Stanford University

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.

Valuing Peace: The Effects of Financial Market Exposure on Votes and Political Attitudes

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Abstract:

Financial markets expose individuals to the broader economy. Does participation in fi nancial markets also lead individuals to re-evaluate the costs of conflict, their views on politics and even their votes? Prior to the 2015 Israeli elections, we randomly assigned fi nancial assets from Israeli and Palestinian companies to likely voters and gave them incentives to actively trade for up to seven weeks. Opportunities to trade in fi nancial markets systematically shifted vote choices and increased support for peace initiatives. These effects persist a year after the experiment, and appear consistent with fi nancial market exposure leading to increased awareness of the economic risks of conflict.

 

Speaker Bio:

saumitra jha
Along with being a Senior Fellow at FSI, Saumitra Jha is an Associate Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, by courtesy, of Economics and of Political Science, and a Senior Fellow at SIEPR. Saum holds a BA from Williams College, master’s degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. Prior to returning to Stanford, he was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. Saum has been a Fellow of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University and received the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in Political Economy from the American Political Science Association in 2014 for his research on ethnic tolerance. Saumitra has consulted on economic and political risk issues for the United Nations/ WTO, the World Bank and other organizations. Having grown up in England, Scotland and the Indian Himalaya, Saum's research interests now take him to Israel, Japan, Mexico and elsewhere.

Saumitra Jha Associate Professor of Political Economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business
Seminars

A Brief History of Security

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Speaker(s) Bio:

Dr. Stephen J. Stedman
Stephen Stedman is a Freeman Spogli senior fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and FSI, an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

 

 

algee hewitt
Mark Algee-Hewitt is Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Literary Lab at Stanford, where he currently holds an Annenberg Faculty Fellowship. His research, which has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, focuses on the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England and Germany and seeks to combine literary criticism with digital and quantitative analyses of literary texts. Professor Algee-Hewitt directs the Literary Text Mining cluster of the Digital Humanities Minor.

 

 

whitney
Whitney McIntosh is a Research Assistant for the Stanford Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective, within the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. She is a recent graduate from Stanford University, where she studied both International Relations and English, and received interdisciplinary honors through CDDRL. Her honors thesis explored the evolution and internationalization of the concept of security during the interwar period in France, from 1919-1933. Her research interests currently include global populism, post-truth democracy, and the conceptual evolution of security.

Stephen J. Stedman

CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-2705 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
Stedman_Steve.jpg PhD

Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.

In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.

In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.

His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

Director, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Director, Program in International Relations
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Deputy Director, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Mark Algee-Hewitt Assistant Professor, Department of English
Research Assistant for the Stanford Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective
Seminars

Is Trump Giving Authoritarianism a Bad Name?

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"Mr. Trump is almost certainly giving authoritarianism a bad name. Support for authoritarian rule declined most among Democrats and young people, while significantly increasing among Republicans. So when it comes to American authoritarianism, perhaps the problem isn’t so much Mr. Trump as it is hyper-partisanship," writes Larry Diamond in The New York Times. Read the full article here.

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Media Literacy and Civic Confusion: Why What We're Teaching Adds to the Problem

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Abstract:

In the face of information pollution, legislators in seven states have drafted bills to mandate courses in "media literacy" and “digital citizenship.” But what if the problem is not the lack of media literacy--but that the media literacy we do teach is the wrong kind? Drawing on a survey of 7804 middle, high school and college students, along with a focused study of Stanford undergraduates, academics from universities in California and Washington, and professional fact checkers at the nation’s most esteemed publications, I’ll argue that our approaches to information pollution may not only be ineffectual but may exacerbate the problem. Based on promising pilot data, I’ll suggest more comprehensive and effective solutions, and how we might address this issue here on our own Stanford campus.

