Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
This project seeks to promote the collaboration between the Center for Latin American Studies and the Program on Human Rights in conducting an interdisciplinary faculty/graduate student research that seeks to better understand the human rights situation of indigenous peoples in Latin America.
The indigenous population in Latin America ranks among the highest in underdevelopment in the world, experiencing high levels of illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, disease, discrimination, violence and expropriation of their lands. In an effort to examine the common trends, actors, and challenges affecting this vulnerable community, the Program on Human Rights (PHR) at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) together with the Center for Latin American Studies is hosting a one-day conference on Tuesday, May 8 2012 at Stanford University to shed light on the important human rights issues indigenous populations face.
Alejandro Toledo, the former president of Peru and its first president of indigenous descent will deliver the opening address. Toledo was a visiting scholar at CDDRL from 2007-2009. The conference will bring together a diverse group of scholars to present research papers on a range of topics relating to indigenous communities in Latin America and the Caribbean, including: violence and security, education, the effect of climate change, health challenges, cultural survival, national and international property rights and political movements.
According to Helen Stacy, the director of the Program on Human Rights, “The goal of the conference is to create an integrated network of professionals that includes Stanford University students, faculty and researchers, who will advance and support continuous research on human rights issues affecting indigenous people in Latin America.”
The lunchtime keynote address will be delivered by the former first lady of Peru, Eliane Karp-Toledo, an anthropologist and economist who specializes in Andean indigenous cultures. Conference speakers include: Alexia Romero, a second year JD candidate at Stanford University, who will address the issue of indigenous property rights; Oliver Kaplan, a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University, who will explore civil war violence in Columbia; Paul Kim, assistant dean and chief technology officer for Stanford’s School of Education, who will speak about the impact of mobile phone technology for indigenous people in Latin America; and Claire Mantini-Briggs, visiting lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Department of Anthropology, who will discuss inequalities in epidemiology and human rights.
The Center on Latin American Studies and the Program on Human Rights view this conference as the beginning of an ongoing research initiative to examine the state of indigenous rights.
The sessions begin at 9:00 am and will be held in the Bechtel Conference Center. They are free and open to the public. To view the complete program and RSVP to the conference, please click here.
The Program on Human Rights Collaboratory Series is an interdisciplinary investigation of human rights in the humanities. It is funded under the Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies as the third in a sequence of pursuing peace and security, improving governance and advancing we
Maxine Burkett is an Associate Professor of Law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai‘i and serves as the inaugural Director of the Center for Island Climate Adaptation and Policy (ICAP), at the University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program.
Professor Burkett’s courses include Climate Change Law and Policy, Torts, Environmental Law, Race and American Law, and International Development. She has written in the area of Race, Reparations, and Environmental Justice. Currently, her work focuses on "Climate Justice," writing on the disparate impact of climate change on vulnerable communities, in the United States and globally. Her March 2007 conference "The Climate of Environmental Justice," at the University of Colorado, brought together leading academics, activists, and legal practitioners in the Environmental Justice field to consider the emerging interplay between race, poverty, and global warming.
Professor Burkett has presented her research on Climate Justice throughout the United States and in West Africa, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean. She most recently served as the Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics at the Wayne Morse Center, University of Oregon, as the Fall 2010 scholar for the Center’s “Climate Ethics and Climate Equity” theme of inquiry. She is the youngest scholar to hold the Wayne Morse Chair.
As the Director of ICAP, she leads projects to address climate change law, policy, and planning for island communities in Hawai‘i, the Pacific region, and beyond. In its first eighteen months, ICAP has completed several climate change adaptation related policy documents for Hawai‘i and other Pacific Island nations, specifically the Federated States of Micronesia. It has also hosted numerous outreach and education programs on island resiliency and climate change and engaged planning agencies in all four counties in Hawai‘i and seven state agencies and offices, as well as several federal entities and many state legislators. Most notably, ICAP has partnered with the Hawai‘i State Office of Planning to conduct early planning and assessment for a statewide Climate Change Adaptation Plan.
