In mid April, FSI convened a special conference on Technology, Governance, and Global Development, to examine how technical innovation solves, or fails to solve, the problems of chronic global underdevelopment.  Experts from business, medicine, philanthropy, academia, government and non-governmental organizations, along with young Stanford alumni, addressed technology's ability to help secure gains in health, economic development, agricultural innovation, food security, and human development.

With a wealth of expertise and on-the-ground experience, panelists tackled central issues and engaged in spirited debate, animated by moderator Philip Taubman.  "The Promise of Information and Communications Technology" examined whether technology can transform lives of individuals, even in poorly governed countries, finding encouraging evidence in technology-based medical and health services and novel approaches to economic development, including sharing vital information and banking via mobile phones. 

A panel of young Stanford alumni discussed their entrepreneurial efforts that led to the development of a low-cost, lifesaving incubator for low birth weight babies, the FACE AIDS program begun at Stanford that now has 20 chapters and has contributed some $2 million for treatment of people with AIDS in Africa, a new Global Health Corps to train health care workers, and other innovations to save lives in underserved areas.

Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, gave the lunchtime keynote with a focus on why democracies are more effective and ultimately more efficient in delivering economic development. Democracies are better at protection of rule of law and property rights, she noted. Democracies are less corrupt, more in touch with their people, more stable, and better able to deliver the benefits of human capital development, health, and education to their population as a whole.

A third panel on "Governance, Innovation, and Service Delivery" addressed how innovative institutions and technologies could overcome poor governance and deliver needed services in underdeveloped regions. "Despite extraordinary growth in our technical capacity to prevent and treat child illness and death, we are seeing stagnation or a rise in mortality rates of children under five in some areas," said pediatrician Paul Wise. "This reflects gross failures in delivering highly efficacious health interventions." Some 9 million children still die each year, and 65 percent of child deaths in unstable areas are preventable, he noted. Wise has launched a new program to improve child health in areas of unstable governance through new integrated technical and political strategies.

A fourth session on "Creative Markets for Technical Innovation" honed in on the institutions, innovations, and incentives needed to stimulate development of products and services that address the needs of the poor. Panelists focused on pharmaceuticals, agricultural innovation, use of mobile technologies to share information on best practices, improved food security through innovative technology - such as solar-powered irrigation to expand growing seasons, crops, and incomes, and the development of human capital in China through rigorous evaluation, field trials, and nutritional intervention.

Among the experts addressing these vital issues were Google.org's Megan Smith, BP Solar's Reyad Fezzani, Center for Global Development President Nancy Birdsall, Gates Foundation Director of Agricultural Development Sam Dryden, Gilead Science's Clifford Samuel, dynamic Stanford alumni Nava Ashraf ‘97, Jared Cohen ‘04, Jane Chen ‘08, and Jonny Dorsey ‘07, and FSI's Coit D. Blacker, Joshua Cohen, Stephen D. Krasner, Paul H. Wise, Rosamond L. Naylor, and Scott Rozelle.

FSI Payne Lecturer Bill Gates, Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Chairman, Microsoft, gave an address on "Giving Back: Finding the Best Way to Make a Difference."  He urged students to become involved in the central issues of global health—including the need to reduce child mortality through more vaccines and better delivery systems—and education, saying we need to find out "what works" and use the Internet to share lessons learned globally.

"We need to shift talent toward bigger needs," Gates said, urging students to provide the passion and ideas to drive us forward in health, education, and energy.  To make a difference, Gates advised, "Get your hands dirty, do the hard work in the actual environment, early in your career."  Telling students that he is looking for "great ideas," he challenged them to post answers on the Gates Foundation Facebook wall to three questions: What problems are you working on? What draws you in? How will you draw other people in to work on solutions to the world's great challenges.

In spring 2009, the Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) and the Division on Languages, Civilizations and Literatures (DLCL) delivered the first part of its multi-year research and public policy program on Contemporary History and the Future of Memory.  The program explored how communities that have undergone deep and violent political transformations try to confront their past.

