Stanford University

International grants totaling $1 million awarded to interdisciplinary Stanford research teams

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Projects to enhance health security and child survival in Africa with improvements in water and sanitation, examine why poor business-management practices persist in India, study the relationship of legal courts to politics and human rights, and understand why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress were recent recipients of grants totaling just under $1 million from Stanford's Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies.

"These projects have great potential to advance academic knowledge, social capital and human development around the world, and to create a healthier, more promising future for hundreds of millions of people," President John Hennessy said. "When we launched The Stanford Challenge, we committed to marshal university resources to address the great challenges of the 21st century in human health, the environment and international affairs, and it is gratifying to see the response from our remarkable faculty."

The 2008 projects and their principal investigators follow:

Enhancing Health Security Through Infrastructure and Behavioral Intervention: Water, Sanitation and Child Survival in Africa. Alexandria Boehm and Jenna Davis, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Abby King, Health Research and Policy and Medicine; Gary Schoolnik, Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology. The project seeks to improve the health and well-being of the 1.2 billion people in low-income countries who lack access to clean water and the 2.6 billion who lack access to sanitation services, with a focus on mortality reduction in children. It will be carried out in sub-Saharan Africa, where the toll of water- and sanitation-related illness on health is severe, and will investigate the extent to which information and education about water and sanitation at the household level motivates behavior changes that result in reduced morbidity. Results will inform international efforts to design and implement effective water supply and sanitation interventions for more than 400 million Africans currently lacking access.

Why Are Indian Firms Poorly Managed? A Survey and Randomized Field Intervention. Nicholas Bloom and Aprajit Mahajan, Economics; Thomas C. Heller and Erik Jensen, Law School; John Roberts, Graduate School of Business. The biggest single reduction in poverty in the history of mankind was achieved by the industrialization of China since 1978, which lifted almost 500 million people out of poverty. India has not experienced this level of poverty reduction because its manufacturing firms have not achieved the productivity gains seen in China. Recent evidence suggests one key factor is the poor management practices adopted by Indian firms. This project examines why poor management practices persist in India and are much more common there. It focuses in particular on evaluating the relative importance of informational, legal and development barriers. The project will undertake a field survey of Indian firms to evaluate their knowledge of modern management techniques and a field intervention aimed at upgrading management practices in a randomized sample of Indian firms, comparing their progress to a control group of untouched firms.

Courts, Politics and Human Rights. Joshua Cohen, Philosophy, Political Science, and Law School; Terry L. Karl, Political Science; Jenny S. Martinez, Law School; Helen Stacy, Law School. This project examines the role of courts as the centerpiece of strategies for promoting human rights by asking if courts should be a preferred human rights venue or if there are other more accessible and effective ways to secure human rights. It addresses three broad themes: the interplay between national, regional and international courts in the protection of human rights; the role of governments and nongovernmental organizations in influencing legal proceedings; and how courts construct historical truth and shape public opinion, memory, attitudes and discourse about human-rights abuses. The multidisciplinary project will span countries, regions, issue areas and historical timeframes to ask what reasonably can be expected from international, regional and domestic courts in safeguarding human rights.

The Middle East and the World Economy. Matthew Harding, Economics; Lisa Blaydes, Political Science. This project examines why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress compared to much of the developing world and the implications of this underdevelopment for two overarching trends in Middle Eastern politics today: authoritarian government and Islamic fundamentalism. The researchers also will examine how political instability originating in the Middle East has affected world oil prices and world markets by constructing economic models of the world economy. The project seeks broadly to understand the macro- and microeconomic determinants of Islamic fundamentalism and authoritarian rule, and the extent to which these two outcomes have affected the stability and prosperity of the world economy. It measures global factors resulting from increased globalization and quantifies their impact on the development of economies in the Middle East.

The $3 million Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies was first established in 2005 by the Office of the President and the Stanford International Initiative to support new cross-campus, interdisciplinary research and teaching among Stanford's seven schools on three overarching global challenges: pursuing peace and security, reforming and improving governance at all levels of society, and advancing human well-being.

