Advisory Committee

  • Robert Crews
    Director, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
    Associate Professor of History
    Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
    Robert Crews, the Director of the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, is an Associate Professor in the Department of History. He is the author of For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Harvard University Press, 2006), co-editor with Amin Tarzi, of The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan (Harvard University Press, 2008) and co-author with Shahzad Bashir (Director of Islamic Studies), Amin Tarzi and Gilles Dorronsoro of Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands (Harvard University Press, 2012). He teaches courses on Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Russian empire.  He was named by the Carnegie Corporation of New York as one of the 2009 Carnegie Scholars selected for influential ideas and enhancing public discourse about Islam.  He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, received an MA from Columbia University, and earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University.
    rcrewsatstanford [dot] edu
  • Rodolfo Dirzo
    Director, Center for Latin American Studies
    Bing Professor in Environmental Science
    Latin American Studies
    Rodolfo Dirzo, Director of the Center for Latin American Studies, is also Bing Professor in Environmental Science, where he directs his own lab (The Dirzo Lab) that looks at a broad range of topics, from species interactions and community ecology to genetic diversity and population ecology. He teaches, among other biology courses, "Tropical Ecology and Conservation," a course that brings Stanford students to a biological preserve in Mexico over spring break each year, followed by lab analysis upon return to campus, followed by individual and group student presentations. Formerly at Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), Professor Dirzo also directed the Los Tuxtlas Research Station near Veracruz, Mexico. His interests are centered on the study of plant-animal interactions, trying to understand how the ecology and evolution of plants are affected by their biotic environment, particularly animals. Professor Dirzo’s work is focused on tropical forest ecosystems, primarily in Mexico, Costa Rica and Amazonia.
  He has published extensively in journals such as Evolution and Ecology Letters. He received his Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Wales in 1980.
    rdirzoatstanford [dot] edu
  • Judith L Goldstein
    Janet M. Peck Professor of International Communication
    ICA
    Judith Goldstein is Professor of Political Science and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She has served as Cognizant Dean for Graduate and Undergraduate Studies in the School of H&S, as Director of the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies and as Director of the Program in International Relations. She is a specialist in international trade policy and has written extensively about economic relations among advanced industrial nations as well as about international institutions, especially the GATT/WTO. She is a recipient of the Dean’s Teaching Award, and was also the founding director of ICA. 
    judyatstanford [dot] edu
  • Thomas Hansen
    Director, Center for South Asia
    Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor in South Asian Studies
    Professor in Anthropology
    Center for South Asia
    Thomas Hansen is the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor in South Asian Studies and Professor in Anthropology. He is also the Director of Stanford’s Center for South Asian Studies where he is charged with building a substantial new program. He has many and broad interests spanning South Asia and Southern Africa, several cities and multiple theoretical and disciplinary interests from political theory and continental philosophy to psychoanalysis, comparative religion and contemporary urbanism. Much of Professor Hansen’s fieldwork was done during the tumultuous and tense years in the beginning of the 1990s when conflicts between Hindu militants and Muslims defined national agendas and produced frequent violent clashes in the streets. Out of this work came two books: The Saffron Wave. Democracy and Hindu nationalism in Modern India (Princeton 1999) which explores the larger phenomenon of Hindu nationalism in the light of the dynamics of India’s democratic experience, and Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in postcolonial Bombay (Princeton 2001) which explores the historical processes and contemporary conflicts that led to the rise of violent socioreligious conflict and the renaming of the city in 2005.
    tbhansenatstanford [dot] edu
  • Jeremy Weinstein
    Director, Center for African Studies
    Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
    Senior Fellow, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
    African Studies
    Jeremy M. Weinstein, Director of the Center for African Studies, is an associate professor of Political Science at Stanford University, an affiliated faculty member at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and has served as Director of the Center for African Studies in 2007-08. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. His research focuses on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics and the political economy of development; and democracy, accountability, and political change. He is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press), which received the William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. He has also published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, World Policy Journal, and the SAIS Review. Selected publications include: “Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War” (APSR 2006), which received the Sage Prize and Gregory Luebbert Award, and “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision?" (APSR 2007), which received the Heinz Eulau Award and the Michael Wallerstein Award. He also received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford in 2007. Weinstein obtained a BA with high honors from Swarthmore College, and an MA and Ph.D. in political economy and government from Harvard University.
    jweinstatstanford [dot] edu