Stanford University

Climate

The Folly of Technological Solutionism

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Abstract
He will preview some of the main arguments about the temptations of "solutionism" from his upcoming book "To Save Everything, Click Here." Now that everything is smart, hackable and trackable, it is very common to see big technology companies (as well as ordinary tech enthusiasts and geeks) embark on ambitious projects to "solve all of the world's problems." Obesity, climate change, dishonesty and hypocrisy in politcs, high crime rate: Silicon Valley can do it all. But where does this solutionist quest lead? What are the things that ought to be left "dumb" and "unhackable"? How do we learn to appreciate the imperfection - of both our lives and our social institutions - in a world, where it can be easily eliminated? Do we even have to appreciate it? 
 
 Evgeny Morozov is the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. In 2010-2012 he was a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Liberation Technology program and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. In 2009-2010 he was a fellow at Georgetown University and in 2008-2009 he was a fellow at the Open Society Foundations (where he also sat on the board of the Information Program between 2008 and 2012).  Between 2006 and 2008 he was Director of New Media at Transitions Online.  Morozov has written for The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, Financial Times, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and other publications. His monthly Slate column is syndicaetd in El Pais, Corriere della Sera, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Folha de S.Paulo and several other newspapers. 

Wallenberg Theater

Evgeny Morozov Author and former Stanford Visiting Scholar Speaker
Seminars
Program on Liberation Technology
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

Indigenous Peoples Rights

This project seeks to promote the collaboration between the Center for Latin American Studies and the Program on Human Rights in conducting an interdisciplinary faculty/graduate student research that seeks to better understand the human rights situation of indigenous peoples in Latin America.

Program on Human Rights Collaboratory: Environmental Humanities - Climate Justice and Climate Induced Migration a conversation with Maxine Burkett

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The Program on Human Rights Collaboratory Series is an interdisciplinary investigation of human rights in the humanities. It is funded under the Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies as the third in a sequence of pursuing peace and security, improving governance and advancing we

Maxine Burkett is an Associate Professor of Law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai‘i and serves as the inaugural Director of the Center for Island Climate Adaptation and Policy (ICAP), at the University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program.

Professor Burkett’s courses include Climate Change Law and Policy, Torts, Environmental Law, Race and American Law, and International Development. She has written in the area of Race, Reparations, and Environmental Justice. Currently, her work focuses on "Climate Justice," writing on the disparate impact of climate change on vulnerable communities, in the United States and globally. Her March 2007 conference "The Climate of Environmental Justice," at the University of Colorado, brought together leading academics, activists, and legal practitioners in the Environmental Justice field to consider the emerging interplay between race, poverty, and global warming.

Professor Burkett has presented her research on Climate Justice throughout the United States and in West Africa, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean. She most recently served as the Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics at the Wayne Morse Center, University of Oregon, as the Fall 2010 scholar for the Center’s “Climate Ethics and Climate Equity” theme of inquiry. She is the youngest scholar to hold the Wayne Morse Chair.

As the Director of ICAP, she leads projects to address climate change law, policy, and planning for island communities in Hawai‘i, the Pacific region, and beyond. In its first eighteen months, ICAP has completed several climate change adaptation related policy documents for Hawai‘i and other Pacific Island nations, specifically the Federated States of Micronesia. It has also hosted numerous outreach and education programs on island resiliency and climate change and engaged planning agencies in all four counties in Hawai‘i and seven state agencies and offices, as well as several federal entities and many state legislators. Most notably, ICAP has partnered with the Hawai‘i State Office of Planning to conduct early planning and assessment for a statewide Climate Change Adaptation Plan.

Professor Burkett attended Williams College and Exeter College, Oxford University, and received her law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked in private practice in Honolulu with Davis, Levin, Livingston and Paul, Johnson, Park & Niles, and served as a law clerk with The Honorable Susan Illston of the United States District Court, Northern District of California. Prior to her appointment at the University of Hawai‘i, Professor Burkett taught at the University of Colorado Law School. Professor Burkett is from the island of Jamaica, and now she and her husband raise their two young children on the island of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i.