Despite vast geographical, cultural and situational differences, the search for post-conflict justice and reconciliation has become a global phenomenon, resulting in many institutional and expressive responses. Some of these are literary and aesthetic explorations about guilt, commemoration and memorialization deployed for reconciliation and reinvention.  Others, especially in communities where victims and perpetrators live in close proximity, have led to trials, truth commissions, lustration, and institutional reform. This series illuminates these various approaches, seeking to foster new thinking and new strategies for communities seeking to move beyond atrocity.

Part 1: Contemporary History and the Future of Memory

In 2008-2009, this multi-year project on “History and Memory” at FCE and DLCL was launched with two high profile conference and speaker series: “Contemporary History and the Future of Memory” and “Austria and Central Europe Since 1989.”  For the first series on Contemporary History, the Forum, along with four co-sponsors (the Division of Literatures, Civilizations, and Languages, principal co-sponsor; the department of English; The Center for African Studies; Modern Thought and Literature; the Stanford Humanities Center), hosted internationally distinguished senior scholars to deliver lectures, student workshops, and the final symposium with Stanford faculty respondents.

Part 2: History, Memory and Reconciliation

In 2009-2010, we launch part 2 of this project by adding “Reconciliation” to our mission.  We are pleased to welcome the Human Rights Program at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law as co-sponsor of this series.  This series will examine scholarly and institutional efforts to create new national narratives that walk the fine line between before and after, memory and truth, compensation and reconciliation, justice and peace. Some work examines communities ravaged by colonialism and the great harm that colonial and post-colonial economic and social disparities cause.   The extent of external intervention creates discontinuities and dislocation, making it harder for people to claim an historical narrative that feels fully authentic.  Another response is to set up truth-seeking institutions such as truth commissions. Historical examples of truth commissions in South Africa, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Morocco inform more current initiatives in Canada, Cambodia, Colombia, Kenya, and the United States.  While this range of economic, social, political and legal modalities all seek to explain difficult pasts to present communities, it is not yet clear which approach yields greater truth, friendship, reconciliation and community healing.  The FCE series “History, Memory, and Reconciliation” will explore these issues.

The series will have its first event in February 2010. Multiple international scholars are invited.  Publications, speaker details, and pod and video casts will be accessible via the new FSI/FCE, DLCL, and Human Rights Program websites.

Series coordinators:

• Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi
• Helen Stacy
• Saikat Majumdar
• Roland Hsu

Mankind has regularly witnessed the immense destruction wrought by natural disasters. Similarly destructive to human life are man-made atrocities, like war and genocide. Those who are lucky enough to have survived either type of cataclysmic event must then begin the process of confronting and reconciling the memories of the catastrophe that befell them.  Public commemorations of these events have run the gamut from poetry and works of art to government sponsored “truth commissions” and institutional reform.

The ways in which people chose to memorialize hardship, whether organized by a group or expressed by an individual, offer illuminating insights into the human psyche and post-conflict justice and also provide valuable information about a society, government or culture.

Several Stanford groups are sponsoring a series of events and research projects designed to explore the many facets of the human phenomena called ‘memory’. Scholars participating in the endeavor, entitled “Contemporary History and the Future of Memory,” represent a broad spectrum of disciplines, but share a common objective: to analyze the range of ways that people have coped with adversity in the past so that future communities may benefit their experience. Attention to the role that memory plays in helping people move beyond tragedy is especially pertinent now as citizens of Chile and Haiti transition from survival to recovery after the devastating earthquakes that took place in each country.

“Contemporary History and the Future of Memory” began in the spring of 2008 with the launch of a multi-year research and public policy program sponsored by Stanford’s Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) and the Division of Literature, Cultures, and Languages (DLCL.) The aim of that program, as described on the DLCL website, is to investigate “how communities that have undergone deep and violent political transformations try to confront their past.”

In the fall of 2009 the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law joined the initiative, bringing with them expertise in reconciliation, a fundamental phase in the cycle of memory.  The series title was amended to “History, Memory & Reconciliation” in recognition of their contribution. This year’s events featured a visit by Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, the internationally renowned scholar of comparative literature from Columbia University, who addressed the subject of cultural and linguistic memory. During the spring quarter human rights and memory will be addressed in separate events by two guest scholars. Cambridge Anthropologist Harri Englund gave a talk on April 6th and University of Chile Law professor José Zalaquett will take part in several events on April 22nd and 23rd, including a lecture on Post-Conflict International Human Rights: Bright Spots, Shadows, Dilemmas.

