In a recent interview with NPR, Larry Diamond provides insights and analysis on some of the most pressing political developments confronting the world today. 

In August, CDDRL’s Draper Hills Summer Fellows program marked its 10-year anniversary by welcoming 20 of its alumni back to Stanford for a weeklong reunion.

Supported by Ingrid Hills and Bill and Phyllis Draper, the program brings practitioners from across the developing world to Stanford for a three-week intensive academic training program on democracy, good governance and rule of law reform. 

From Afghanistan to Venezuela, the program’s alumni form a network of over 250 leaders working under some of the most adverse conditions.

Fellows apply the academic lessons - taught by leading Stanford faculty - to practical problems in their countries. Many learn how to use technology to expose corruption, draw on case studies to improve the quality of public administration and borrow examples from history to build institutions in the aftermath of revolution.

An alumni network program - supported by the Omidyar Network - host’s global workshops, Stanford reunions and a robust communication platform to connect this global community of democratic leaders.

During the reunion, alumni attended sessions led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Michael McFaul who has just returned back to Stanford after serving as U.S. ambassador to Russia.

While back on campus, some alumni found the occasion to reflect on the program and its impact on their professional and personal lives. Their inspiring stories are testament to the incredible work they are doing to build democratic systems in some of the most complex corners of the world.

Fighting for Democracy in Ukraine

When the EuroMaidan protests started in November 2013 in Kiev, Andriy Shevchenko (09’) was in Independence Square calling for the resignation of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych. It was there that he reflected on the lessons from the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program on social mobilization as he helped translate the demands of protesters into political action.

Shevchenko, who was elected to parliament in 2006, is one of nine fellows from Ukraine who are part of a new generation of leadership working to move their country away from Russian influence and towards greater European integration. Working as journalists, civil society leaders and politicians, these fellows are pushing for democratic institutions and political accountability in a country transitioning towards democracy.

Before joining politics, Shevchenko was a journalist and founded the first independent 24-hour news channel – 5^th Channel – which covered the events surrounding Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution.

Shevchenko describes the program as “one of the greatest experiences of his life” because of the knowledge, friendships and inspiration he gained from his participation in the program. Leaving the program with an expanded interest in human rights, Shevchenko now serves as the first deputy chairman of the Human Rights Commission in Ukraine.

While the struggle for democracy continues in Ukraine, Shevchenko will draw on the program’s teachings and the strength of the peer community during these challenging times.

Empowering Women through Education in Afghanistan

Sakeena Yacoobi (08’) understands firsthand how education can change a life. After receiving her degree in the U.S., Yacoobi returned to Afghanistan with a mission to empower women and children through access to quality education. In 1995, Yacoobi founded the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) and set off to change the system of education – often operating underground due to threats from the Taliban – by training a network of teachers and opening women’s learning centers.

Yacoobi was overwhelmed with interest from women seeking education and in decades AIL has set up 300 learning centers in 12 provinces, serving over 11 million people in Afghanistan. Training is at the heart of AIL’s model and Yacoobi has applied much of what she has learned from the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program to offer civic education to AIL’s students.

As the country emerges from over three decades of conflict, Yacoobi credits the Program and its curriculum in democracy and leadership for inspiring Afghan citizens to be more civic minded and involved in democratic processes - such as voting. Recognizing the current political struggles that Afghanistan faces, Yacoobi hopes that these important lessons will help to build a greater democratic culture for the country’s future generations. 

Building New Institutions of Democracy in Argentina

Laura Alonso (12’) never envisioned herself as a politician. With an esteemed career in civil society as the head of the Argentine chapter of Transparency International, she had always operated outside of the political system. But one day she realized that she might be more effective inside government. 

In 2009, Alonso was elected as a member of Congress for the city of Buenos Aires and began to advocate for greater transparency and reform Her push for better governance has often put her at odds with her party and the subject of attacks, but she continues to defend her reform agenda.

Re-elected to a second term of Congress in 2013, Alonso has set out to improve the quality of democracy in Argentina by strengthening institutions that deliver public services and to help steer the country in a different direction. From time to time, she has been able to reflect on the case studies taught in the Draper Hill’s Summer Fellows Program by Francis Fukuyama to inform her policymaking.   

While Alonso is unsure of what her future may hold - may it be in politics or elsewhere - she will continue to raise her voice when necessary to make the government more accountable to the people of Argentina.

Defending Civil Society in Russia

Anna Sevortian (06’) served as the Russian director for Human Rights Watch when the crackdown on civil society began in 2011. Non-profit organizations (NGO’s) receiving foreign funding were labeled as foreign spies and forced to register their operations with the Russian government.

Sevortian describes this repressive environment as reminiscent of Soviet times when propaganda and inspections were common practice. Cut off from funding, many NGO’s supporting important social needs have been forced to shut their doors.

A longtime journalist, Sevortian spent three years at Human Right’s Watch in the height of this crackdown documenting worsening conditions for civil society and also covering Belarus, Ukraine and the North Caucuses.

It was during this period that one of the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program’s founding faculty members - Michael McFaul - was serving as U.S. ambassador to Russia and Sevortian was able to raise human rights concerns to him directly.

