Stanford University

Liberation Technology Seminar Series launches for the fall quarter

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The Liberation Technology Seminar Series is set for an exciting fall quarter. Held on Thursdays from 4.30 to 6 pm at Wallenberg Theater, this 1-unit seminar course is co-taught by CDDRL director Larry Diamond and Professor of Computer Science Terry Winograd. Hosted by the Program on Liberation Technology (LibTech) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, this seminar series features guest speakers who introduce students to cutting-edge theoretical and practical applications of new technologies.

Beginning on October 6, the seminar series will kick off with Andrew McLaughlin an expert on internet regulation who served in the Obama administration and worked with Google’s policy division. The quarter will continue featuring new research, innovative Lib Tech products and stimulating debate on the impact technology has on ‘liberation’.

Technology and revolutions debate

When protestors waged a revolution across the Arab world in January, they did not set out to make life interesting at Stanford. Whether they intended to or not they have achieved just that. We are now mired in the debate on the impact of technology in revolutions that has become more interesting since the Arab Spring. Ramesh Srinivasan Assistant Professor in Design and Media/Information Studies at UCLA, will speak to this debate based on his recent field work in Egypt on October 20. Evgeny Morozov a visiting scholar for the Program on Liberation Technology will revisit the debate at the end of the quarter based on his new work. For those who have heard him caution against the use of technology before the Arab Spring, it may be an interesting time to revisit Morozov's arguments on December 1.

Lib Tech products

At the core of this debate is the idea that technology is ever-evolving. Some are creating systems to give governments greater control, while others seek to protect the activists. New ideas and products are changing this landscape every day. To take an example, at a recent hack-a-thon in San Francisco there was a suggestion to encrypt sensitive messages in a Beyonce song. If that works out, you may be able to swing a leg and send a message at least until a technology comes up to trace your steps. We could not have a LibTech seminar series without taking a look at such innovations. 

Sam Gregory and Bryan Nunez from Witness will give a taste of this evolving drama through their work on the use of videos for human rights. They will offer ideas to harness its power without exposing the activists to its dangers on October 27. 

The Fall series will also feature Joshua Stern, executive director of Envaya, speaking to their ultra fast blogs that are making inroads among African NGOs on October 13. Paul Kim of Stanford University will discuss his experiments with delivering education through mobile phones. For those who enjoy the 'hands on experience,' word is that Paul Kim will bring his mobile phones for us to play with on November 3! On December 8, Jeff Klingner of Benetech will give a presentation on databases that help track human rights abuses.

D-School presentation

One of the season’s highlights is a panel of students who participated in the innovative class taught by Joshua Cohen and Terry Winograd at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school). On November 17, four teams will present their new ICT designs to mitigate water problems and other issues in the slums of Kibera, Kenya. For those who wish to get a taste of this much sought after course, this talk will prove invaluable.

For those interested in registering for the course it is available on Explore Courses as CS 546: Seminar on Liberation Technologies and POLISCI 337S. We encourage others to attend who are interested in the topics, speakers, or liberation technology in general.

To view the complete Liberation Technology Seminar Schedule, please click here.

 

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Advancing energy sector reform in Lebanon

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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, together with the Safadi Foundation USA (SFUSA) and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) announced the winners of the first annual Safadi-Stanford Initiative for Policy Innovation (SSIPI). The title of Safadi Scholar of the Year has been awarded to Katarina Uherova Hasbani, an energy policy expert at the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut, Lebanon. The title of first runner up has been awarded to Miriam Allam, an economist for the Middle East North Africa Governance Program at the Regulatory Policy Division, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

SSIPI was established to promote new scholarship and analysis on Lebanon. “SSIPI represents the link between the academic and policy worlds that Stanford's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy aims to nurture,” said Dr. Lina Khatib, who leads the ARD program at CDDRL. "The research by Hasbani and Allam addresses some of the core challenges impacting governance in Lebanon and the rest of the region. Hasbani’s paper on the reform of the electricity sector and Allam’s discussion on public consultation are both strategic areas vital to linking citizens and institution building,” said Lara Alameh, Executive Director of Safadi Foundation USA.