Four Stanford scholars co-chair “History, Memory & Reconciliation.” They are French Professor Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, Assistant Professor of English Saikat Majumdar, Law School lecturer and FSI fellow Helen Stacy, and Roland Hsu, Assistant Director of FSI’s Forum on Contemporary Europe.

Professors Majumdar and Boyi answered a few questions about the value of delving into memory and how humanities research informs the broader dialogue. Read the full interview here.

يقوم برنامج الإصلاح و الديمقراطية في العالم العربي بمركز الديمقراطية و التنمية و سيادة القانون في جامعة ستانفرد، بتحليل الديناميات الإجتماعية و السياسية ذاخل البلدان العربية. كما يقوم بتحليل أنظمتها السياسية وذلك من خلال التركيز على الأوضاع، الفرص، و الطرق الممكنة من أجل تفعيل الإصلاحات الديمقراطية بالمنطقة.

و يستقطب هذا البرنامج المتعدد الإختصاصات محاضرين و مشاركين من مختلف مراكز صناعة القرار، منظمات المجتمع المدني، المنظمات الغير حكومية، الإعلام، و المجتمعات السياسية. بالإضافة إلى استقطاب فعاليات أخرى ،من العالم العربي، من مختلف الخلفيات و المرجعيات. وذلك من أجل بحث كيفية إمكانية ترسيخ الديمقراطية و تأسيس حكامة مسؤولة و عادلة كتحدي عام يواجه المنطقة ككل و بالأخص ذاخل بعض البلدان و المجتمعات.

ويهذف هذا البرنامج إلى أن يكون منبعا للرصيد المعرفي حول مواضيع الحكامة الجيدة والإصلاح السياسي في المجتمعات العربية، من خلال إنتاج بحوث أكاديمية دقيقية و سباقة تقوم على أساس عمل ميداني ذاخل العالم العربي يتيح فرصة التعبير أمام مختلف الآراء والأصوات.

كما يستفيد هذا البرنامج من المشاركات الغنية و القيمة للمجتمع الأكاديمي بجامعة ستانفرد بكل مكوناته:  أساتذة، باحثون، وطلبة. بالإضافة إلى المساهمات القيمة لشركائنا في العالم العربي و أوروبا.

وتتضمن النشاطات الخاصة بالبرنامج مايلي:

بحث متعدد الإختصاصات: يعمل البرنامج على إنجاز بحث متعدد الإختصاصات في مجال السياسة مركزا على أوجه متعددة للإصلاح و الديمقراطية في العالم العربي. و يتم ذلك من خلال مشاريع بحوث قصيرة وطويلة المدى، يتم العمل عليها عبر مواضيع منفردة بالإضافة إلى بحوث أكثر شمولية تركز على بلدان عربية محددة. ويتكلف أعضاء فريق البرنامج بالقيام بالأبحاث بالإضافة إلى الشركاء الدولين.

برنامج الباحث الزائر: يستظيف برنامج الإصلاح و الديمقراطية في العالم العربي باحثين و مهنيين رائدين من أجل استكمال و القيام ببحوث فريدة خلال اقامتهم بمركزالديمقراطية و التنمية و سيادة القانون.

تداريب: يعمل البرنامج على خلق فرص تداريب جديدية بالنسبة لطلبة ستانفرد لتمكينهم من قضاء بعض الوقت في العالم العربي و أيضا لتمكينهم من العمل ذاخل المركز.

ورشات ونذوات: يستظيف البرنامج عدة نذوات، الورشات ومحاضرات، غالبا بالتعاون مع شركائنا بستانفرد و بأماكن أخرى، كما يستضيف أحداث أخرى بالعالم العربي.

مطبوعات: يشارك البرنامج في نشر’مجلة الشرق الأوسط للثقافة و التواصل‘ و هي مجلة متعددة التخصصات [تنشر من طرف برل]. كما يقوم البرنامج بنشر مقالات و مسودات و كتب محررة.