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MARGARET JACKS HALL (BLDG. 460)
TERRACE ROOM, 4TH FLOOR

Helen Stacy Director, Program on Human Rights Moderator
Maxine Burkett Associate Professor of Law, Director Center for Island Climate Adaptation and Policy Speaker University of Hawai at Manoa
Workshops
Human Well-Being and Human Rights Collaboratory

Program on Human Rights Collaboratory: Environmental Humanities - Finding a future for climate change

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The Program on Human Rights Collaboratory Series is an interdisciplinary investigation of human rights in the humanities. It is funded under the Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies as the third in a sequence of pursuing peace and security, improving governance and advancing well-being.

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Y2E2 Room. 300

Andrew Light Center for American Progress and George Mason University Speaker
David Magnus Host
Sandra Koelle Moderator
Workshops
Human Well-Being and Human Rights Collaboratory

Vidal Romero

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Visiting Associate Professor 2012-13
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Vidal Romero is a 2012-2013 visiting associate professor at CDDRL. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Stanford University. Romero’s research is focused on drug-related crime and violence. Romero investigates into citizens’ perceptions of crime and violence and how a climate of insecurity affects individuals’ well-being, their support of crime fighting efforts and their assessment of authorities’ performance. His work also investigates into the determinants of violence and the type of relationship between the State, criminal organizations and citizens. Much of his work is based on econometric and experimental methods implemented in different surveys that he has co-designed. During his stay at CDDRL, he will work on exploring the determinants of crime and violence in Mexico and its effects on Unites States domestic security. 

CV

Innovation Beyond Boundaries: Partnerships for Advancing Smart, Green Living

This two-day international forum at Stanford University brought together experts from academia, government, and industry to analyze leading cases of current institutional models for innovation in smart and green industries. Cases included multi-company collaborations, public-private partnerships, and government-funded consortia. To enable more focus and comparative analysis, sectors selected for focus included the built environment and intelligent transportation.

FORUM Speakers & DISCUSSANTS (listed in alphabetical order)

  • Rohit T. Aggarwala, Special Advisor to the Chair, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group
  • Alan Beebe, Managing Director, China Greentech Initiative
  • Sven Beiker, Executive Director, Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS)
  • Ann Bordetsky, North America Market Development, Better Place
  • Dennis Bracy, cEO, US-China Clean Energy Forum
  • Curtis R. Carlson, President and CEO, SRI International
  • Jaching Chou, Senior Transportation Analyst, Institute of Transportation
  • Stephen J. Eglash, Executive Director, Energy and Environment Affiliates Program, Stanford University
  • Henry Etzkowitz, President of Triple Helix Association; Senior Researcher, Human Sciences and Technology Advanced Research Institute (H-STAR), Stanford University; Visiting Professor at University of Edinburgh Business School
  • Gordon Feller, Director of Urban Innovation, Cisco Systems
  • TJ Glauthier, President, TJG Energy Associates, LLC
  • Russell Hancock, President & Chief Executive Officer, Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network
  • Ted Howes, Business for Social Responsibility
  • Asim Hussain, Director of Product Marketing, Bloom Energy
  • Paul Chao-Chia Huang, Deputy General Director, Service Systems Technology Center, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan
  • Kristina M. Johnson, Former Under Secretary of Energy, U.S. Department of Energy
  • Jeffrey Heller, President, Heller Manus Architects
  • Allan King, Senior Manager, Institute for Information Industry, Taiwan
  • Michael Marlaire, Director, NASA Research Park
  • David Nieh, General Manager, Shui On Land Limited
  • Jon Sandelin, Senior Associate Emeritus, Office of Technology and Licensing, Stanford University
  • Gerald Sanders, CEO & Chairman, SkyTran
  • Tim Schweikert, President & CEO, China Region for GE Technology Infrastructure, GE
  • Jonathan Thorpe, Senior Vice President, Gale International
  • Kung Wang, Professor, China University of Technology
  • Sean Wang, President, ITRI International Inc.
  • Jonathan Woetzel, Director, McKinsey & Co; Co-Chair, Urban China Initiative

Questions for presentations and discussion included:

  • What roles are public-private partnerships and other forms of collaboration playing to advance innovations in smart green industries, such as in the built environment or intelligent transportation?
  • What innovations - not only in technologies and products but also in processes, models and platforms - are leading the way?
  • What results are emerging from living labs, leading cities, or other outstanding examples of public-private partnerships around the world?
  • How do results stack up against economic, energy and social metrics, e.g. economic productivity, quality of life, energy impact, financial payback, user response, etc.?
  • What are implications for business strategies?
  • What government policies are effectively nurturing advancement in these areas?

