
Burke: Great, thanks, Mike. It's great to be here. Class of 2003: good to see everyone.
So, I will talk about climate change. And the thing I want to start with, and I'm going to blow part of my two minutes, doing a quick survey. So, think about U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
And my question to you is, are we making progress? Are emissions going up? Are they trending up in the U.S.? Or are they trending down? So, quick show of hands. Who thinks emissions are trending up? Okay. Who thinks emissions are trending down? Okay. So roughly split.
So, this is good. My point was going to be a lot of people don't recognize how much progress we're actually making. Emissions have fallen by 20% since 2005.
[Audience clapping]
Yep, and that should be an applause line if you care about climate change. And declines are accelerating. We're actually speeding up progress. So we are actually making substantial progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dealing with the core climate change problem, which is the human emission of greenhouse gasses.
That progress is accelerating in the U.S. with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act a few years ago and the subsequent implementation of that act and various rules that the Biden administration has championed to help us transition our economy to greener energy technologies, transportation technologies. So, there's progress happening.
Globally, the progress has been less rapid. Emissions are roughly flat. We can argue about whether or not they’ve peaked, but they're roughly flat. But overall, we're making progress. I co-teach a large undergraduate class, on climate change, and we've had to update our slides on how much warming we're expecting over the next century, and those updates have been in a good direction. We thought it was going to be four degrees Celsius. Now we think it's going to be something between two and three degrees Celsius. So, we're making progress.
The flip side of that is we're still going to get two to three degrees Celsius, right? We've had a little over a degree so far. That's two degrees Fahrenheit. We're going to get three to five degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That is a lot of warming, and we are not prepared to deal with that warming.
So progress, on the one hand, but a lot of work left to do in the coming decades.
McFaul: Perfect. Steve: Ukraine. One thing you want people to know that they don't understand.
Pifer: One thing I want people to understand is that there's a narrative that's taken place in the American media, and I think in some governments, over the last six to eight months that Russia is winning the war, Ukraine is losing, and it's only a matter of time.
And to be sure, Russia has captured some more Ukrainian territory. Bu only a little bit more than they occupied in January of this year. Russia still occupies a lot less Russian territory. There was the case at the high point of mid-2022 . . .
Mastro: Ukrainian territory?
Pifer: Ukrainian territory! Sorry, thank you. And Russia has done this at enormous cost. The Pentagon says as of September, Russia had lost 600,000 dead and wounded soldiers. To put that in context, in February of 2022 when this major invasion began, the total Russian military — not just the army, but the total Russian military — was 1.1 million people. And the British Ministry of Defense earlier this week assessed that Russia now is losing 1,200 soldiers killed or severely wounded per day. You have to ask how long that's sustainable.
Now I'm not saying Ukraine is winning. This is a very difficult period for Ukraine. But Ukrainians are determined. I was in Kyiv for about four days at the end of March, and what I heard from them, and I think others who've been there since, they still hear this: is Ukrainians regard this war as existential. If they lose, Ukraine is gone. And they're pretty determined. They think and they believe they can still win. So I would not count them out.
McFaul: Perfect. Thanks, Steve. Oriana?
Mastro: Well, first let me say, happy to be here. I'm a Stanford undergrad class of 2006 and I was also a CISAC honors student, which was my first foray into international security. I liked it enough to stick it out for a couple decades afterwards.
And what I would tell you is that the challenge of China is not over. So there's a lot of discussion right now about the fact that the economy in China is slowing down. They’re demographic changes. One of the big takeaways of my book is that China has built power in a different way than the United States. They've been very entrepreneurial. And so we have to reassess how we understand power.
When people in the United States make arguments like, “Well, we have more allies,” or, “We have more overseas bases” . . . are those actually the metrics of power in 2024?
I often think that we in the United States, a lot of strategists, are like taxi companies looking at Uber and saying, “Well, I own more cars.” Yes, that's true, but no one would say that Uber is suffering because of that.
And so, one of the things that is very clear is that since the 1990s, China has developed a significant amount of political, economic, and military power. They've gone from having an economy smaller than France’s to the second largest in the world. They've gone from not being involved in international institutions to a great degree, not even having diplomatic relations with major countries like South Korea, to now having stronger and greater diplomatic networks, especially in Asia, than the United States.
