Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

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Abstract:

Three years after the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted, it's already clear we will fall short on our current trajectory. Global challenges are getting more complex, and the fast pace of change is disrupting the status quo faster than we can adapt. Bridging this gap will require a fresh mindset. Rather than rigid programs, we need to embrace risk and accelerate learning in order to create more cost-effective and scaleable solutions. It's time to bring the best practices for innovation that have underpinned Silicon Valley's success to global development.

 

Speaker Bio:

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Ann Mei Chang is a leading expert on social innovation the author of Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good (Wiley, Oct 2018). Previously, she served as the Chief Innovation Officer at both USAID and Mercy Corps. Prior to her pivot to social good, Ann Mei was a seasoned Silicon Valley executive, with more than 20 years experience at such leading companies as Google, Apple, and Intuit, as well as a number of startups.

Ann Mei Chang Author: Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good
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Abstract:

Influential theories indicate concern that campaign donors exert outsized political influence. However, little data documents what donors actually want from government; and existing research largely neglects donors' views on individual issues. We argue there should be significant heterogeneity by party and policy domain in how donors' views diverge from citizens'. We support this argument with the largest survey of U.S. partisan donors to date, including an over sample of the largest donors. We show that Republican donors are much more conservative than Republican citizens on economic issues, whereas their views are similar on social issues. By contrast, Democratic donors are much more liberal than Democratic citizens on social issues, whereas their views are more similar on economic issues. Both parties' donors are more pro-globalism than their citizen counterparts. We replicate these patterns in an independent dataset. These patterns can help inform significant debates about representation, inequality, and populism in American politics.

Speaker Bio:

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Neil Malhotra is the Edith M. Cornell Professor of Political Economy in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Political Science. He serves as the Louise and Claude N. Rosenberg, Jr. Co-Director of the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford GSB.

He has authored over 60 articles on numerous topics including American politics, political behavior, and survey methodology. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among other outlets. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of Public Opinion Quarterly and the Journal of Experimental Political Science.

He received his MA and PhD in political science from Stanford University, where he was the Melvin & Joan Lane Stanford Graduate Fellow. He received a BA in economics from Yale University.

 

Neil Malhotra Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business
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CDDRL director Francis Fukuyama believes America's increased political polarization can be traced back to a universal desire for recognition. His latest book, "Identity," digs into the factors that gave rise to President Trump, Brexit and even violent extremist groups. Fukuyama joins Forum to discuss identity politics, the road back to a united American identity and how the world has changed since the publication of his best-selling "The End of History." Listen here.

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Under the title “Political Contestation and New Social Forces in the Middle East and North Africa,” the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy convened its 2018 annual conference on April 27 and 28 at Stanford University. Bringing together a diverse group of scholars from across several disciplines, the conference examined how dynamics of governance and modes of political participation have evolved in recent years in light of the resurgence of authoritarian trends throughout the region.

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Delivering the opening remarks of the conference, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond reflected on the state of struggle for political change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In a panel titled “Youth, Culture, and Expressions of Resistance,” FSI Scholar Ayca Alemdaroglu discussed strategies the Turkish state has pursued to preempt and contain dissent among youth. Adel Iskandar, Assistant Professor of Communications at Simon Fraser University, explained the various ways through which Egyptian youth employ social media to express political dissent. Yasemin Ipek, Assistant Professor of Global Affairs at George Mason University, unpacked the phenomenon of “entrepreneurial activism” among Lebanese youth and discussed its role in cross-sectarian mobilization.

The conference’s second panel, tilted “Situating Gender in the Law and the Economy,” featured Texas Christian University Historian Hanan Hammad, who assessed the achievements of the movement to fight gender-based violence in Egypt. Focusing on Gulf Cooperation Council states, Alessandra Gonzales, a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, analyzed the differences in female executive hiring practices across local and foreign firms. Stanford University Political Scientist and FSI Senior Fellow Lisa Blaydes presented findings from her research on women’s attitudes toward Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Egypt.

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Speaking on a panel titled “Social Movements and Visions for Change,” Free University of Berlin Scholar Dina El-Sharnouby discussed the 2011 revolutionary movement in Egypt and the visions for social change it espouses in the contemporary moment. Oklahoma City University Political Scientist Mohamed Daadaoui analyzed the Moroccan regime’s strategies of control following the Arab Uprisings and their impact on various opposition actors. Nora Doaiji, a PhD Student in History at Harvard University, shared findings from her research examining the challenges confronting the women’s movement in Saudi Arabia.

The fourth panel of the conference, “The Economy, the State, and New Social Actors,” featured George Washington University Associate Professor of Geography Mona Atia, who presented on territorial restructuring and the politics governing poverty in Morocco. Amr Adly, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, analyzed the relationship between the state and big business in Egypt after the 2013 military coup. Rice University Professor of Economics Mahmoud El-Gamal shared findings from his research on the economic determinants of democratization and de-democratization trends in Egypt during the past decade.

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The final panel focused on the international and regional dimensions of the struggle for political change in the Arab world, and featured Hicham Alaoui, a Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Georgetown University Political Scientist Daniel Brumberg, and Nancy Okail, the Executive Director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

The conference included a special session featuring former fellows of the American Middle Eastern Network at Stanford (AMENDS), an organization dedicated to promoting understanding around the Middle East, and supporting young leaders working to ignite concrete social and economic development in the region. AMENDS affiliates from five different MENA countries shared with the Stanford community their experiences in working toward social change in their respective countries.

