Stanford University

Conflict

A Question of Rights [SF State Univ Event]

San Francisco State University will host a conference September 16-17, 2010 exploring the question and place of rights in history, politics, and society.

Rights, both individual and collective, have long been a theme in American society, often seen in conflict with state power. The conference welcomes papers on assertions of rights by insurgent groups, resistance to rights claims, and governmental efforts to suppress or promote rights, in areas including but not limited to: civil liberties; disability rights; labor and economic rights; feminism and antiracism; immigration; environmental justice; access to healthcare; the prison industrial complex; sexual orientation; the stateless; and human rights.

The goal is to bring together a wide variety of people from a range of academic, activist, legal, and community spaces to examine the place of rights within the context of American society (as situated within a boarder global political community). To that end, the conference is open to historians, both senior and junior scholars, graduate students, community advocates, archivists, and lawyers.

The deadline for submission of proposals, consisting of an abstract of 1000 words for panel and workshop proposals or 300 words for individual presentations and a one-page CV for each participant, is March 15, 2010. Send your proposals to

Christopher Waldrep
Department of History
San Francisco State University
San Francisco, California 94132

or via email to cwaldrep@sfsu.edu.

More information is available at this link.

SF State University

Conferences
Program on Human Rights

Sudan Before and After 2011 [STAND Event]

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Sudan Before and After 2011


Stanford STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition seeks to use advocacy, awareness-raising and fundraising to address the conflicts in Sudan, The Democratic Republic of Congo and Burma. Our mission is to empower individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide.

Y2E2, Rm. 111

Conferences
Program on Human Rights

Legalizing Human Rights in Africa Workshop #6

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At this workshop, Mark Goodale will be delivering a talk entitled "Human Rights in an Anthropological Key." Mark is an anthropologist who specializes in legal anthropology, human rights and culture, comparative ethical practice and epistemology, the anthropology of morality, and conflict studies. He has been conducting research in Bolivia since 1996 and during 2003-2004 (as a Fulbright scholar) he studied Romania’s efforts to reform its political and legal institutions in preparation for accession to the European Union in 2007. He came to George Mason's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution in the fall of 2003 after serving as the first Marjorie Shostak Distinguished Lecturer in Anthropology at Emory University. His Ph.D. is from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2001).

He is the author of two recent books: Surrendering to Utopia: An Anthropology of Human Rights (Stanford University Press, 2009) and Dilemmas of Modernity: Bolivian Encounters with Law and Liberalism (Stanford University Press, 2008). He is currently at work on two new books: the first is an ethnographic analysis of sociopolitical change and the moral imagination in Bolivia based on three years of research funded by the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation; the second is a volume of essays on human rights and moral creativity.

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Mark Goodale Associate Professor of Conflict Analysis and Anthropology Speaker George Mason University
Seminars
Program on Human Rights

Scott Handler

Department of Political Science
616 Serra Street
Encina Hall West, Room 100
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

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CDDRL Fellow 2010
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Scott Handler is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. While at CDDRL, he will focus on his dissertation. Scott's primary research is on post-conflict state- building. He is exploring the mechanisms external actors provide that contribute to self-enforcing stability between the parties to the conflict after the external actor departs.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Islamist Militancy in South Asia

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Throughout its history, Pakistan has deliberately used non-state actors as a strategy of asymmetric warfare against stronger adversaries such as India and the Soviet Union. Islamist militants were armed and trained by elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence services, and funded by a sophisticated international financial network. This enabled Pakistan to attrite Indian and Soviet resources via proxy, without having to face either country in a direct conflict.

Now, however, Pakistan's strategy has given rise to what we call a ‘‘sorcerer's apprentice'' problem. The jihadi organizations, like the magic brooms in Goethe's tale, have taken on a life of their own. Along with the government, the army, and the intelligence services, such groups now comprise one of the main centers of gravity within Pakistan. As a result, the militants are in a position to pursue their own policy. Similar to Goethe's brooms, they often act against the interests of their creators, attacking security personnel, assassinating government officials, seizing large swaths of territory within Pakistan, and launching attacks on India that could permanently scuttle the Indo-Pak peace process and trigger a large-scale war. Although Pakistan is largely to blame for creating and nurturing the jihadis, it is no longer wholly in control of them, and they should not be seen simply as tools of Pakistan's policy.

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Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
The Washington Quarterly
Authors
Šumit Ganguly
External URL

When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation

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This talk provides an overview of deliberative democracy projects conducted by the Center for Deliberative Democracy and its partners in China, Northern Ireland, Brazil, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland and other countries as well as on a European-wide basis. The projects all involve scientific random samples deliberating about policy choices and providing the before and after results as an input to policy making. The talk will focus particularly on the challenges of conducting such projects when they are intended as a precursor to further democratization or when there is ethnic conflict.