And the military aspect that I'll talk more about with respect to the other questions, is mind blowing. When I was at Stanford, I was studying the Chinese military, and my parents were like, “How are you going make a living out of that?” And I was like, well, I don't know. But it was just so fascinating. It was so dynamic. And I always like to say, you know, my sister went into business, got her degree at Wharton; I never had to move back in with my parents.
[Laughter]
Mastro: So it worked out pretty well for me. But all of that rise — they did it from a far weaker resource position. So even if their economy is completely stagnant for the next 25 years, they will have more power and resources to contest what is important to us than they have the past 25 years. And I think one of the takeaways of my book is they did a pretty good job in the past 25 years.
McFaul: Great. Didi and democracy.
Kuo: On the topic of global democracy, I think many people think that the threat to democracy comes from outside our borders, particularly from countries like the ones my colleagues are talking about — Russia and China — that are asserting themselves in new and aggressive ways, probably newer than we've seen in the post-Cold War era for the past 30 years.
But another thing to note is that the real threat to democracy that's happening, at least the advanced industrial democracies, is coming from within. And this is a pattern that's true across the world. There are a lot of different organizations that measure the kind of amount of global democracy, and they've noticed what's called backsliding or regression since 2005. So, it's been at least 15 years, almost 20, of this pattern.
And what's really happening with the phenomenon of democratic backsliding is that leaders will come to power through democratic means, but they usually erode power from within in two ways. One is that they attack the electoral system and the process of democratic elections, mainly by sowing doubt in the electoral process itself and trying to attack the people who administer the elections.
The second way is by aggregating power within the office of the executive. So, we have split our power among three different branches of government, and there's a lot of contestation over who gets to pass policy and make the definitive laws that govern our country.
And over time, presidents, in a place where presidents can aggregate power within their agencies, have an incentive, if they are so inclined, to take power away from other branches, and to make sure that their loyalists, or people who they appoint are the ones who are making the laws.
These are the threats to democracy. And the problem is that they're not super obvious. It's not the same as external aggression. They often happen outside of public view. So what it really requires is a lot of vigilance.
And the good news is there are a few countries — France, Brazil, Poland — where illiberal leaders were stopped by pro-democracy coalitions of people who came together. They are at odds with each other politically; they may be working in opposite goals or be members of opposite parties, but they came together at election time to foreclose illiberal leaders from coming to power. We have the opportunity to do that in few short days.
McFaul: Amichai.
Magen: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. You know, I spent time as a graduate student here at FSI working with Mike, working with some other great colleagues. So, once you come to Stanford, you spend the rest of your life trying to come back, and that's what I've tried to do.
I think there are two developments that we've been watching over the last year or two that are really kind of coalescing now and that we don't yet fully understand the implications of. But I think we can see that globally, an alliance that Ambassador Dennis Ross has called “the alliance of misery,” or the “axis of misery;” some people have called this the “axis of resistance, or “muqawama.” Some call this the “axis of chaos,” that is composed of Russia and Iran and North Korea, with a lot of Chinese involvement as well, and it is really transforming our international system in unbelievable ways.
And every day that passes, every week that passes, we see the nature and the interconnectivity of this new axis of chaos that is united by one thing and one thing alone, and that is the desire to dismantle the liberal international order that was built, not just in the post-Cold War period, but in the post-Second World War period.
You see North Korean soldiers fighting for Putin in Ukraine. You see Putin helping the Houthis attack international Western shipping in Yemen. We see North Korean tunnel technology turn up in Lebanon with Hezbollah and then with Hamas in Gaza. The interconnectivity is something that we really need to know much more about. And related to that is what is at stake.
The critical norm of the post Second World War international order, what we've called the liberal international order, the miracle of the liberal international order is that we've managed to take global averages of defense spending from about 50% — historically, emperors, kings, dukes, used to spend 50% of their resources on preparing for war or waging war. The miracle of the liberal international order is that we've managed to reduce that to a global average of about 7%. In some places like Scandinavia and Europe, of course, it's much, much lower.
And that has been a miracle, because it's allowed us to invest that surplus wealth in education and health and scientific discovery.
