Stanford University

Human Rights

The Subject of Multiculturalism: Culture, Religion, Language, Ethnicity, Nationality, and Race?

-

Professor Song is presently an Assistant Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California at Berkley. She is a graduate of K-12 public schools and Harvard College, where she majored in Social Studies. She received her M. Phil in Politics from Oxford University and her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Prior to Berkeley, she taught in the Political Science Department at M.I.T.

Her fields of interest include political and legal theory and the history of modern political thought. Her research focuses on issues of citizenship, immigration and diversity.

Her book Justice, Gender and the Politics of Multiculturalism (Cambridge University Press, 2007), explores the justice of minority group rights and multicultural policies with a focus on their effects on the rights of women. Her current research examines different ideals of citizenship reflected in immigrant integration policies in North America and Western Europe.

Her recent publications include Majority Norms, Multiculturalism, and Gender Equality, in American Political Science Review(2005): La défense par la culture en droit American( The cultural defense in American law) Critique internationale (2005) andReligious Freedom v. Sex Equality in Theory and Research in Education (2006)

Co-sponsered with the Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop in Global Justice

Abstract:

Contemporary political theory debates about multiculturalism largely take for granted that it is "culture" and "cultural groups" that are to be recognized and accommodated. Yet, the discussion tends to draw on a wide range of examples involving religion, language, ethnicity, nationality, and race. My paper attempts to disaggregate the variety of claims typically associated with multiculturalism.

Download pdf

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Sarah Song Assistant Professor of Law and Political Science Speaker University of California at Berkeley
Workshops
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice

Can Democracy Reach the Poor? A Presidential Perspective on Education, Poverty and Democracy in Latin America

-

Dr. Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; a Stanford professor of political science, and sociology by courtesy; and coordinator of the Democracy Program at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). A specialist on democratic development and regime change and U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad, he is the founding co-editor of the Journal on Democracy.

He has written extensively on the factors that facilitate and obstruct democracy in developing countries and on problems of democracy, development, and corruption, particularly in Africa. He is the author of Squandered Victory:The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq; Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation; and Promoting Democracy in the 1990s.

He received a BA, MA, and PhD from Stanford University, all in Sociology.

For more information about this event, please refer to the article in The Stanford Report.

Cubberley Auditorium (School of Education)
485 Lausen Mall
Stanford, CA 94305

Alejandro Toledo Speaker

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
0
Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
Larry Diamond Speaker
Lectures

Cohen leads Google.org course on global poverty and development

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

In September Google.org launched the first of three courses on its main areas of philanthropic activity--Global Development, Global Health, and Climate Change. Joshua Cohen, director of the Program on Global Justice (PGJ) at FSI Stanford and professor of political science, philosophy, and law, is moderating the 10-week course, which focuses on understanding poverty and development at the global, national, local, and personal levels.

"Google has an extraordinary collection of creative employees," says Cohen. "This course on global poverty aims to enlist their energetic creativity in addressing one of our most commanding moral challenges."

The course on global poverty and development meets once a week at a Google headquarters. Each two-hour session features guest speakers on development-related issues such as education and health, equitable financial markets, globalization, and population mobility. On October 3, Rosamond L. Naylor, director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) at FSI Stanford, co-taught a session on productive agriculture for the 21st century with Frank Rijsberman, Google.org director of water and climate adaptation issues.

Cohen opens each session, synthesizing points from previous weeks, and then moderates the hour-long discussion between guest speakers and Google employees that follows the speaker presentations. The 200-person capacity of the room is superseded by participation from employees at more than 20 remote locations. On October 3, Google.org Executive Director Larry Brilliant joined the discussion as well.

In a related collaboration, Cohen may also be leading a small-group seminar, "Global Poverty 2.0," at Stanford for Google employees as well as graduate students and colleagues. Global Poverty 2.0 is expected to meet on Friday afternoons and draw on readings from history, sociology, political science, economics, and philosophy. Students would be required to make one presentation and also to submit a 3,000-word project proposal for dealing with some aspect of the large problem of global poverty.

Google.org is the philanthropic arm of Google and the umbrella for its commitment to devote employee time and one percent of Google's profits and equity toward philanthropy.

All News button
1

2008 Payne Lecture Series: Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective (Final Lecture)

-

The Honorable Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

Bechtel Conference Center

Alejandro Toledo Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, CDDRL Visiting Scholar, and Former President of Peru Speaker
Lectures

2008 Payne Lecture Series: Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective (Lecture 2)

-
The Honorable Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

This is the second lecture in a series of lectures Dr. Toledo will give. His final lecture will be on May 14th.

Bechtel Conference Center

Alejandro Toledo Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, CDDRL Visiting Scholar, and Former President of Peru Speaker
Lectures

Huda Ahmed

not in residence

0
Visiting Scholar (Iraq) 2007-2008

Huda Ahmed is an Iraqi journalist. She had a joint fellowship for the 2007-2008 academic year at CISAC and CDDRL. In 2006-2007 she held the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship, sponsored by the International Women's Media Foundation, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

Ahmed's interests include international relations, ethnic politics and peace, democracy and religion of the West versus the East, and human rights reporting. She is interested in exploring current issues in Iraq related to politics, the status of democracy conflicts, violence, and the impact of war on Iraq.