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication and Professor of Political Science. He is also Director of Stanford's Center for Deliberative Democracy and Chair of the Dept of Communication.

He is the author of a number of books including Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform (1991), The Dialogue of Justice (1992 ), The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (1995). With Bruce Ackerman he is co-author of Deliberation Day (Yale Press, 2004). His new book When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation will be published by Oxford University Press in fall 2009.

He is best known for developing Deliberative Polling® - a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. Professor Fishkin and his collaborators have conducted Deliberative Polls in the US, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Bulgaria, China, Greece and other countries.

Fishkin has been a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge as well as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Fishkin received his B.A. from Yale in 1970 and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale as well as a second Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cambridge.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

James S. Fishkin

Encina Hall, E102
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-4611
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Janet M. Peck Professor of International Communication
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy)
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
fishkin_2.jpg PhD

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University, where he is a Professor of Communication and Professor of Political Science (by courtesy). He is also Director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab at CDDRL (formerly the Center for Deliberative Democracy).

He is the author of a number of books, including Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform (Yale University Press, 1991), The Dialogue of Justice (Yale University Press, 1992 ), The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (Yale University Press 1995). With Bruce Ackerman, he is the co-author of Deliberation Day (Yale University Press, 2004). And more recently, When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford University Press, 2009 and Democracy When the People Are Thinking (Oxford University Press, 2018).

He is best known for developing Deliberative Polling® — a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. Professor Fishkin and his collaborators have conducted Deliberative Polls in the US, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Bulgaria, China, Greece, Mongolia, Uganda, Tanzania, Brazil,  and other countries.

Fishkin has been a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge, as well as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Fishkin received his B.A. from Yale in 1970 and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale as well as a second Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cambridge.

Director, Deliberative Democracy Lab
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James S. Fishkin Janet M Peck Chair in International Communication and Professor of Poli Sci Speaker Stanford University
Seminars

Mobile Technology: Empowering the Grassroots

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Abstract
Despite the promise, the majority of mobile technology solutions are only meeting the needs of a small percentage of organisations who could benefit from them. In his talk, Ken Banks will discuss how he empowers grassroots NGOs, provide the history and background to FrontlineSMS, and highlight some of the challenges in developing mobile tools which work in resource-constrained environments

Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 16 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text messaging-based field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Stanford University Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was named a Laureate of the Tech Awards, an international awards program which honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. Ken's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation

Summary of the Seminar
Ken Banks, the founder of kiwanja.net, spoke about the importance of technology solutions that meet the needs of those working in the developing world and his own work in this area through FrontlineSMS.

While current excitement in the technology world may be focused on increasing centralization through cloud computing, this means little to people working in the developing world where internet connectivity is unavailable or unreliable.  Too little investment is going into building tools that will genuinely assist the work many non-profits are doing now.

Ken developed FrontlineSMS to tap into the potential of mobile phones, which are now widely available and used in the developing world. This is a two way communication system that can be used anywhere where there is a mobile phone signal.  FrontlineSMS is available as a free download and Ken's approach has been not to dictate implementation but rather to allow people to use this very general tool in whatever ways meet their particular needs. This has resulted in diverse applications, for example:

  • Monitoring election practices in Nigeria in 2007
  • Sending security alerts to humanitarian workers in conflict areas of Afghanistan
  • Encouraging young people to take part in elections in Azerbaijan
  • Updating local people on the location of speeches during President Obama's visit to Ghana

There is also great potential to combine FrontlineSMS with traditional media, such as radio, that is already widespread throughout Africa, to make this much more interactive.

Ken offered a number of points of guidance for those thinking about designing technology with social applications:

  • Work with the equipment that people already have at their disposal
  • Make equipment easy to assemble and intuitive
  • Price it at a level people can afford
  • Think about how use can be replicated - how will other NGOs find out about it?
  • Assume a situation of no internet connectivity
  • Where possible, give users an ability to connect with others - for example through a forum (this has been particularly successful at FrontlineSMS, with a third of those who download the software joining the online community)
  • Don't let a social science approach dominate - it is much better to think in a multi-disciplinary way
  • Use technology that is appropriate to the context - don't bring in tools that require knowledge and equipment not already held in the community
  • Collaborate, don't compete. Sometimes NGOs can rush to do the same things; examples of genuine cooperation are hard to find

Looking ahead, Ken will be developing functionality for FrontlineSMS that makes use of internet connectivity where this is available. He is also working on finding additional funding to help organizations pay for text messages.

Wallenberg Theater
Bldg 160

Ken Banks Founder Speaker kiwanja.net
Seminars
Program on Liberation Technology
Liberation Technology Seminar Series
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