What is at stake now is the possibility of a return of a norm where states are destroyed and disappear. And we have currently three states in the international system, at the very least — Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — that are at risk of annihilation. And we're being told this is not about borders. This is about your existence as a sovereign, independent state.
And if we allow the norm of the non-disappearance of state to erode and collapse, we will go back to the law of the jungle, where we will have to spend so much more money on the wrong things. And so, we have to understand what is at stake in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and with Taiwan.
McFaul: Great, thank you. Okay, second question, if you had — and they all think they get three minutes, but I'm going to do exactly what Rahm Emanuel did to me one time. I was waiting outside of the Oval Office to go in to see President Obama. I was told I had five minutes to prep him on an extremely important phone call that had to do with the START treaty. And right before we went in, Rahm was the Chief-of-Staff at the time, he said . . . I won't tell you the adjectives he described, because we were taking time away from health care, which became Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act, which was more important to Rahm. And he said, “McFaul, you have one minute, not five minutes.”
So, you all have one minute, not five minutes. But I'm going to make a prediction: we are going to have a new president here in the United States of America, one way or the other. So if you got your shot right in the beginning, right after inauguration, to go into the Oval Office and tell the new president to make one policy change, one American policy change, what would you recommend?
Steve, let's start with you, and then we'll end with Marshall.
Pifer:Alright. I would be arguing for a change in American policy towards Ukraine, which would be providing more weapons and relieving some of the restrictions we apply to allow the Ukrainians to use those weapons to strike military targets in Russia. Number of reasons for this.
One, for decades, we've said a stable and secure Europe is a vital national interest. You're not going to have a stable and secure Europe unless there's a stable and secure Ukraine.
Two, we have to ask ourselves, what does an emboldened Vladimir Putin do if he wins in Ukraine? I don't think his ambitions end with Ukraine, perhaps not even with the post-Soviet space.
Now there's a question: would Putin actually attack a NATO member like Estonia? I think if you ask most Russia experts say they would say, no, that would be crazy. But in 2018, had you asked those experts, “Would Putin launch the kind of assault on Ukraine that he launched in 2022?” they would say, no, that would be crazy. We underestimate Putin's ambitions at our risk. And this is somebody who makes very major miscalculations.
Two quick last points: there's talk about a negotiation. At some point there will be a negotiation between Kyiv and Moscow. It is not possible now. Russia is not serious. Russia is demanding just to a ceasefire, that Ukraine give up territory that Russia does not even occupy at this point.
So finally, we should be providing the Ukrainians the weapons to win. By win, I define either Ukraine drives Russia completely out of Ukrainian territory, or, at a minimum, achieve such success on the battlefield that it can get an agreement that Ukraine's government and people can accept. But we can't let Putin win. If Putin wins, there's going to be a much darker Russian threat hovering over Europe.
McFaul: Excellent. Oriana?
Mastro: So you know, I recently had the opposite thing happen to me in which this week, I had a one-on-one meeting with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and they said, “You have five minutes.” And he kept me in there for 25 minutes asking about China.
McFaul: He's a really smart guy!
Mastro: He is a very smart guy.
McFaul: But that’s not happening here, Oriana!
[Laughter]
Mastro: So I'll tell you what I started to tell him. We were running out of time to get the military balance right in Asia. We don't have the right stuff. We don't have it in the right numbers, and it's not in the right place. And a lot of this has to do with focus on deterring war over Taiwan, but generally speaking, maintaining peace and stability in Asia.
Now, in terms of these types of things, we don't have the right stuff. A lot of people — and I could have answered the first question with this — don't understand how the balance of power has shifted. The United States is no longer in a position where it can defend some of its allies, because China has the capability to basically destroy everything that we have close in.
They can sink surface ships, so we need more submarines. They can get rid of all of our bases that are close to China, so we need aircraft and other types of air power that don't need runways to take off. And then we need them in such numbers, because China now has the largest navy in the world. They've built up such capability that they have more ships than we do.
So if you want to keep them from making the calculation that maybe Russia did to say, “Oh, I can do this thing against Taiwan.” You also need to have the munitions, and we don't have the defense industrial base that can do it. And then they need to be in the right place, which is basically, in my mind, the southwest islands of Japan and northern Philippines. I spent a summer in Japan looking at some of that and doing a research project there.