Sevortian now serves as the executive director for the newly launched EU-Russia Civil Society Forum in Berlin, a platform designed to amplify the voice of civil society. Despite the deteriorating situation in Russia, Sevortian hopes to use the forum to help encourage the growth and development of civil society in Russia and Europe. 

In a piece for The Irrawaddy, Draper Hills Summer Fellow Zin Mar Aung ('13), a Burmese human rights activist, writes on recent attempts by nationalist monks in Burma to lobby for a new law, which would restrict interfaith marriages and interrupt individual freedoms. Aung critiques the so-called reformist government, calling all people of Burma, no matter gender, ethnicity or faith, to unite during Burma's democratic reform process.

Fourteen Stanford researchers addressing global poverty through a range of academic disciplines are receiving a total of $4.6 million in awards from the university-wide Global Development and Poverty (GDP) initiative.

Their projects, which are the first to be funded by the GDP, deal with challenges of health, violence, economics, governance and education in the developing world.

“GDP seeks to transform scholarly activity and dialogue at Stanford around the topic of global poverty, so that the university may have a greater impact on poverty alleviation in developing economies,” said GDP faculty co-chair Jesper B. Sørensen. “By focusing on placing a small number of big bets, GDP encourages researchers to think big, and to move beyond the conventional way of doing things. We are thrilled by the inaugural set of awardees, as they demonstrate the creative, inter-disciplinary approaches that will make Stanford a leader in this area.”

The GDP initiative is part of the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (SEED) and is administered in partnership with Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). The GDP is co-chaired by Sørensen, the faculty director for SEED and the Robert A. and Elizabeth R. Jeffe Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business; and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, senior fellow and director of FSI and the Stanley Morrison Professor at Stanford Law School.

SEED, which seeks to alleviate poverty by stimulating the creation of economic opportunities through innovation, entrepreneurship and the growth of businesses, was established in 2011 through a generous gift from Robert King, MBA '60, and his wife, Dorothy.

Through complementary areas of focus, GDP funding and other SEED research initiatives will stimulate research, novel interdisciplinary collaborations and solutions to problems of global poverty and development. GDP research aims to pursue answers to crucial questions that are essential to an understanding of how to reduce global poverty and promote economic development. That includes governance and the rule of law, education, health, and food security – all of which are essential for entrepreneurship to thrive. By contrast, other SEED research focuses on innovation, entrepreneurship, and the growth of businesses in developing economies.

Since 2012, SEED’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Developing Economies Award program also has doled out 22 awards and seven PhD fellowships to help support and scale businesses in developing economies. Among the $1 million in funded projects were studies of how to improve the livelihoods of small-holder cacao farmers throughout the tropics; how to identify startups with high job- and wealth-creating potential in Chile; how political accountability affects the ability to attract investment in Sierra Leone; and how managerial practices affect trade entrepreneurship in China.

First GDP Awards

The first 14 GDP award recipients are professors of economics, political science, law, medicine, pediatrics, education and biology, and senior fellows from FSI, the Woods Institute, and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

“Each of these projects cuts across disciplines, reflects innovative thinking, and has the potential to generate crucial knowledge about how to improve the lives of the poor around the world,” Cuéllar said. “These projects, along with a variety of workshops engaging the university and external stakeholders, will help us strengthen Stanford’s long-term capacity to address issues of global poverty through research, education and outreach.”

Among the award recipients is Pascaline Dupas, an associate professor of economics and senior fellow at SIEPR. Dupas, along with faculty from the Center for Health Policy and Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, will launch the Stanford Economic Development Research Initiative using GDP funds.  This initiative will focus on collecting high-quality institutional and individual-level data on economic activity in a number of developing countries over the long term, and making these data available to scholars around the world.

Beatriz Magaloni, an associate professor of political science and senior fellow at FSI, is receiving an award to lead a team focused on criminal violence and its effects on the poor in developing economies, and the practical solutions for increasing security in those regions.

Douglas K. Owens, a professor of medicine and FSI senior fellow, was awarded an award to help him lead a team that will develop models to estimate how alternative resource allocations for health interventions among the poor will influence health and economic outcomes.

Stephen Haber, a professor of political science and history and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, received an award to bring together Stanford researchers interested in examining the long-term institutional constraints on economic development. Their goal will be to provide policymakers with a framework for determining the conditions under which particular innovations are likely to have positive payoffs, and the conditions under which resources will likely be wasted.

Other projects will address the educational impacts of solar lighting systems in poor communities; identifying interventions to improve the profits and safety among poor, smallholder pig farmers in Bangladesh and China; the role of law and institutions in economic development and poverty reduction; and how to rethink worldwide refugee problems. Awards are also being provided to researchers focused on microfinance, online education and teacher training.

The project proposals were reviewed by an interdisciplinary faculty advisory council chaired by Cuéllar and Sørensen. 

“We were very encouraged by the impressive number of project proposals from a wide range of areas and are looking forward to introducing several new capacity and community-building activities in the fall,” Sørensen said.. “This wide range of research initiatives will form a vibrant nucleus for Stanford’s growing community of scholars of global development and poverty.”