Abstract
A global struggle for control of the Internet is now underway. At stake are no less than civil liberties, privacy and even the character of democracy in the 21^st century.

Many commentators have debated whether the Internet is ultimately a force for freedom of expression and political liberation, or for alienation, and repression. Rebecca MacKinnon moves the debate about the Internet’s political impact to a new level. It is time, she says, to stop arguing over whether the Internet empowers individuals and societies, and address the more fundamental and urgent question of how technology should be structured and governed to support the rights and liberties of all the world’s Internet users.

Rebecca MacKinnon is a Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, where she conducts research, writing and advocacy on global Internet policy, free expression, and the impact of digital technologies on human rights. She is author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom (Basic Books, January 2012). MacKinnon is also cofounder of Global Voices, an international citizen media network. She also serves on the Boards of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Global Network Initiative.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon worked as a journalist for CNN in Beijing for nine years and was Beijing Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 1998-2001, then served as CNN’s Tokyo Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 2001-03. From 2004-06 she was a Research Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where she began her ongoing research and writing about the Chinese Internet in addition to launching Global Voices with colleague Ethan Zuckerman. In 2007-08 she taught online journalism at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre. In 2009 she conducted research and writing as an Open Society Fellow, and in the Spring of 2010 she was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton’s Center or Information Technology Policy.

MacKinnon received her AB magna cum laude from Harvard University and was a Fullbright scholar in Taiwan in 1991-92.

Ten years into the war in Afghanistan, Payne Distinguished Lecturer Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and the former Commander of the American-led Coalition Forces there, set out to examine the transition to Afghan sovereignty.   Eikenberry laid out  three broad sets of questions: How well are we doing in the campaign in Afghanistan, what are the significant challenges we’ll face in achieving our goals and objectives, and what are the implications for American power and influence in the 21^st century.

Watch the video below.

Abstract:

There is a wide diversity in the provision of public services in India. In some states one can go for miles without seeing a functional school or public health centre, where roads are poorly maintained, and electricity has not yet been introduced. In other places, governments tend to function remarkably in extending basic public services to all, with tremendous consequences to human lives. In this talk, Vivek Srinivasen will explore why some parts of India have developed an impressive social commitment to such services unlike others. In this context, he will also discuss the remarkable changes in Bihar and other parts of North India in the recent years.

 Speaker Bio: 

Vivek Srinivasen joined the Liberation Technology Program as the manager in February 2011 after completing his Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Prior to this, Srinivasen worked with campaigns on various socio-economic rights in India, including the right to food, education and the right to information. Based on these experiences he has written (and co-authored) extensively on issues surrounding the right to food, including Notes from the right to food campaign: people's movement for the right to food (2003), Rights based approach and human development: An introduction (2008), Gender and the right to food: A critical re-examination (2006), Food Policy and Social Movements: Reflections on the Right to Food Campaign in India (2007).

Abstract:  

Haber and Menaldo (2011) claim there is little evidence that oil is harmful to democracy, and that previous studies to the contrary were corrupted by omitted variable bias. Michael Ross professor of political science at UCLA will present findings from a paper co-authored with Jørgen Juel Andersen to show there is little evidence of the bias they allege, and point out that they decline to test the most credible version of the resource curse hypothesis.  The versions that they do test, moreover, are based on two implausible assumptions: that oil will effect a country’s regime type immediately, rather than over a period of several years; and that the relationship between oil wealth and political power did not change over the 200 year period covered by their data.  We argue that oil only had strong anti-democratic effects after the 1970s, when most oil-producing autocracies nationalized their industries; and show their main results are overturned when we add to their models a dummy variable for the post-1979 period, and allow the effects of oil to take place over a period of three, five, or seven years, instead of just one year.  

Speaker Bio: 

Michael L. Ross is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. 

He has published widely on the political and economic problems of resource-rich countries, civil war, democratization, and gender rights; his articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Journal of Confiict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Politics and Gender, and World Politics.  In 2009, he received the Heinz Eulau Award from the American Political Science Association for the best article published in the American Political Science Review. 

His work has also appeard in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harper's, The Los Angeles Times, and been featured in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and many other publications. 

Ross currently serves on the advisory boards of the Review Watch Institute, the Natural Resource Charter, and Clean Trade, and was previously a member of the Advisory Group for the World Bank's Extractive Industries Review.  He is also a member of the Political Instability Task Force and the APSA Task Force on Democracy Audits and Governmental Indicators.

Abstract:

What explains the success and failure of institution-building under foreign occupations? Reo Matsuzaki, post-doctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, examines this question by comparing the Japanese colonization of Taiwan and the American colonization of the Philippines, which produced contrasting institutional legacies despite the presence of similar initial conditions. He argues that two variables jointly play a significant role in determining variation in institution-building outcomes: the degree of discretionary power afforded to the occupational administration by its home government; and the strength of resistance to the institution-building effort by local elites in the occupied territory. He will present his research on foreign-imposed police reform in colonial Taiwan and the Philippines, and discuss the implications of his findings for contemporary state-building missions. 

Speaker Bio:

Reo Matsuzaki is a 2011-2012 post-doctoral fellow at CDDRL with a PhD in political science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His dissertation examines variation in institution-building outcomes within foreign occupations, particularly in the areas of police and education, through a comparison of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan (1895-1945) and the American occupation of the Philippines (1898-1941). While at CDDRL, he will be working to turn his dissertation into a book manuscript, as well as on a project examining the role of community policing in counter-insurgency campaigns.

Before appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring in April 2009 with the rank of Lieutenant General.  His military operational posts included commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces from 2005-2007.

He has served in various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. Security Coordinator and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Deputy Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Army Staff.

He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, has master’s degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. 

Ambassador Eikenberry earned an Interpreter’s Certificate in Mandarin Chinese from the British Foreign Commonwealth Office while studying at the  United Kingdom Ministry of Defense Chinese Language School in Hong Kong and has an Advanced Degree in Chinese History from Nanjing University in the People’s Republic of China.

His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman badges, and master parachutist wings.  He has received the Department of State Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards, Director of Central Intelligence Award, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Distinguished Civilian Service and Department of the Army Meritorious Civilian Service Awards.  His foreign and international decorations include the Canadian Meritorious Service Cross, French Legion of Honor, Czech Republic Meritorious Cross, Hungarian Alliance Medal, Afghanistan’s Ghazi Amir Amanullah Khan and Akbar Khan Medals, and NATO Meritorious Service Medal.

Ambassador Eikenberry serves as a Trustee for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relation, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Council of American Ambassadors, and was previously the President of the Foreign Area Officers Association.  He has published numerous articles on U.S. military training, tactics, and strategy, and on Chinese ancient military history and Asia-Pacific security issues.  He has a commercial pilot’s license and instrument rating, and also enjoys sailing and scuba diving.  He is married to Ching Eikenberry.