And the one thing that's a bit more controversial is in all of this, the way we get there is making smart investment decisions, and it is not investing in more nuclear weapons.
Pifer: Yes.
Mastro: And so, I have told them this, and I have a piece coming out next week in The Economist: we do not have the resources, and it makes no strategic difference to the Chinese if we have more nuclear weapons. What we need is to think more about our conventional balance in Asia.
McFaul: Great!
Kuo: I mean, I think my advice really hinges on who I would be talking to. If I were talking to a Mr. President, it would be like, “Please don't do some of the stuff you're saying you're going to do. Just don't do it.”
But if it were a Madam President, I would say that, you know, we have a real loyalty to our Constitution and our institutions in the United States. And their stability over time is what we think makes them great.
I would just point out that historically, the reason American democracy succeeds is because we have been adaptable and flexible over time. We have changed those institutions when we see that they're out of date. We've done it by extending the suffrage: first to black Americans who were formerly enslaved, then to women, then to Native Americans. We've done it by eliminating poll taxes, rethinking what it means to have a multiracial democracy. We've also done it by creating direct election of senators.
So, I would say that sometimes our institutions are antiquated. They don't reflect our contemporary values, and therefore you should be bold and think about institutional reform, not because it's going to threaten some status quo that exists, but instead because it can help us achieve the ideals that we are always aspiring to. I'm kind of agnostic as to the reform.
One thing I think would help a lot is to reform the Electoral College and create a system of popular elections for the president. There's no reason that we should have indirect election of the president. It's a holdover from a time when the Constitution was a much more exclusionary document, and it does not really retain a lot of popular support.
But whether it's thinking about expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court, whether it's rethinking Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden's Freedom to Vote Act and protect democracy and various pieces of legislation to try to ban gerrymandering or create independent counsels for redistricting . . . there are all sorts of things on the table, but we need to actually be bold and think about pursuing them so that we can really try to adhere to contemporary democratic values.
Magen: I would say to whoever occupies the White House next, I would say two things.
First, every American administration since the Clinton administration has vowed to prevent Iran from becoming an armed nuclear power. And Iran is effectively nearly, nearly there. They have already enriched uranium. They have enough enriched uranium for about a dozen bombs.
We saw in mid-April, we saw again on the first of October, that is, Iran is willing to use the exact same ballistic missiles — the Sejjil and the Fajr ballistic missiles — that will be required to fire nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, not just at Israel, but the entire region is threatened.
There is only one thing that is worse than going to war against Iran, and that is allowing Iran to become a military nuclear power because that is the end of the nonproliferation regime. That means Saudi goes nuclear, the Turks go nuclear, Egypt goes nuclear, and we are in an entirely different international environment.
Secondly, and much more constructively: we need a Middle East Stability Pact, a peace and stability pact, new regional initiative that would strive towards a two state solution, that would give the Palestinian people the dignity and the freedom that they deserve alongside a safe and secure Israel, and that would leverage the new spirit that exists in the Middle East of cooperation, which, at the moment, is manifested mainly in missile defense cooperation, but the potential for economic, energy transition, climate cooperation is enormous.
We have to articulate a positive strategic vision for the Middle East.
Burke: So like Didi, the climate message depends substantially on who we're talking to. So if it's Madam President, we want to double down on progress, right? And this is all about implementation of what is already working in the Inflation Reduction Act.
We've moved a lot of cash; Biden is trying to get as much of it out the door as he can before his term ends, but he won't be able to get all of it out the door. There's substantial amount left to spend, and spending that money wisely and quickly is going to be a priority for a Harris administration.
The second thing, and this could be the most boring topic in the world, but is permitting reform. We have so much capital ready to be deployed in the clean energy transition to build the clean energy infrastructure and production capabilities that we need. That capital cannot be deployed because we cannot permit things quickly enough, and we cannot build the transmission lines to hook up wind and solar to the grid and shift the power to where it's needed.
There are good reasons why it's hard to permit things, but this is standing in the way of substantial progress, and we need permitting reform. So that would be on the Harris side.