The first $1 million in interdisciplinary grants was awarded in February 2006; the second round of grants was awarded in February 2007.

"In all three rounds of funding, it has been heartening to see the imaginative and innovative ways that Stanford faculty are combining intellectual forces across disciplines to tackle some of the most pressing and persistent problems of our day," said Coit D. Blacker, chair of the International Initiative Executive Committee and director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "It is especially gratifying to see the younger faculty competing for these grants, eager to generate new knowledge and new solutions and help train a new generation of leaders."

Priority in funding has been given to teams of faculty who do not typically work together, who represent multiple disciplines and who address issues falling broadly within the three central research areas of the Stanford International Initiative. Projects are to be based on collaborative research and teaching involving faculty from two or more disciplines and, where possible, from two or more of the university's seven schools.

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Terrorism Law: Between the Executive and Legislative Models

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Daphne Barak-Erez LL.B. (Tel-Aviv) (summa cum laude) 1988, LL. M. (Tel-Aviv) (summa cum laude) 1991, and J. S. D (Tel-Aviv) 1993, is a professor at the Faculty of Law and the Stewart and Judy Colton Chair of Law and Security at Tel-Aviv University. She specializes in administrative law, constitutional law and gender law. She was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School (1993-1994), a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Public Law, Heidelberg (2000), an Honorary Research Fellow at University College, London (2002), a Visiting Researcher at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (2004), a Visiting Fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi (2006), and a Schell Fellow at Yale Law School (2006). She was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Federalism (Fribourg, Switzerland) (2005), the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto (2005 and 2007), the University of Siena (2006) and Queen's University (2007).

She also served as the Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights (2000-2001) and the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Law (2000-2002) and currently serves as a member of Israel's Council of Higher Education (since 2007). She was awarded several prizes, including the Rector's Prize for Excellence in Teaching (twice), the Zeltner Prize, the  Woman of the City Award (by the City of Tel-Aviv) and the Women in Law Award (by the Israeli Bar). She is the author and editor of several books and has many articles published in journals in the United States, Canada, England, and Israel.

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Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the New Middle East

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Robin Wright is an American journalist currently covering U.S. foreign policy for The Washington Post. She has reported for The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times (of London), CBS News and The Christian Science Monitor, and has served as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. She has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and The International Herald Tribune.

Awards and Honors
Wright received the U.N. Correspondents Association Gold Medal for coverage of international affairs, the National Magazine Award for reportage from Iran in The New Yorker, and the Overseas Press Club Award for "best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative" for coverage of African wars. For coverage of U.S. foreign policy, she was named journalist of the year by the American Academy of Diplomacy for “distinguished reporting and analysis of international affairs ” and won the National Press Club Award and the Weintal Prize for diplomatic reporting. Wright has also been the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant.

Wright has been a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution, Yale University, Duke University, Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Southern California. She also lectures extensively around the United States and has been a television commentator on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC programs, including "Meet the Press," "Face the Nation," "This Week," “Nightline," the PBS Newshour, "Frontline," and "Larry King Live."

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Caring About Systemic Military Atrocity in Iraq and Afghanistan

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Neta C. Crawford is Professor of Political Science and African American Studies where her teaching focuses on international ethics and normative change. Crawford is currently on the board of the Academic Council of the United Nations System (ACUNS). She has also served as a member of the governing Council of the American Political Science Association; on the editorial board of the American Political Science Review; and on the Slavery and Justice Committee at Brown University, which examined Brown University's relationship to slavery and the slave trade.