Prior to her studies in the United States, Ahmed was a reporter for McClatchy Newspapers (formerly Knight Ridder Newspapers) in Baghdad. Beginning in July 2004, she assisted in coverage and translation for a wide range of breaking news and feature stories including the bloody siege of Najaf, Iraq's historic elections, and corruption in the new Iraqi security forces.

She was recognized by Knight Ridder's Washington bureau for extraordinary bravery in covering combat during the siege of Najaf in Southern Iraq.

Ahmed served as a reporter and translator for The Washington Post in Baghdad, where she assisted in covering the search for weapons of mass destruction, looting after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, the secret massacre of students during Hussein's reign, and the abuse of women in the Islamic world among other stories.

Her journalism career began in 1992 when she served as a translator for The Daily Baghdad Observer and Al Jumhurriya Daily, in Baghdad. Earlier in her career, she worked as a translator and a high school teacher in U.A.E, Tunisia, and Libya.

Ahmed, along with 5 other Iraqi journalists from McClatchy's Baghdad bureau, received the Courage in Journalism Award for 2007 from the International Women's Media Foundation.

Zvisinei Sandi

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C139f
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-3996 (650) 724-2996
0
Visiting Scholar (Zimbabwe) 2007-2008
Zvisinei.jpg

Zvisinei C. Sandi is a graduate of the University of Zimbabwe and the New School of Social Research's Democracy and Diversity Summer Institute. Zvisinei was a journalist in Zimbabwe, where she was assaulted and persecuted for her views. She has successfully won the lawsuit against the state machinery for unfair labor practices and human rights violations. She also taught Social and Political Philosophy at the Zimbabwe Open University as well as Masvingo State University. She was the Secretary General of the human rights watchdog, the Society for Gender Justice. She was elected into the executive council of the lecturers union where she led a strike that virtually paralyzed the State owned University system between February and June of 2007. Because of her pro-democracy activities, she was captured and tortured by the notorious War Veterans militia. Zvisinei is currently a visiting scholar at CDDRL, after initially coming to Stanford as one of our Summer Fellows 2007.

Nozima Kamalova

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

0
Visiting Scholar (Uzbekistan) 2007-2009
Nozima_website.jpg

Nozima Kamalova, a human rights defender and lawyer, is the director of the Public Defense Office of the Tashkent Board of Lawyers and the founding chair of the Legal Aid Society of Uzbekistan, a nongovernmental organization that works with international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, to safeguard and promote the rule of law. Kamalova has been instrumental in the revision of several Uzbek laws related to torture and human rights, and her lobbying activities have influenced much policy and legislation adopted both internationally and in Uzbekistan. She has served as a chief consultant to agencies of the United Nations, and in since 2002, she submitted a number of alternative reports to the United Nation's Committees on human rights violations and concerning the use of torture in her country.

In 2005, Kamalova was awarded the Chevening Fellowship by the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In 2003, she completed an advanced course on human rights in Poland at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, and in 1999, she was an International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) Fellow. She holds a diploma with highest honors in law from Tashkent State University.

During her fellowship at CDDRL (2007-09), Kamalova continued her research on how Western antiterrorism policies limit civil liberties and freedoms in less-developed, transitional countries. She studied the impact of the war against terrorism on authoritarian countries, with Uzbekistan as an example, and will develop recommendations for legislation and practice.

What is the Appropriate Role of the United States in Promoting Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights Around the World?

-

Jared Genser is an attorney in the global government relations group of DLA Piper US LLP in Washington, D.C. and President of Freedom Now (www.freedom-now.org), a non-profit organization that works to free prisoners of conscience worldwide through legal, political, and public relations advocacy efforts. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and in Winter 2008 will be an Adjunct Professor Law at the University of Michigan Law School teaching a seminar entitled "The UN Security Council in the 21st Century: Operations, Impact, and Reform." Genser was a 2006-2007 Visiting Fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy. His human rights clients have included former Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel, former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Aung San Suu Kyi, Desmond Tutu, and Elie Wiesel. Previously, Genser was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, the global strategy consulting firm. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University, a Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where he was an Alumni Public Service Fellow, and a J.D., cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. He has published op-eds on human rights topics in such publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal Asia, International Herald Tribune, The Nation (Bangkok), The Independent (UK), and The Star (Johannesburg), among others.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Jared Genser Attorney Speaker DLA Piper US LLP, President, Freedom Now
Seminars

Just Supply Chains

Globalization, with its volatile mix of economic opportunity and social disruption, is reorganizing production, redefining work, and provoking fundamental changes in the institutions of economic governance. In a world of global supply chains - with links extending across cultural and political boundaries - corporations, unions, NGOs, national governments, and even international labor, trade and financial organizations are all casting about, searching for new strategic directions and/or novel institutional arrangements.

Subscribe to Human Rights