Abstract:

In India, the world’s largest democracy, the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. For instance, how can free and fair democratic elections exist alongside rampant criminality? Why do political parties actively recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoing? Why do voters elect (and even reelect) them, to the point that a third of state and national legislators assume office with pending criminal charges? In a new book, When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics, Milan Vaishnav takes readers deep into the marketplace for criminal politicians by drawing on fieldwork on the campaign trail, large surveys, and an original database on politicians’ backgrounds. The result is the first systematic study of an issue that has profound implications for democracy both with and beyond India’s borders.

 

Speaker Bio:

Milan Vaishnav is a senior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary research focus is the political economy of India, and he examines issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity, distributive politics, and electoral behavior. He is the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (Yale University Press, 2017) and co-editor (with Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Devesh Kapur) of Rethinking Public Institutions in India (Oxford University Press, 2017). He was previously a fellow at the Center for Global Development and has taught at Columbia, Georgetown, and George Washington Universities. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

 

This event is co-sponsored by the WSD HANDA Center for Human Rights and International Justice and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. 

 

Abstract:

Unchecked greed is the primary driver of conflict and mass atrocities in Africa. Most often, it manifests itself in the form of violent kleptocracies, in which governments are hijacked by networks of senior officials, military officers, bankers, mining and oil company representatives, and arms dealers. Conventional foreign policy approaches have failed to address the hell on earth that these networks have created. The principal vulnerability of the networks is their exposure in the international financial system, as most corrupt actors use that system to move their money and hide their wealth. The tools of financial pressure that have been honed in the aftermath of 9/11 hold great promise for countering the kleptocrats that are destroying parts of Africa through war and resource pillaging. Examining how those policies can be used and how a hopeful political constituency is being built is a major focus of this presentation.

 

Speaker Bio:

John Prendergast is a human rights activist and New York Times best-selling author who has focused on peace in Africa for over thirty years. He is the Founding Director of the Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity. With George Clooney, he also co-founded The Sentry, a new investigative initiative focused on dismantling the networks financing conflict and atrocities. John has worked for the Clinton White House, the State Department, two members of Congress, the National Intelligence Council, UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, and the U.S. Institute of Peace.  He has been a Big Brother for three decades, as well as a youth counselor and a basketball coach.  John is the author or co-author of ten books. John also co-founded the Satellite Sentinel Project, which used satellite imagery to spotlight mass atrocities.  With NBA stars, John launched the Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Program to fund schools in Darfuri refugee camps. He also created Enough’s Raise Hope for Congo Campaign, highlighting the issue of conflict minerals, and its student arm the Conflict-Free Campus Initiative. John also runs Not On Our Watch, the organization founded by Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Brad Pitt and George Clooney.  John has been awarded six honorary doctorates. He has been a visiting professor at Yale Law School, Stanford University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, and others. John has appeared in four episodes of  60 Minutes, for which the team won an Emmy Award, and helped create African stories for two episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. John has also traveled to Africa with NBC’s Dateline, ABC’s Nightline, PBS’ NewsHour, CNN’s  Inside Africa, and Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He also appears in the motion picture “The Good Lie,” starring Reese Witherspoon and Emmanuel Jal, as well as documentaries including Merci Congo, When Elephants Fight, Blood in the Mobile, Sand and Sorrow, Darfur Now, 3 Points, and  War Child.

 

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Abstract:

There is a growing backlash against the liberal and neoliberal economic, political and social ideologies that have dominated the globe since the 1980s. On economic fronts, critiques of free-market, privatization, and deregulation policies are on the rise, especially since the financial crisis of 2008. Even mainstream economists at the International Monetary Fund now report that the benefits of neoliberalism have been “oversold” and may contribute to increasing inequality. On political fronts, we see a decline in liberal democracy; for instance, Freedom House reports that more countries have experienced losses than gains in freedoms since 2005. We argue that just as there is a groundswell of opposition against dominant global economic and political ideologies, there is rising resistance to the social dimensions of a world culture rooted in Western liberalism. To illustrate our argument, we examine the rise of legal restrictions on foreign funding to non-governmental organizations in more than 50 countries over the period 1994-2015.

