Stanford University

International Voices Seminar

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Anne Simonin is a historian at the CNRS in the IRICE lab (Identités, Relations Internationales, et Civilisations de l’Europe), which is affiliated with the universities of Paris I and IV. During her visit, she will focus on her latest groundbreaking work, published in 2008, Le Déshonneur dans la République, devoted to the concept of “indignity” in a cultural and legal context from the French Revolution to the emergence of the Fifth Republic (1789-1958).

The international visitors seminar series provides an opportunity for the Humanities Center's international scholars in residence to engage with the Stanford community by presenting and discussing their recent work in a congenial environment. Stanford faculty, students, and affiliates meet over lunch to hear a brief, informal presentation and engage in vigorous discussion. The series seeks to foster the exchange of ideas across borders and across disciplines, with the particular goal of enhancing interactions between researchers in the humanities and the social scientists.

Levinthal Hall

Anne Simonin Historian, CNRS, IRICE Laboratory, University of La Sorbonne, Paris; FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor, 2009-2010 Speaker
Seminars

Alejandro Toledo launches Social Agenda for Democracy in Latin America

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The Social Agenda for Democracy in Latin America is a policy-oriented research initiative of the Global Center for Development and Democracy, which was founded by former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo in 2006. Authored by a taskforce of 20 former Latin American Presidents, as well as development experts from academia, the private sector, and multi-lateral organizations, the Social Agenda comprises 16 pressing social issues and 63 specific public and private policy recommendations to the region's current heads of state.

From the Washington, D.C. launch of the Social Agenda for Democracy in Latin America:

The Global Center for Development and Democracy, founded and presided over by former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, along with The Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the National Endowment for Democracy, the Brookings Institution, and the Inter-American Dialogue, is pleased to invite you to join us at the Falk Auditorium at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday, November 3, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. for a presentation of The Social Agenda for Democracy in Latin America for the Next Twenty Years by Dr. Alejandro Toledo and the following former presidents: Vicente Fox of Mexico; Carlos Mesa, Bolivia; Nicolas Ardito Barletta, Panama; Ricardo Maduro, Honduras; and Vinicio Cerezo, Guatemala.

The Global Center for Development and Democracy has sponsored five Presidential Meetings over the last two years, at which a Presidential Task Force (including 20 former presidents of Latin American countries) has met with leading experts from policy-oriented academia, multilateral organizations, the private sector, and members of civil society to consider the innovative policy research of those experts and to discuss what the former heads of state consider to be the 15 most important social issues facing the region.  The conclusions of their research and discussions at these meetings have been synthesized into a report that will be shared with the sitting presidents of Latin American nations at the Ibero-American Summit in Estoril, Portugal, on December 1, 2009 – as well as with President Obama, the Prime Minister of Canada, and the heads of state of the European Union.  The report will present specific recommendations for actions to significantly reduce poverty, inequality, and social exclusion, as well as to strengthen democratic institutions in Latin America. The report will also include mechanisms for carrying out a twenty-year program of monitoring the results of the policy initiative.

Full text of the Social Agenda for Democracy in Latin America (pdf).
 

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The Recent Subtraction and Prospects of Addition of Democracy in Russia - Can They at Last Get Right What We All First Got Wrong?

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Ambassador Kinsman retired from the Canadian Foreign Service in 2006. Over his 40 years of service, he was Chairman of Policy Planning and later Political Director before being named Canada's Ambassador in Moscow in 1992. He was subsequently Ambassador in Rome (1996-2000), High Commissioner in London (2000-2002), and Ambassador to the EU in Brussels (2002-2006). Earlier postings abroad included being Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in New York and Minister for Political Affairs in Washington. From 1985 to 1989 he was the senior federal official responsible for Cultural Affairs and Broadcasting where he was responsible for preparing the still-current Broadcasting Act, on which he continues to consult.

