As part of a pre-recorded broadcast for the December 25, 2006 Forum program, FSI Director Coit Blacker talked to KQED's Michael Krasny about FSI, its constituent centers and programs, Stanford's new International Initiative, and the role that research universities need to play in scholarship and policymaking.

The goals of a big research university like Stanford, Blacker argued, are not only to generate ideas and educate people, but also to "send talent out" into the world. Collectively, FSI's five different centers conduct scholarly research into issues of global security, health, environment, governance, and the political economy of the Asia-Pacific--an organizational structure that Krasny likened to an "interdisciplinary think tank," with scholars both investigating discrete issues as well as embarking on broad, multiyear research efforts. According to Blacker, however, a major priority for FSI is to "[get] the research product out there so that it begins to do social good." Particularly since the end of the cold war, this is "more of a self-conscious judgment that we need to do this, and we need to be more aggressive about it, because we are the incubators of these great ideas. And we may not have 20 years to allow these processes to happen." The 2006 FSI International Conference: A World at Risk was one such form of outreach.

Blacker also discussed Stanford's new multiyear development campaign, The Stanford Challenge, and how it is organized explicitly in terms of large-scale, multidisciplinary initiatives that cut across campus and across fields. In addition to its research work, FSI is also a hub in the wheel of the International Initiative, one of the four big, overlapping, very ambitious programs that make up the campaign.

Forum, one of NPR-affiliated KQED's major offerings, is a mid-morning news program hosted by Michael Krasny.