 

Speaker Bio:

sam wineburg
Sam Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of History & American Studies. Educated at Brown and Berkeley, he holds a doctorate in Psychological Studies in Education from Stanford and an honorary doctorate from Sweden’s Umeå University. In 2004, Wineburg founded the Stanford History Education Group (sheg.stanford.edu), whose curriculum and assessments have been downloaded five million times. His latest work focuses on how people judge the credibility of digital content, research that has been reported in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, BBC, Die Zeit and translated into dozens of languages.

Wineburg’s scholarship sits at the crossroads of three fields: the psychology of learning, history, and education, and his articles have appeared in such diverse outlets as Cognitive Science, Journal of American History, Smithsonian Magazine, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. In 2002 his book, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past won the Frederic W. Ness Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities for work that makes the most important contribution to the “improvement of Liberal Education and understanding the Liberal Arts.” In 2013, he was named the Obama-Nehru Distinguished Chair by the US-India Fulbright Commission and spent four months crisscrossing India giving lectures about his work. His new book, Why Learn History When It’s Already on Your Phone (Chicago), will be available in September.

Sam Wineburg The Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of History & American Studies
Seminars

Why is Iran Protesting?

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Commentary
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"Protests in Iran have erupted over the past few weeks as citizens from across the country have taken to the streets to voice their opposition against the government. Much of their anger is directed at the status quo, particularly President Hassan Rouhani and the clerical establishment who have shown no sign of following through on initiatives to fight government corruption and improve the economy." Listen to Abbas Milani speak about the issue in World Affairs here.

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Eastern vs. Western Paradigms for Infrastructure Development

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Speaker(s) Bio:

fukuyama francis self portrait logo
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).  He is also a professor by courtesy in the Department of Political Science. He was previously at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.

 

 

bushra batainey
Bushra Bataineh is a PhD student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Stanford University. Her research focuses on innovative project delivery mechanisms for water infrastructure worldwide. Her current research, conducted under the Global Projects Center at Stanford, is on private sector participation in water infrastructure projects in developing countries and the emergence of local private sector players. She is also analyzing cases of water sector public private partnerships in the United States in order to draw lessons learned with regards to innovative financial structuring.

 

 

 

mbennon
Michael Bennon is a Managing Director at the Stanford Global Projects Center, developing new initiatives for the GPC and managing our student programs and industry affiliations. Michael’s research areas of interest for the center and work experience are in Public Sector finance, infrastructure and real estate investment, and project organization design. Michael served as a Captain in the US Army and US Army Corps of Engineers for five years, leading Engineer units, managing projects, and planning for infrastructure development in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Thailand. Michael received a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point and received an MSCE and MBA from Stanford University.

Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
yff-2021-14290_6500x4500_square.jpg

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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CDDRL Mosbacher Director and Olivier Nomellini Fellow at FSI
Bushra Bataineh PhD student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford
Michael Bennon Managing Director at the Stanford Global Projects Center
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Reflections on the Future of Ukraine

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Please join visiting scholar Sviatoslav Vakarchuk and Mosbacher Director of CDDRL Francis Fukuyama for a conversation on Ukraine's future success. 

 

Francis Fukuyama

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
yff-2021-14290_6500x4500_square.jpg

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
Read More
CV
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CDDRL Mosbacher Director and Olivier Nomellini Fellow at FSI

Sviatoslav Vakarchuk

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Visiting Scholar, Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program, 2017-18
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Vakarchuk is a Ukrainian civic activist, musician and the lead vocalist and founder of the band “Okean Elzy.“ He will be in residence at CDDRL this fall to attend courses and study with some of the leading intellectuals and academics at CDDRL. He holds a doctorate degree in theoretical physics from the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv.

Vakarchuk is also the founder of a charity fund called “Lyudi Maybutnyogo” (People of the Future) and co-founder of the Center for Economic Strategy, an independent policy think tank dedicated to supporting reforms and sustainable economic growth in Ukraine. He served as a Yale World Fellow in 2015.

CDDRL Visiting Scholar and lead singer of "Okean Elzy" rock group
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