Hasbani will begin her four-week residency at CDDRL with the ARD program on October 1 where she will participate in seminars, engage with leading faculty and benefit from the scholarly resources at Stanford. During that time she will produce a publishable paper based on her research, which will then be presented at a policy conference in Washington, DC on December 6, 2011.

"It is an incredible opportunity to receive the support of SSIPI for my research on consensus-based electricity sector reform as a vital element for Lebanon's future economic and social development," said Hasbani.

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The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program on Democracy and Development is now accepting applications for the Class of 2014

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About the Program

Launched in 2005, the Draper Hills Summer Fellowship on Democracy and Development Program  is a three-week executive education program that is hosted annually at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The program brings together a diverse group of 25-30 mid-career practitioners in law, politics, government, private enterprise, civil society, and international development from transitioning countries. This training program provides a unique forum for emerging leaders to connect, exchange experiences, and receive academic training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work.

For three weeks during the summer, fellows participate in academic seminars that expose them to the theory and practice of democracy, development, and the rule of law. Delivered by leading Stanford faculty from the Stanford Law School, the Graduate School of Business, and the Departments of Economics and Political Science, these seminars allow emerging leaders to explore new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote democratic change in their home countries.

Guest speakers from private foundations, think tanks, government, and the justice system, provide a practitioners viewpoint on such pressing issues in the field. Past program speakers have included; Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy; Kavita Ramdas, former president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women; Stacy Donohue, director of investments at the Omidyar Network; Maria Rendon Labadan, Deputy Director of USAID; and Judge Pamela Rymer, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Fellows also visit Silicon Valley technology firms to explore how technology tools and social media platforms are being used to catalyze democratic practices on a global scale.

The program is funded by generous support from Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills.

About the Faculty

The program's all-volunteer interdisciplinary faculty includes leading political scientists, lawyers, and economists, pioneering innovative research and analysis in the fields of democracy, development, and the rule of law. Faculty engage the fellows to test their theories, exchange ideas and learn first-hand about the challenges activists face in places where democracy is at threat. CDDRL Draper Hills Summer Fellows faculty includes; Larry Diamond, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper, Erik Jensen, Francis Fukuyama, Steve Krasner, Avner Greif, Helen Stacy, and Nicholas Hope.

About our Draper Hills Summer Fellows

Our network of 186 alumni who graduated from the Draper Hills Summer Fellows program hail  from 57 developing democracies worldwide. Their professional backgrounds are as diverse as the problems they confront in their home countries, but the one common feature is their commitment to building sound structures of democracy and development. The regions of Eurasia, which includes the former Soviet Union and Central Asia, along with Africa constitute over half of our alumni network. Women represent 40% of the network and the program is always looking to identify strong female leaders working to advance change in their local communities.

Previous Draper Hills Summer Fellows have served as presidential advisors, senators, attorneys general, lawyers, journalists, civic activists, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, think-tank managers, and members of the international development community. The program is highly selective, receiving several hundred applications each year.

Please see the alumni section of the website for a complete listing of our program alumni.

Our Summer Fellows include:

  • The former Prime Minister of Mongolia
  • Political activists at the forefront of the 2011 Egyptian revolution
  • Advocate for the high court of Zambia
  • Deputy Minister of the Interior of Ukraine
  • Peace advocate and human rights leader in Kenya
  • Journalists advocating for a greater role for independent media
  • Leading democratic intellectual in China
  • Social entrepreneur using technology for public accountability in India

 

 Funding

Stanford will pay travel, accommodation, living expenses, and visa costs for the duration of the three-week program for a certain portion of applicants. Participants will be housed on the Stanford campus in residential housing during the program. Where possible, applicants are encouraged to supply some or all of their own funding from their current employers or international nongovernmental organizations.

 

 




 
 
 
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Henrik Larsen

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Henrik Boesen Lindbo Larsen is a CDDRL visiting researcher 2011-12, while researching on his PhD project titled NATO Democracy Promotion: the Geopolitical Effects of Declining Hegemonic Power. He expects to obtain his PhD from the University of Southern Denmark and the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in 2013.