Her research interests include international relations theory, normative theory, foreign policy decisionmaking, abolition of slavery, African foreign and military policy, sanctions, peace movements, discourse ethics, post-conflict peacebuilding, research design, utopian science fiction, and emotion. She is the author of Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge University Press, 2002) which was a co-winner of the 2003 American Political Science Association Jervis and Schroeder Award for best book in International History and Politics. She is co-editor of How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa (St. Martin's, 1999). Her articles have been published in books and scholarly journals such as the Journal of Political Philosophy; International Organization; Security Studies; Perspectives on Politics; International Security; Ethics & International Affairs; Press/Politics; Africa Today; Naval War College Review; Orbis; and, Qualitative Methods. Crawford has appeared on radio and TV and written op-eds on U.S. foreign policy and international relations for newspapers including the Boston Globe; Newsday (Long Island), The Christian Science Monitor, and the Los Angeles Times. Crawford has a Ph.D. in political science from MIT and a bachelor of arts from Brown.

This event is co-sponsored with the Program on Global Justice and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

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Neta C. Crawford, Catherine Lutz, Robert Jay Lifton, Judith L. Herman, Howard Zinn
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Larry Diamond releases a new book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World

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In his new book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books 2008), Larry Diamond intensely scrutinizes the global effort on democracy promotion.

In his new book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books 2008), Larry Diamond intensely scrutinizes the global effort on democracy promotion. By both exploring the sources of progress as well as the locations and reasons for failure, Diamond presents a comprehensive assessment that is realistic but also hopeful. Diamond presents his arguments through a world of examples, citing the negative Putin's Russia and Musharraf's Pakistan; the unsuccessful politcally but nevertheless exemplary Toledo's Peru; and even the more difficult places like Nepal, Iran, and Thailand.

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The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World

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In his new book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books 2008), Larry Diamond intensely scrutinizes the global effort on democracy promotion. By both exploring the sources of progress as well as the locations and reasons for failure, Diamond presents a comprehensive assessment that is realistic but also hopeful. Diamond presents his arguments through a world of examples, citing the negative Putin's Russia and Musharraf's Pakistan; the unsuccessful politically but nevertheless exemplary Toledo's Peru; and even the more difficult places like Nepal, Iran, and Thailand.

By comparing the progress of today with that of the mid 1970s, when he was a Vietnam War protester, Diamond expresses hope. At that time, Diamond notes, barely a quarter of all independent states were using free and fair elections. But times have changed since then: "by the mid-1990s," he writes, "it had become clear to me, as it had to many of my colleagues involved in the global struggle for democracy, that if some three-fifths of the world's states, many of them poor and non-Western, could become democracies, there was no intrinsic reason why the rest of the world could not do as well."

Jessica Tuchman Mathews, president, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes that "no one has thought harder or more broadly about the past and future of democracy than Larry Diamond. A passionate treatment, infused with optimism and eminently readable, The Spirit of Democracy is a must for anyone who cares about the toughest challenge of balancing national values and national interests."
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McFaul urges new engagement with Iran in Wash Post Op-Ed

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As the year draws to a close, write Michael A. McFaul and Abbas Milani in the Washington Post, it's important to note that the U.S. debate on Iran is stalled, trapped between "regime changers" vs. "arms controllers," "hawks" vs. "doves," and "idealists" vs. "realists." The National Intelligence Estimate released this month offers an opportunity to escape this straitjacketed debate by embracing a new strategy that would pursue both the short-term goal of arms control and the long-term goal of democracy in Iran.

Reprinted with permission from Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company and The Washington Post

As the year draws to a close, it's important to note that the U.S. debate on Iran is stalled, trapped between "regime changers" vs. "arms controllers," "hawks" vs. "doves," and "idealists" vs. "realists." The National Intelligence Estimate released this month offers an opportunity to escape this straitjacketed debate by embracing a new strategy that would pursue both the short-term goal of arms control and the long-term goal of democracy in Iran.

The NIE's "key judgment" that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program has thrust the arms controllers onto center stage. Because the nuclear threat is no longer immediate, the arms controllers insist that the time is ripe for the United States to engage in direct diplomacy with Tehran as a way to change the regime's behavior, but not the regime itself -- specifically, to persuade the mullahs to suspend their nuclear enrichment program.

Those who profess to back regime change claim that the NIE changes nothing and that the United States should continue to use coercive power, potentially including military strikes, to counter Tehran.