If it's Mr. President: part of the motivation of the Inflation Reduction Act is a political one. Let's onshore manufacturing related to the clean energy transition. And so my pitch would be on, let's build out American manufacturing, and we're doing that in lots of ways that, again, support the clean energy transition. We can't use the word “climate,” but we'll use the word “manufacturing.”
McFaul: You all should join the next administration. Whoever wins could use this team. But we have one more question, and we have only five minutes left. So Oriana, let's start with you and go this way.
I want to ask a question about us. If you could recommend to our new president here at Stanford, or to this audience, or to me, what should Stanford be doing more to create research about the things you're talking about, to create new policies, to train new leaders?
If you could do one thing differently here at Stanford, what would it be?
Oriana, we'll start with you, Steve, and we’ll end with Didi.
Mastro: I have so many ideas for you, Mike, but I'll start with one. I think we really need to support our students and invest in our students to broaden their engagement with Stanford.
I always give this anecdote: when I was an undergrad, at that time there was available to apply for a scholarship. And I think I got $1,000 to do my research. And that was the first time I got to go to China to do research. The impact that we have when we give undergraduates some of these opportunities to do their own independent research, and in particular, to focus on women in national security would be important.
So one of the aspects of focusing on our students is, I think we should have a student advisory council to FSI. It's kind of like that military 360; you don't only ask the bosses what they think of people you know, their subordinates. In a lot of the military, you also ask the subordinates, you know, how things are going.
So, supporting those undergraduates and helping them do, I think, what we do best at Stanford, which is asking the tough questions and continuing to invest in the research that cannot be done anywhere else. It cannot be done because it is so politically sensitive.
You know, the research that I'm doing right now on provocation and war in Taiwan, China and Russia . . . I'm going to South Africa to meet with Russian officials and Chinese officials to talk about nuclear issues . . . this is only possible because of that level of support and the willingness of a university like Stanford to invest in that tough support.
So I'd also, of course, love for Stanford to have the first research center on China military and security issues, which is something that doesn't exist at any university in the world.
McFaul: Okay, that's a challenge to us all. Steve?
Pifer: Yeah. Stanford is doing better at this than when I was here back in the 70s, but I would work more policy ideas into teaching. And I think we have with the Freeman Spogli Institute, you're a bit more academic than Brookings, which I'm also associated with.
But there's also, I think, this idea of, how do you take the ideas and research and turn it into policy recommendations? Because it's not just looking at sort of the history and the research, but how do you take that, what can the government do with it?
And we have an opportunity at Stanford. One thing that Mike's been leading on . . . we've got several small groups that privately try to encourage the administration on issues that I care about: Russia, Ukraine. We've probably not had as much success as we'd like, but doing things like that.
On the policy side, Mike co-chairs a group that I work on international sanctions, where we try to bring international group together say, how can you tighten the sanctions on Russia?
So there are things I think that a university can do that can have a policy impact, and we ought to be preparing students to go out in the world to think about how they can have, even just as a new graduate of Stanford, how they can then begin to affect some of these major policy issues.
McFaul: Great. Marshall.
Burke: From a climate perspective, joining the ACC was a terrible idea.
[Laughter]
PIfer: Come on! You can’ get excited about the Stanford-Wake Forest rivalry?
Burke:From a sports perspective, I'll leave it to you guys. Mike is a bigger sports fan; but from a climate perspective, that was the wrong move.
First thing: Stanford needs to double down on its strengths. We have been, Stanford has been an amazing source of innovation, technical innovation on climate. We have incubated a bunch of the really exciting new startups in the sort of climate, energy production space. We should keep doing that. Stanford is very good at it. We know how to do it. So, we should do that.
What we've been less good at is on the climate policy side. I have been pushing hard. So we have a new-ish sustainability school, the Doerr School on Sustainability. We're in year two of that. We have a lot of engineers who are getting very good on the tech. We have less policy expertise. A big focus of mine has been in really trying to build the social science component of that, the policy experts who can really speak to these key policy issues that, as I mentioned before, are going to be a central part of the energy transition.
So, more tech: we know how to do it. Much more policy: we're less good at that right now, at least on this side of campus, much better at FSI.
McFaul: Great, Marshall. Okay, Amichai?