Henrik Larsen’s PhD project views democracy promotion as a policy resulting from power transitions as mediated through the predominant narratives of great powers. It distinguishes between two main types of democracy promotion, the ability to attract (enlargement, partnerships) and the ability to impose (out-of-area missions, state-building). NATO’s external policies are increasingly pursued with a lower intensity and/or with a stronger geographical demarcation.

Prior to his PhD studies, Henrik Larsen held temporary positions for the UNHCR in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congoand with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Denmark working with Russia & the Eastern neighborhood. He holds an MSc in political science from the University of Aarhus complemented with studies at the University of Montreal, Sciences Po Paris and the University of Geneva. He has been a research intern at École Militaire in Paris and he is member of the Danish roster for election observation missions for the OSCE and the EU.

 

Publications

  • "Libya: Beyond Regime Change”, DIIS Policy Brief, October 2011.
  • "Cooperative Security: Waning Influence in the Eastern Neighbourhood" in Rynning, S. & Ringsmose, J. (eds.), NATO’s New Strategic Concept: A Comprehensive Assessment, DIIS Report 2011: 02.
  • "The Russo-Georgian War and Beyond: towards a European Great Power Concert", DIIS Working Paper 2009: 32 (a revised version currently under peer review). 
  • "Le Danemark dans la politique européenne de sécurité et de défense: dérogation, autonomie et influence" (Denmarkin the European Security and Defense Policy: Exemption, Autonomy and Influence) (2008), Revue Stratégique vol. 91-92.

Establishing a Legislative Upper House in Lebanon

The Ta’if Accords, which ended Lebanon’s civil war, called explicitly for the dismantling of political confessionalism through the election of a Chamber of Deputies on “a national, non-confessional basis” and the formation of a Senate representing all of Lebanon’s various sects. Lebanese leaders from across the ideological and confessional spectrum have declared their support for this idea, and it is routinely raised whenever questions of institutional reform and “de-confessionalism” are discussed.

Program on Human Rights Collaboratory: Cultural Heritage - The Role of Archaeology in Cultural Heritage and Human Rights

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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.

Bio: Ian Hodder came to Stanford in 1999. He is the Dunlevie Family Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and since 2006 he has been Director of the Stanford Archaeology Center. Since 1993 he has been excavating at the 9,000 year-old Neolithic site of Catalhoyuk in central Turkey. The 25-year project has three aims - to place the art from the site in its full environmental, economic and social context, to conserve the paintings, plasters and mud walls, and to present the site to the public. The project is also associated with attempts to develop reflexive methods in archaeology. Ian Hodder teaches and writes about archaeological method and theory. Among his publications are: Symbols in Action (Cambridge 1982), Reading the Past (Cambridge 1986), The Domestication of Europe (Oxford 1990), The Archaeological Process (Oxford 1999), Catalhoyuk: The Leopard's Tale (Thames and Hudson 2006).

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Reports from the Bleeding Edge: What Journalism in Syria, China and Iran tell us about Silicon Valley's Future

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The Internet is now approaching near-ubiquity as a method for gathering, distributing and obtaining the news. Over the last decade, social tools and websites built in Silicon Valley have come to dominate that conversation. The use of those tools, the Net and the nature of online journalism varies wildly from country to country. Danny O'Brien of the Committee to Protect Journalists discusses how those tools are used by journalists and their sources in dangerous conditions, and what technologists can learn about the future from these edge cases.

Danny O'Brien is CPJ's Internet Advocacy Coordinator. He has spent over twenty years documenting and explaining the growth of the Internet and new media and its effect on free expression and society. He has written articles for Wired, New Scientist, the Guardian, and TV shows for the BBC. Prior to joining CPJ last year, O'Brien was International activist for the original Internet freedom organization, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and was a founder of the British pressure group, the Open Rights Group. He is based in San Francisco. http://www.twitter.com/#!/danny_at_cpj

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Danny O'Brien Internet Advocacy Coordinator Speaker Committee to Protect Journalists
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After the Arab Spring: The Current State of the Internet & Democracy Debate

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The talk will discuss the impact that recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and other MENA countries has had on the debate about the Internet & democracy in general and on the future of the so-called "Internet freedom agenda" in particular. The talk will also explore the possibility of finding some workable middle ground between cyber-utopianism and cyber-dystopianism, attempt to articulate what a more culturally-sensitive approach to studying Internet & democratization may look like and argue for the growing relevance of such approach, particularly as a way to avoid essentialist attitudes towards technology. 
 