Outcomes will include policy recommendations as well as highlights to be included in a book published by SPRIE at Stanford.

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Workshops

No Picnic: The Dynamics of Culture in the Contemporary Arab World

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In this analysis of the region, Hicham Ben Abdallah points out that, while political issues are important to understanding the authoritarian political structures of the Arab world, it is also important to understand the dynamics of culture.  Ben Abdallah demonstrates the proliferation of cultural practices through which societies and individuals learn to live in a complex mix of parallel and conflicting ideological tendencies -- with the increasing Islamicization of everyday ideology developing alongside the proliferation of secular forms of cultural production, while both negotiate for breathing room under the aegis of an authoritarian state. 

He describes how the state takes advantage of a segmented cultural scene by posing as a restraint against the extremes of the salafist norm, while channeling modernist cultural expression into safe institutional and patronage reward systems  and into a commercialized process of "festivalization," all of which celebrate a depoliticized "Arab" identity. 

Hicham Ben Abdallah refers us to the deep history of Islam, which protected divergent cultural and intellectual influences as the patrimony of mankind.  He suggests a new cultural paradigm, inspired by this history while understanding the necessity for political democratization and cultural modernism.  We must, he argues, be unafraid to face the challenges implied in the tension between the growing influence of a salafist norm and the widespread embrace of implicitly secular cultural practices throughout the Arab world.   

Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui received a B.A. in Politics from Princeton University, and an M.A in Politics from Stanford University. He recently founded the Moulay Hicham Foundation for Social Science Research on North Africa and the Middle East, and serves as its Director.   

Through this Foundation he has established the Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World, at The Freeman Spogli Institute's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.  Hicham Ben Abdallah is a member of the Advisory Board of the Freeman Spogli Institute. 

He has also recently founded a program in Global Climate Change, Democracy and Human Security (known as the "Climate Change and Democracy Project), in the Division of Social Sciences, Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.   

In 1994, at Princeton University, Hicham Ben Abdallah endowed the Institute for the Trans-regional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.  This Institute has become an important venue for study and debate on the region. 

Hicham Ben Abdallah is also active in global humanitarian and social issues. He serves on the Human Rights Watch Board of Directors for the Middle East and North Africa.   He has worked with the Carter Center on a number of initiatives, including serving as an international observer with the Carter Center delegations during elections in Palestine in 1996 and 2006, and in Nigeria in 2000.  In 2000, he served as Principal Officer for Community Affairs with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo . 

Hicham Ben Abdallah is also an entrepreneur in the domain of renewable energy.  His company, Al Tayyar Energy, develops projects that produce clean energy at competitive prices.  He has implemented several of these projects in Asia, Europe and North America.

CISAC Conference Room

Hicham Ben Abdallah

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Consulting Professor
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Hicham Ben Abdallah received his B.A. in Politics in 1985 from Princeton University, and his M.A. in Political Science from Stanford in 1997. His interest is in the politics of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

He has lectured in numerous universities and think tanks in North America and Europe. His work for the advancement of peace and conflict resolution has brought him to Kosovo as a special Assistant to Bernard Kouchner, and to Nigeria and Palestine as an election observer with the Carter Center. He has published in journals such Le Monde,  Le Monde Diplomatique,Pouvoirs, Le Debat, The Journal of Democracy, The New York Times, El Pais, and El Quds.

In 2010 he has founded the Moulay Hicham Foundation which conducts social science research on the MENA region. He is also an entrepreneur with interests in agriculture, real estate, and renewable energies. His company, Al Tayyar Energy, has a number of clean energy projects in Asia and Europe. 

Hicham Ben Abdallah Visiting Scholar Speaker CDDRL
Seminars
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