Prince­ton Weekly Bulletin

A $12 mil­lion gift to Prince­ton from Prince Hans-Adam II of Liecht­en­stein will cre­ate the Liecht­en­stein Insti­tute on Self-Determination, which will serve as a cen­ter for research and teach­ing on issues of self-determination around the world.

The gift will expand the University’s exist­ing Liecht­en­stein Research Pro­gram on Self-Determination, which also has been funded by Prince Hans-Adam II. It will enable Prince­ton fac­ulty, stu­dents and out­side experts to expand their work and embark on wide-ranging new projects in such places as Kosovo, Kash­mir, and Chechnya.

As a bridge between acad­e­mia and the prac­ti­cal world, the Liecht­en­stein Insti­tute will engage both in fun­da­men­tal research and in a prac­ti­cal search for solu­tions to real-world problems.

“By cre­at­ing a non-polemical envi­ron­ment for research and dis­cus­sion, we hope to help reduce the tumul­tuous and fre­quently vio­lent process inher­ent in the search for increased auton­omy,” said Wolf­gang Danspeck­gru­ber, a lec­turer in the Woodrow Wil­son School of Pub­lic and Inter­na­tional Affairs and the found­ing direc­tor of the new insti­tute. He believes the insti­tute can advance com­pro­mises that rec­og­nize com­mu­nity auton­omy within exist­ing states along with regional inte­gra­tion, pre­vent­ing seces­sion in all but the most extreme cases.

Researchers at the insti­tute are begin­ning work on three major projects. An ini­tia­tive launched in June by Danspeck­gru­ber and Stephen Kotkin, direc­tor of the Russ­ian Stud­ies Pro­gram, is explor­ing state power, bor­ders and self-governance in the for­mer Soviet Union. The project is expected to con­clude with find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions pre­sented at a major con­fer­ence in 2001.

In the sec­ond project, which is also sup­ported by a grant from the Carnegie Cor­po­ra­tion of New York, researchers will develop strate­gies to pre­vent and man­age crises of self-determination. This project brings together Danspeck­gru­ber, Michael Doyle, direc­tor of the Cen­ter of Inter­na­tional Stud­ies; Jef­frey Herbst, chair of the Depart­ment of Pol­i­tics; and Gilbert Roz­man, pro­fes­sor of sociology.

In the third project, researchers will search for solu­tions to the prob­lem in Kash­mir, where sep­a­ratist groups have mounted an 11-year strug­gle against Indian rule. Pre­dom­i­nantly Mus­lim Kash­mir has been the main point of con­flict between India and Pak­istan since the par­ti­tion of India in 1947.

At the same time, the insti­tute will con­tinue work to assist in find­ing a peace­ful solu­tion for con­flict in the Balkans. An inter­na­tional con­fer­ence eval­u­at­ing the impli­ca­tions of self-determination at the begin­ning of the 21st cen­tury is planned for the com­ing aca­d­e­mic year, Danspeck­gru­ber said.

The insti­tute will be part of the Cen­ter of Inter­na­tional Stud­ies in the Woodrow Wil­son School. Each year, the insti­tute will sup­port at least one vis­it­ing post­doc­toral fel­low along with other out­stand­ing schol­ars or diplo­mats. It also will encour­age the cre­ation of new courses related to self-government, and will sup­port related research by under­grad­u­ates, grad­u­ate stu­dents and faculty.

The insti­tute is an out­growth of the Liecht­en­stein Research Pro­gram on Self-Determination, which was cre­ated in 1994 and sup­ported by Prince Hans-Adam II. The research pro­gram already has pro­duced numer­ous books and pub­li­ca­tions, and con­vened inter­na­tional con­fer­ences attended by schol­ars, polit­i­cal lead­ers and diplo­mats focused on self-determination.

In a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Shapiro, Prince Hans-Adam II said he and his fam­ily con­sider the new gift “money well invested for the ben­e­fit of mankind.”