Evgeny Morozov is the author of the Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, published earlier this year and a visiting scholar with the Liberation Technology program at Stanford University. He's also a Schwartz fellow at New America Foundation and a frequent contributor to national and international media on questions of technology and politics. 

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Evgeny Morozov

Program on Liberation Technology
616 Serra Street E108
Stanford, California 94305

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Evgeny Morozov is a visiting scholar in the Liberation Technology Program at Stanford University and a Scwhartz fellow at the New America Foundation. He is also a blogger and contributing editor to Foreign Policy Magazine. He is a former Yahoo fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a former fellow at the Open Society Institute, where he remains on the board of the Information Program. His book The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom was published by PublicAffairs in January 2011.

Evgeny Morozov Visiting Scholar, Program on Liberation Technology Speaker Stanford University
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Fourth Wave or False Start? Democracy After the Arab Spring

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The decades-long political winter in the Arab world seemed to be thawing early this year as mass protests toppled Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and it appeared that one Arab dictatorship after another might fall during the so-called Arab Spring. Analogies were quickly conjured to the collapse of dictatorships in Europe and Latin America in the 1970s; Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines in the 1980s; and Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s—the transformative “third wave” of global democratization. Many scholars and activists reasonably imagined that a “fourth wave” had begun.  At this momentous inflection point, which may well define the future shape of the Arab world, the United States has never faced a more urgent set of opportunities and challenges there. Diamond will discuss the prospects for democratic development that exist alongside the very real risks of Islamist ascension, political chaos, and humanitarian disaster, and suggest principles and long-term strategic thinking the U.S. might employ to increase its legitimacy in the region.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he also directs the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond is co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and a senior consultant to the National Endowment for Democracy. Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and as an advisor to the Iraq Study Group.  Diamond, author of the Spirit of Democracy and several other works on democratic development, has also edited or co-edited some 36 books on democracy. A renowned teacher and mentor, Diamond, who teaches courses on comparative democratic development and post-conflict democracy building, was named “Teacher of the Year” by the Associated Students of Stanford University and received the prestigious Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education in 2007.

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Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
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Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Policy perspectives from the Obama Administration

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Jeremy M. Weinstein is Associate Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He serves as director of the Center for African Studies, and is an affiliated faculty member at CDDRL and CISAC. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.

Weinstein recently returned to Stanford after serving as Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House between 2009 and 2011. In this capacity, he played a key role in the National Security Council’s work on global development, democracy and human rights, and anti-corruption, with a global portfolio. Among other issues, Weinstein was centrally involved in the development of President Obama’s Policy Directive on Global Development and associated efforts to reform and strengthen USAID, promote economic growth, and increase the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance across the board; led efforts at the White House to develop a robust international anti-corruption agenda, which included the creation of the G-20 Action Plan on Anti-Corruption, the design and launch of the Open Government Partnership, and the successful legislative passage and subsequent internationalization of a ground-breaking extractive industries disclosure requirement; and played a significant role in developing the Administration’s policy in response to the Arab Spring, including focused work on Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and others. Before joining the White House staff, Weinstein served as an advisor to the Obama campaign and, during the transition, served as a member of the National Security Policy Working Group and the Foreign Assistance Agency Review Team.

His research focuses on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics and the political economy of development; and democracy, accountability, and political change. He is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press), which received the William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. He is also the co-author of Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (Russell Sage Foundation), which received the Gregory Luebbert Award for the best book in comparative politics. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, World Policy Journal, and the SAIS Review. Selected publications include: “Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War” (APSR 2006), which received the Sage Prize and Gregory Luebbert Award, and “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision (APSR 2007), which received the Heinz Eulau Award and the Michael Wallerstein Award. He also received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford in 2007. Weinstein obtained a BA with high honors from Swarthmore College, and an MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.

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Jeremy Weinstein Associate Professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow at FSI Speaker Affiliated faculty member at CDDRL
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