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Speaker: Surin Pitsuwan, Member of Parliament (Democrat Party), Thailand
Octobers and democracy in Thailand are inextricably entwined. On 14 October 1973, thirty years to the day before Dr. Pitsuwan will speak at Stanford, Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn, Thailand's strongman prime minister, was driven into exile. Parliamentary democracy flourished for three years until it was violently shut down in October 1976 following Thanom's return. On 12 October 2002 in Bali, extremist Muslims took more than 200 lives and made terrorism an urgent priority for Thailand and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Relevant events in Southeast Asia in October 2003 include three summits--of ASEAN (Bali, 7-8 Oct.), of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (Kuala Lumpur, 16-18 Oct.), and of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (Bangkok, 20-21 Oct.), the latter to include U.S. President George W. Bush. Dr. Pitsuwan will this unusual conjunction of anniversaries and summits to explore some of the ways in which democracy, terrorism, regionalism, and Islamism in Southeast Asia overlap and intersect.
Surin Pitsuwan served as Thailand's foreign minister from 1997 to 2001. He was the first Muslim to hold that post. He has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Thailand's House of Representatives since 1986. He has also been a columnist for Thai newspapers and a political science lecturer in Thammasat University. In 1983-84 he was a legislative assistant to U.S. Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. He earned a PhD from Harvard University in 1982 after graduating cum laude from the Claremont Men's College in Claremont, California.