Magen: The last year has been incredibly painful, but there was one amazing ray of light, and that was our Stanford undergraduates. I taught a course on Israel, society, politics, policy. It was completely packed. I had a waiting list that was sort of 60% longer than the number of students I could have in my class; there is a tremendous amount of thirst and curiosity and openness.
And I found that our students are able and they are craving the guidance and the education to be able to grapple with a complicated, contested world. I think we have a sacred duty as educators to prepare our amazing young women and men to deal with a complex, fast, moving, contested world.
And for the very first time, as we have a Turkey Program, an Iran Program, an Arab Reform Program, now an Israel Program. We're beginning to put a puzzle together that would begin to allow us to really create the space to provide our students with the research opportunities, with the educational opportunities, to acquire the skill and the knowledge and the confidence to be able to engage with this incredibly tumultuous, and fast moving part of the world.
Imagine if we had this panel yesterday before what happened overnight in Iran. This morning we have an entirely new Middle East, a completely new Middle East compared to what we were 24 hours ago. We must prepare our amazing undergraduates to deal with that complexity and those interactions.
McFaul: Great. Didi.
Kuo: I’m going to be kind of repetitive here, but I’ve had the honor of co-directing the Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law for nearly a decade.
And one of the biggest changes I've seen . . . we take our students to D.C. every September right before school starts. These are an interdisciplinary set of really talented seniors who care about the world, but out here in California, they feel like government is very far away. They're not necessarily quite sure what the value added of government is a lot of times. They're around a very vibrant and entrepreneurial private sector.
But they are increasingly interested in public service. Because they realize government is a responsible for what happens in the world. It's responsible for achieving good outcomes and putting up good incentives for the private sector.
And second of all, they realize that you can lose your government. It can happen really fast. Institutions are vulnerable, and they are only as strong as the people within them.
So, many of them are oriented now towards public service and the study of public policy. And that's where I think Stanford has a real opportunity. We're not over there on the East Coast just one Acela train ride way from D.C. It's harder for our students to get out there and to understand.
But with the right research opportunities, with maybe a school of public policy, more kind of coherent ways to bring together all the students across campus who want to understand how government works and how public policy can achieve the goals that they want . . . that's where I think that we can really make an impact. Because I see the motivation. They're so bright. They're so concerned. So, to be able to channel that into the highest institutions of power is how we're really going to make a difference.
McFaul: Fantastic. But I would say two things. One: we should have a public policy school. We have an Applied Economics school . . . it's called the Business School. Why don't we have an applied politics school? I think the time has come. There's been resistance to it for too long. We need to do that.
But in the immediate run, you know, because of my background, I interact with a lot of students that want to do public service. And the hardest thing is to get that first job, especially when you're out here. We have something called the Gardner Fellowships. It’s a fantastic program. We give money to students to go work in the public sector.
The tragedy is, even since . . . I've been here for a long time . . . even when I was an undergraduate, it hasn't changed. We still have four. Why don't we have 400? Everybody in the valley likes to talk about scaling. One thing we should do: scale the Gardner Fellowships to break down the barriers for our students to serve. And if you would rather it be named after you, I'm happy to talk about it afterwards. John Gardner was great, but I'm agnostic as to what these fellowships should be called.
So we have to end. We have to get down to the stadium or wherever you're going. But I want to end with two things.
First: I told you that I left Stanford many times, and I've always come back. You got a little flavor today of why I come back. These are the people I get to work with, and we have brilliant students, just as brilliant as them. And I just want to thank them for being part of what I think is a unique institution at a unique university, Stanford University.
There's no other place in the world like FSI or Stanford, and that's why I want to be here. But the second thing I want to do — I started with and I want to echo it one last time. Please stay engaged with us, okay? Pick up our material. Zoom in. Email me if you’ve got ideas about other things.
Because we learn from you as well. We want you to learn from us, but there's a lot of talent in this room, and we want you to stay engaged with us. Be part . . . I love your idea about an advisory council; we're going to do that. But I also think we should have an Alumni Advisory Council open to everybody.
So that's my pledge to you. Stay engaged, and let's go win. Let's beat Wake Forest!
[END EVENT AUDIO]
McFaul: You've been listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on what's happening in the world, and why.