Professor Burkett attended Williams College and Exeter College, Oxford University, and received her law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked in private practice in Honolulu with Davis, Levin, Livingston and Paul, Johnson, Park & Niles, and served as a law clerk with The Honorable Susan Illston of the United States District Court, Northern District of California. Prior to her appointment at the University of Hawai‘i, Professor Burkett taught at the University of Colorado Law School. Professor Burkett is from the island of Jamaica, and now she and her husband raise their two young children on the island of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i.
MARGARET JACKS HALL (BLDG. 460)
TERRACE ROOM, 4TH FLOOR
The Program on Human Rights Collaboratory Series is an interdisciplinary investigation of human rights in the humanities. It is funded under the Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies as the third in a sequence of pursuing peace and security, improving governance and advancing well-being.
Y2E2 Room. 300
FORUM Speakers & DISCUSSANTS (listed in alphabetical order)
Questions for presentations and discussion included:
Outcomes will include policy recommendations as well as highlights to be included in a book published by SPRIE at Stanford.
In this analysis of the region, Hicham Ben Abdallah points out that, while political issues are important to understanding the authoritarian political structures of the Arab world, it is also important to understand the dynamics of culture. Ben Abdallah demonstrates the proliferation of cultural practices through which societies and individuals learn to live in a complex mix of parallel and conflicting ideological tendencies -- with the increasing Islamicization of everyday ideology developing alongside the proliferation of secular forms of cultural production, while both negotiate for breathing room under the aegis of an authoritarian state.
He describes how the state takes advantage of a segmented cultural scene by posing as a restraint against the extremes of the salafist norm, while channeling modernist cultural expression into safe institutional and patronage reward systems and into a commercialized process of "festivalization," all of which celebrate a depoliticized "Arab" identity.
Hicham Ben Abdallah refers us to the deep history of Islam, which protected divergent cultural and intellectual influences as the patrimony of mankind. He suggests a new cultural paradigm, inspired by this history while understanding the necessity for political democratization and cultural modernism. We must, he argues, be unafraid to face the challenges implied in the tension between the growing influence of a salafist norm and the widespread embrace of implicitly secular cultural practices throughout the Arab world.
Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui received a B.A. in Politics from Princeton University, and an M.A in Politics from Stanford University. He recently founded the Moulay Hicham Foundation for Social Science Research on North Africa and the Middle East, and serves as its Director.
Through this Foundation he has established the Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World, at The Freeman Spogli Institute's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Hicham Ben Abdallah is a member of the Advisory Board of the Freeman Spogli Institute.
He has also recently founded a program in Global Climate Change, Democracy and Human Security (known as the "Climate Change and Democracy Project), in the Division of Social Sciences, Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
In 1994, at Princeton University, Hicham Ben Abdallah endowed the Institute for the Trans-regional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. This Institute has become an important venue for study and debate on the region.
Hicham Ben Abdallah is also active in global humanitarian and social issues. He serves on the Human Rights Watch Board of Directors for the Middle East and North Africa. He has worked with the Carter Center on a number of initiatives, including serving as an international observer with the Carter Center delegations during elections in Palestine in 1996 and 2006, and in Nigeria in 2000. In 2000, he served as Principal Officer for Community Affairs with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo .
Hicham Ben Abdallah is also an entrepreneur in the domain of renewable energy. His company, Al Tayyar Energy, develops projects that produce clean energy at competitive prices. He has implemented several of these projects in Asia, Europe and North America.
CISAC Conference Room
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Hicham Ben Abdallah received his B.A. in Politics in 1985 from Princeton University, and his M.A. in Political Science from Stanford in 1997. His interest is in the politics of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.
He has lectured in numerous universities and think tanks in North America and Europe. His work for the advancement of peace and conflict resolution has brought him to Kosovo as a special Assistant to Bernard Kouchner, and to Nigeria and Palestine as an election observer with the Carter Center. He has published in journals such Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique,Pouvoirs, Le Debat, The Journal of Democracy, The New York Times, El Pais, and El Quds.
In 2010 he has founded the Moulay Hicham Foundation which conducts social science research on the MENA region. He is also an entrepreneur with interests in agriculture, real estate, and renewable energies. His company, Al Tayyar Energy, has a number of clean energy projects in Asia and Europe.
