About

STUART CANIN

Stuart Canin has held the title of concertmaster at the San Francisco Symphony, the New Japan Philharmonic (conducted by Seiji Ozawa), the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Kent Nagano), San Francisco Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, and numerous major Hollywood studios on such films as Schindler’s List, Titanic and Forrest Gump. He was a founding member of the New Century Chamber Orchestra and served for seven years as New Century’s first music director. A young student of Hans Letz and Ivan Galamian and a graduate of Juilliard, Canin became the first American to win the Paganini International Violin Competition in 1959. In 1937, as a ten-year-old violinist, Canin garnered nationwide attention when he performed Schubert’s “The Bee” on The Fred Allen show and was instrumental in starting a feud between Allen and Jack Benny.

SAM BALL (project director)

Documentary film and multimedia director Sam Ball is an alumnus of Stanford University’s graduate program in documentary production (1996) and cofounder of Citizen Film, which has produced more than 150 documentary films and multimedia projects for museums, cultural and educational institutions, and television. Ball’s works have been exhibited at many of America’s most prestigious venues, from the Sundance Film Festival to the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

ABRAHAM D. SOFAER (project producer)

Abe Sofaer (LLB, New York University’s School of Law, 1965) is a former US district judge, state department legal adviser, and the first George P. Shultz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His work focuses on the power over war under international law and within the US government and on issues related to diplomacy and national security. His most recent books are Taking on Iran: Strength, Diplomacy, and the Iranian Threat (Hoover Institution Press 2013) and The Best Defense? Legitimacy and Preventive Force (Hoover Institution Press 2010). He received the Distinguished Service Award in 1989, the highest state department award given to a noncivil servant.

NORMAN NAIMARK (lead scholar)

Norman Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies in the history department at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute. He also serves as the Sakurako and William Fisher Director of Stanford’s Global Studies Division. His books include The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Germany (Harvard 1995); Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe (Harvard 2001); and Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton 2010). He is presently writing a book on Stalin and Europe, 1945–1953.

HON. GEORGE P. SHULTZ (adviser)

A native of New York, Shultz graduated from Princeton University in 1942. After serving in the US Marine Corps (1942–45), he earned a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Shultz taught at MIT and the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, where he became dean in 1962. He was appointed US secretary of labor in 1969, director of the Office of Management and Budget in 1970, and secretary of the Treasury in 1972. From 1974 to 1982, he was president of Bechtel Group, Inc. Shultz served in the Reagan administration as chairman of the President’s Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981–82) and secretary of state (1982–89). Since 1989, he has been a distinguished fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

SCOTT D. SAGAN (adviser)

Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as the cochair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Global Nuclear Future Initiative. His books on the subject of nuclear strategy include The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993), and, with coauthor Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W. W. Norton, 2012).

HÉLÈNE WICKETT (performer)

Hélène Wickett has appeared as piano soloist with major orchestras throughout the United States and Europe including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Göteborg Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Stockholm Philharmonic, and Residentie Orchestra of The Hague. She has played recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, Paris’s Opéra Comique, Salle Gaveau, and Salle Cortot, Rome’s Villa Medici, Washington’s Kennedy Center, and New York’s Carnegie Hall.

SEAN NILSSON (web design and development)

Sean Nilsson is the principal creative director for N Creative, a Toronto-based digital marketing company. A decade spent managing the creative services department at IMAX Corporation taught him the importance of brand identity and excellence in execution.