Speaker Bio:

Patricia Bromley is an Assistant Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University. Her work has focused on the rise and globalization of a culture emphasizing rational, scientific thinking and expansive forms of rights. It spans a range of fields including comparative education, organization theory, the sociology of education, and public administration and policy. A recent book, Hyper-organization: Worldwide organizational expansion, explains the global proliferation of organization, both in numbers and internal complexity (Oxford University Press 2015, with J.W. Meyer). Other recent publications appear in American Sociological Review, Administration & Society, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.

Abstract:

Join Professor Larry Diamond and the winners of the 10x10K Cuba competition for a talk on the emerging entrepreneurial scene in Cuba. The 10x10K Cuba is an international competition seeking to help talented programmers and entrepreneurs in Cuba. This event will feature Janse Lazo Valdes and Victor Manuel Moratón, the entrepreneurs leading the startups MiKMa and NinjaCuba.

 

Speaker(s) Bio:

Janse Lazo Valdes is a Computer Science engineer from the Havana University of Technologies José Antonio Echeverría. Valdes and his team Sírvete participated in Havana’s first Startup Weekend, coming in 2nd place. At Stanford, he is hoping to learn more about business opportunities, marketing, human resources, and leadership to promote entrepreneurship and development in Cuba. Valdes is representing the startup MiKMa.

MiKMa is a startup that will guarantee the advertising of houses for rent in national currency in Cuba and hopes to revolutionize the way in which the user makes the reservations of these properties.

 

Victor Manuel Moratón is a Computer Science engineer from the Havana University of Technologies José Antonio Echevarría. He specializes in software development and is the product developer of Ninjas Cuba. At Stanford, he wants to represent the emerging entrepreneurial Cuban community and meet leaders in the sector of entrepreneurship and development. Moratón is representing the startup NinjaCuba.

NinjaCuba is a website oriented to the search of talents of computer science in Cuba thought for the thousands of computer engineers, cybernetics, designers, companies and groups of development. NinjaCuba hopes to connect people in the technology space with employment opportunities.

 

Abstract:

Commentators have vigorously debated whether international criminal justice mechanisms favor conflict or peace. Others have debated whether decapitation (i.e., assassination of leaders) strengthens or weakens militias, insurgencies, and terrorist groups. This study examines how arrests of, and threats to arrest, militia leaders pursuant to international criminal warrants have affected demobilization of Rwandan militias in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

 

Speaker Bio:

Richard Steinberg  writes and teaches in the areas of international law and international relations. He currently teaches International Trade Law, International Business Transactions, and Theories of International Law, and directs Law School clinics that work with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and conduct research in conflict and post-conflict zones.  He is also Director of the Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Project, and Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning  www.ICCforum.com (link is external). In addition to his UCLA appointment, Professor Steinberg is currently Visiting Professor of Stanford Global Studies at the WSD Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice, and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford.

 

 

Co-sponsor:  HANDA Center for Human Rights & International Justice

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract:

In Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, I showed that turning points in global population trends have been driving waves of political stability or crisis for at least the last 500 years. We are currently seeing a new turning point, as rich countries enter a period of workforce decline and emerging markets divide into those with falling fertility vs. stable and still-high fertility. Drawing on experience from previous centuries in Europe and Asia, we can forecast political trends; these include a new wave of revolutions in Africa and the Middle East and a surge in populist and protectionist politics in Europe and the U.S., but also eventual peaceful transitions to democracy in Russia and China.

 

Speaker Bio:

Jack A. Goldstone (PhD Harvard) is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr. Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University. Previously, Dr. Goldstone was on the faculty of Northwestern University and the University of California, and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, awarded the 1993 Distinguished Scholarly Research Award of the American Sociological Association; Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History; and co-editor of Political Demography: How Population Changes are Reshaping International Security and National Politics. He has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford University, and won Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. He has also won the Arnoldo Momigliano Award of the Historical Society, the Myron Weiner award of the International Studies Association, and been Holbrooke lecturer at the American Academy in Berlin. His current research focuses on conditions for building democracy and stability in developing nations, the impact of population change on the global economy and international security, and the cultural origins of modern economic growth.