Both sides have part of the strategy right, but on its own neither offers a long-term vision for dealing with Iran.

It is folly to assume that advocates of military strikes are in the same camp as those who advocate regime change. There is no better way to prolong the life of the autocratic regime in Tehran, to strengthen increasingly weakened radicals such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, than bombing Iran. Thankfully, the NIE has made military strikes less likely.

But the estimate provides no evidence to suggest that Iran's regime has changed its ways to be more compatible with American national interests or the interests of the Iranian people. The regime continues to repress its own people; supports terrorist organizations that threaten Israel and destabilize the governments in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories; and still has not suspended its enrichment program, the key aspect of developing a nuclear weapon. Iran's suspension of its military nuclear program in 2003 was a tactical response to revelations about the clandestine operation, not a fundamental shift in strategic thinking.

To presume, therefore, that the NIE gives the United States license to bargain with Iran over its enrichment program and forgo any pressure on the regime is also folly. Focusing solely on enrichment would play into the hands of the mullahs, who see how the NIE has weakened the coalition in support of serious sanctions. They have every incentive to stretch out any negotiations -- while continuing to develop their enrichment program. Days after the NIE was made public, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran plans to have a cascade of 50,000 centrifuges, surely enough to make highly enriched uranium. American diplomatic tools to alter this behavior are extremely weak. Moreover, this strategy gives Iran a free pass on its support for terrorism and human rights abuses.

The United States and its allies must develop an Iran strategy that establishes both short- and long-term goals. Specifically, the United States must recommit to a policy of encouraging democratization inside Iran, because only a democratic regime will stop supporting terrorist groups abroad and repression at home. A democratic Iran is also less likely to restart a nuclear weapons program, especially if the United States and a new Iranian regime establish close military ties, a likely outcome.

Although counterintuitive to some, diplomatic engagement is required to pursue the long-term goal of democratization and, in parallel, the short-term goal of arms control. The first American offer of direct talks should include everything: the prospect of formal diplomatic relations and the lifting of sanctions; the potential supply and disposal of nuclear fuel (from a third-party organization or state); suspension of nuclear enrichment; an end to aid to Hezbollah and Hamas; and a serious discussion about stopping the arrests of students and human rights advocates and the persecution of union leaders and religious minorities. Discussion of new security institutions in the region should also be on the table. America's experience dealing with the Soviet Union during the Cold War demonstrates that we can engage a despotic regime without compromising our commitment to democracy and human rights.

Greater contact between Iranian and American societies will further undermine the regime's legitimacy, strengthen the independence of Iranian economic and political groups, and perhaps even compel some regime leaders to cash out and exchange their diminishing political power for enduring property rights. Over the past four decades, autocratic regimes have rarely crumbled as a result of isolation but more often have collapsed when seeking to engage with the West. Even the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred not when tensions between Moscow and Washington were high but during a period of engagement.

Will Iran follow a similar path? We will never know if we do not try. Of course, the mullahs might reject our overtures, but their refusal would embolden the opposition inside Iran. And a serious attempt to engage the Islamic republic now would strengthen the American case for more coercive diplomatic and economic pressure, should they be necessary in the future.

Michael McFaul is a professor of political science at Stanford University. Abbas Milani is director of the Iranian studies program at Stanford. Both are fellows at the Hoover Institution.

Copyright Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and The Washington Post. All rights Reserved.

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Morocco's Elections: The Limits of Limited Reforms

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Morocco's experience suggests that expanded political liberty, especially freedom of association, can facilitate the emergence of multiple versions of political Islam, reducing the salience of a large, undifferentiated Islamist movement as an umbrella for oppositionist sentiment. The best means for containing potentially destabilizing discontent and promoting moderation among potentially antidemocratic forces are a pluralized political space and iterative free elections. The dilemmas that the king must now resolve in the face of citizen alienation reveal the limits of a strategy of gradual liberalization stage-managed from on high by a pro-Western autocrat.

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