Today Ambassador Kinsman is a Contributing Writer for Policy Options magazine, a regular commentator for CBC News, and is published widely elsewhere, such as in the International Herald Tribune. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer in Europe and North America, and in 2007-2008 was Diplomat in Residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. In fall, 2009 he will be a Regents' Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

He has been a member of numerous Boards, including the Imperial War Museum, London, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and the European Policy Centre, and several non-profit Boards, including the Council for a Community of Democracies, and the Victoria Conservatory of Music. His principal business contribution is to the Dundee Group of companies, and he sits as an independent Director on the Board of Dundee Precious Metals, Toronto.

He attended Princeton University and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris. He lives on Vancouver Island with his wife Hana.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Jeremy Kinsman Lecturer Speaker UC Berkeley
Seminars

Russia's Negative Influence on Democracy in the Post-Soviet Space

Aesthetic Education in the Age of Globalization

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The lecture is preceded by a workshop at 10am in the same location. For additional information please access the DLCL site listing here.

Margaret Jacks Hall (Building 460)
Terrace Room (Room 429)

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak University Professor Speaker Columbia University
Lectures
History, Memory and Reconciliation
Program on Human Rights

Natascha Born

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

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CDDRL Honors Student, 2009-2010
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Transitional Success and Failure in East Germany

Pluralism and Global Justice

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Cristina Lafont is presently a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Northwestern University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Frankfurt . Habilitation, University of Frankfurt. She specializes in German philosophy, particularly hermeneutics and critical theory. She has also published in philosophy of language and contemporary moral and political philosophy. She is author of The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy (MIT Press, 1999) and Heidegger, Language, and World-disclosure (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Christina Lafont Professor, Department of Philosophy Speaker Northwestern University
Workshops
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice

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
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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

Potential Misuses of the Internet in a Dystopic World

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Abstract
Technology can be a positive force for decentralization, but in extreme cases this can lead to chaos.  Technology can also be a positive force for centralization, creating huge value.  However, in extreme cases the potential for centralization could play into the hands of governments with totalitarian aspirations.  I will explore examples of each, and also of how technology companies can create systems and processes that prevent this kind of abuse.  I will bring up some of the most difficult decisions I have faced in my career and give the class a chance to tell me what they would have done in my shoes.

Kim Scott is the Director of Online Sales and Operations for AdSense and YouTube at Google. In that role, she is responsible for managing Google's worldwide network of partner publishers and building the YouTube community and YPP program.

 Prior to joining Google, Kim was the CEO and co-founder of Juice Software, a business intelligence start-up based in New York City. Kim was VP of Business Development at two other technology start-ups: CapitalThinking, a commercial mortgage ASP and Delta Three, an Internet telephony service provider.  Earlier in her career, Kim managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo, served as senior policy adviser to Reed Hundt at the FCC, and worked in Moscow from 1990-1994.

Kim is the author of three unpublished novels, The Measurement Problem, The
Househusband, and Virtual Love.  Kim currently sits on the advisory board for Sunlight Foundation and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  

Summary of the Seminar
Kim Scott, Director AdSense Online Sales & Operations at Google, explored the potential of new technology for both increasing decentralization and centralization. Decentralization refers to the capacity of the internet to disperse power and influence to many more people. In the political context, this has (arguably) enabled greater citizen activism. In business, online advertising enables start-ups to get going without relying on venture capitalist funding. Individuals have greater capacity for personal expression now that they can bypass publishing power houses and distribute their own work at virtually no cost. Corresponding to these benefits are a number of negative impacts. The same technology that allows pro-democracy groups to come together also enables terrorists and pedophile groups to organize and perpetrate harm on a greater scale.

Technology also allows for increasing centralization. The Internet provides a place for the world's information to be easily organized and accessed. But with this comes the risk that certain groups (particularly authoritarian governments) could deliberately misinform citizens.  

Kim raised a number of dilemmas for discussion, including:

  • How should technology companies respond to requests from governments to hand over data?
  • How should Internet companies respond to different countries' understanding of what content is acceptable? Google's policy to date has been to allow different access in different countries but it has stopped short of allowing any one country to dictate what others countries see.

Wallenberg Theater

Kim Scott Director AdSense Online Sales & Operations Speaker Google
Seminars
Program on Liberation Technology
Liberation Technology Seminar Series
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