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ARD 2018 Annual Conference participants.
Front row (from left): Hanan Hammad, Hamza Arsbi, Ayca Alemdaroglu, Mahdi Lafram, Lior Lapid.
Second to front row (from left): Dina El-Sharnouby, Daniel Brumberg, Radidja Nemar, Mona Atia.
Third to front row (from left): Hesham Sallam, Joel Beinin, Nora Doaiji, Hicham Alaoui, Mohamed Daadaoui, Salma Takky, Larry Diamond, Amr Adly, Sultan Al Amer, Heba Al-Hayek.
Back row (from left): Amr Gharbeia, Mahmoud El-Gamal, Amr Hamzawy
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Author Yochai Benkler sits down with Kelly Born to discuss Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. According to the New Yorker, the Washington conventional wisdom presupposes a kind of symmetry between our polarized political parties. Liberals and conservatives, it is said, live in separate bubbles, where they watch different television networks, frequent different Web sites, and absorb different realities. The implication of this view is that both sides resemble each other in their twisted views of reality. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analyzing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that “the right-wing media ecosystem differs categorically from the rest of the media environment,” and has been much more susceptible to “disinformation, lies and half-truths.”

 

Register for this free event online at:  pacscenter.stanford.edu/event


6:00—6:30 PM  Doors Open and Pre-Reception

6:30—7:30 PM  Program 7:30—8:00 PM

Q&A 8:00—8:30 PM  Book Signing and Post-Reception
 

PAUL BREST HALL 555 SALVATIERRA WALK STANFORD, CA 94305

Yochai Benkler Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School
Kelly Born Program Officer, Madison Initiative, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Seminars
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This event will be livestreamed. Click here to access the livestreaming page.

ABSTRACT

The clampdown on political dissent inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has attracted intense attention in the wake of the recent murder of journalist and opinion-shaper Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey earlier this month. This panel analyzes the murder of Khashoggi in the context of the foreign and domestic policies of KSA’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It also seeks to understand the implications of this event for freedom of expression in the Arab world, U.S.-Saudi relations, and the future of stability inside the Kingdom.

 

 

PANELISTS

 

Moderator: 
Larry Diamond 
Senior Fellow, FSI; 
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, 
Stanford University

 

Janine Zacharia 
Journalist; 
Carlos Kelly McClatchy Visiting Lecturer, Communication, 
Stanford University

 

Hesham Sallam 
Associate Director, ARD, 
Stanford University

 

 

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Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. For more than six years, he directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, where he now leads its Program on Arab Reform and Democracy and its Global Digital Policy Incubator. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around in the world, and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy.  His 2016 book, In Search of Democracy, explores the challenges confronting democracy and democracy promotion, gathering together three decades of his writing and research, particularly on Africa and Asia.  He has just completed a new book on the global crisis of democracy, which will be published in 2019, and is now writing a textbook on democratic development.

 

 

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Janine Zacharia is the Carlos Kelly McClatchy Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University where she teaches journalism classes, including news reporting and writing fundamentals, and foreign correspondence. She was the Jerusalem Bureau Chief and Middle East Correspondent for the Washington Post from December 2009 through April 2011. During her time at the Washington Post, she reported widely throughout the Middle East beyond Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including assignments in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey. She reported on the uprisings in Egypt and Bahrain as they began in early 2011. From 2005-2009, Ms. Zacharia worked as chief diplomatic correspondent for Bloomberg News based in Washington. During this period, she traveled to more than 40 countries with then U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other senior administration and military officials. Ms. Zacharia’s earlier career included five years as Washington bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post, and five years in Jerusalem working for various news outlets including the Reuters news agency. She was a regular contributor to the New Republic and has appeared routinely as a cable news analyst on MSNBC, CNN and other networks. She was also a regular panelist on Gwen Ifill’s Friday evening roundtable, Washington Week in Review. During the 2008-2009 academic year, Ms. Zacharia was awarded a Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University. She earned her Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Literary Studies from Middlebury College and is originally from Long Island.

 

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Hesham Sallam is a Research Associate at CDDRL and serves as the Associate-Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. He is also a co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on Islamist movements and the politics of economic reform in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Past institutional affiliations include Middle East Institute, Asharq Al-Awsat, and the World Security Institute. He is editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).

 

*An earlier list of speakers included Nora Doaiji, who could not participate on the panel due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts.

 


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William J. Perry Conference Room,
Encina Hall, 2nd Floor, 616 Serra St,
Stanford, CA 94305

Panel Discussions
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Note: This seminar series is open only to Stanford faculty and scholars.

The Project on Democracy and the Internet’s Fall Seminar Series on Free Speech, Democracy, and the Internet is hosted by Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford, and Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, every Tuesday, from September 25 to November 27 (excluding holidays).

The goal of this seminar series is to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing as we address the impact of the internet on democracy and build this new field of study. Guest speakers from academia and the technology sector will cover topics including disinformation, polarization, hate speech, political advertising, media transformation, election integrity, and legal regulation of internet platforms in the U.S. and abroad.

Room 280A, Crown Law Building, Stanford Law School

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford
Yochai Benkler Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies & Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society
Seminars
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Note: This seminar series is open only to Stanford faculty and scholars.

The Project on Democracy and the Internet’s Fall Seminar Series on Free Speech, Democracy, and the Internet is hosted by Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford, and Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, every Tuesday, from September 25 to November 27 (excluding holidays).

The goal of this seminar series is to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing as we address the impact of the internet on democracy and build this new field of study. Guest speakers from academia and the technology sector will cover topics including disinformation, polarization, hate speech, political advertising, media transformation, election integrity, and legal regulation of internet platforms in the U.S. and abroad.

Room 280A, Crown Law Building, Stanford Law School

Erika Franklin Fowler Associate Professor of Government, Wesleyan University
Seminars
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