Abstract:

The hegemony of the democratic ideal may be waning. Until recently, even the custodians of dictatorships claimed democratic status for their regimes. Many still do. But other rulers now drop the pretense of democracy and claim that their nondemocratic regimes provide the people with conditions that are superior to those found in democracies. They portray themselves as demophiles rather than democrats, and claim that their concern for their people provides a superior alternative to popular control over the state. What is more, some actually do pursue policies that differ meaningfully from the predation that characterizes the behavior of elites in many nondemocratic regimes. How may we understand contemporary demophily, and how does it challenge democracy?

Speaker Bio:

M. Steven Fish is a comparative political scientist who studies democracy and regime change in developing and postcommunist countries, religion and politics, and constitutional systems and national legislatures. He is the author of Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (Oxford, 2011). He is also author of Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (Cambridge, 2005), which was the recipient of the Best Book Award of 2006, presented by the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association, and Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (Princeton, 1995). He is coauthor of The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey (Cambridge, 2009) and Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton, 2001). He served as a Senior Fulbright Fellow and Visiting Professor at the Airlangga University, Surabaya, Indonesia, in 2007 and at the European University at St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2000-2001. In 2005, he was the recipient of the Distinguished Social Sciences Teaching Award of the Colleges of Letters and Science, University of California-Berkeley.

This event is co-sponsored with The Europe Center

Abstract:

Ruby Gropas is a lecturer in international relations at the law faculty of the Democritus University of Thrace (Komotini) and research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). Gropas was in residence at CDDRL in 2011 as a visiting scholar. In this seminar she will discuss the ongoing Greek economic and political crisis, and what it means for the future of the European Union and monetary system. Is the crisis in Greece ‘internal’ or is it symptomatic of a wider European failure? Is the Greek crisis the result of failed modernity, or rather a precursor of things to come? Why has Greece become so important and why has it dominated global politics and world news for the past two years?  Are its malignancies purely domestic or are they representative of a wider malaise within Europe and possibly beyond? The collapse and orderly default of a eurozone country at the heart of the Western financial system arguably marks the end of an era. It has brought with it the deepest social and political crisis that modern Greecehas faced since the restoration of democracy and it has also led to Europe's deepest existential crisis. With the EU struggling to effectively managing the eurozone crisis and the burst of recent movements opposing neo-liberal orthodoxy and the “Occupy” movements – what does this mean for Europe? And what is next?

Speaker Bio: 

Ruby Gropas has worked on asylum and migration issues for UNHCR in Brussels and worked for McKinsey & Co. in Zurich and Athens (2000-2002). As part of the ELIAMEP team, her research concentrates on European integration and foreign policy, Transatlantic relations, human rights, migration and multiculturalism. She was Managing Editor of the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (Taylor & Francis) between January 2006 and October 2009. Ruby has taught at the University of Athens and at College Year in Athens. She was Southeast Europe Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC in 2007 and again in 2009. She is Vice-President of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation Scholars' Association since June 2009, and was Member of the Academic Organisation Committee of the Global Forum for Migration and Development, Civil Society Days, Athens 2009.

Ruby studied Political Science at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (1994) and undertook graduate studies at the University of Leuven (MA in European Studies) and at Cambridge University (MPhil in International Relations). She holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University (New Hall, 2000).

Please join the Stanford Baha'i Club, in collaboration with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law; the Center on Philanthrophy and Civil Society, Stanford Amnesty International, Stanford Six Degrees in defending Article 26 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights on

Friday, April 6 from 7:00-9:00pm

We will be screening Education Under Fire, a moving documentary about this issue. Following the screening, we will be having a panel discussion.

Imagine you are sitting in class at Stanford University when armed guards come into the classroom and arrest everyone in your class. Your professor is sentenced to five years in prison; you are expelled not only from Stanford, but from any institution of higher education in the country. Your crime? Gaining a higher education. Your professor’s crime? Providing higher education. Fortunately, this is not happening today at Stanford, but it is happening right now to many young people in Iran.

Since its inception, the Baha’i community of Iran has been suffering different forms of human rights violations, from intense persecution to being denied employment, the ability to bury their dead, access to higher education. Their crime? Being a Baha’i. The Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) was founded in 1987 in response to the Iranian government's continuing campaign to deny Iranian Bahá'ís access to higher education. The need to create a new university for those who were denied access to higher education captivated the talents and minds of exceptional faculty and staff from within Iran and abroad. For twenty years they have dedicated their efforts to building an exemplary institution and cultivating a student body prepared for fulfilling careers, future study, and social responsibility. But this has come with constant struggles and limited resources. In May 2011, the government launched a coordinated attack against the BIHE–raiding dozens of homes, confiscating computers and materials and detaining eighteen professors and administrators. Seven of those arrested received four or five-year prison terms. Their only crime: educating the youth in their community.

We also have a facebook event here - http://www.facebook.com/events/291432670928509/