Professor Li Liangdong is currently the Department Head of the Central Party School's Politics and Law Department. He directly advises senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party. Professor Li received his doctorate from the Central Party School in Law.  His main research areas are: democratic perspective, Western political thought, and political theory.

Some of his key works include: Contemporary Chinese Studies of Public Opinion (Central Party School Press, 1996), Mao Zedong and Chinese Farmers (China Farmers Press, 1993), Contemporary Chinese Democracy Studies (Contemporary World Press, 2001 edition), and Third Wave and the Chinese Democracy (Central Party School Press, 2001 edition). He has published over 300 articles.  Professor Li has hosted discussions on topics including "Public Discussion in China," "Societal Transitions", and "Study of Political Stability"

Co-sponsored by the Center for Deliberative Democracy

Stanford STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition seeks to use advocacy, awareness-raising and fundraising to address the conflicts in Sudan, The Democratic Republic of Congo and Burma. Our mission is to empower individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide.

Dr. Songs talk will focus on the question concerning interpretation and possible application of Article 121 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), in particular its third paragraph, to the selected disputed offshore islands or rocks that are situated in the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea. A number of recent developments occurred in the East Asian waters that are relevant to or have the potential to give rise to the problem of interpretation and application of the said article will first be cited. Then, a brief summary of the development of the "Regime of Islands" at UNCLOS III will be given, focusing in particular on those proposals made by the participating delegations to amend or delete entirely Article 121(3) of UNCLOS. The views of the law of the sea experts on interpretation and application of Article 121(3) will be examined. Several selected examples of state practices with regard to the application or interpretation of Article 121(3) will then be provided. This is to be followed by discussing the interpretation and possible application of Article 121(3) to the selected disputed offshore islands that are situated in the East Asian waters. Finally, several suggestions for possible amendment to Article 121 or policy measures to help deal with the confusion found in Article 121(3) will be offered.

Yann-huei Song received his undergraduate degree from National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, a Master's degree in Political Science from Indiana State University, Indiana, USA, a LL.M. degree from the University of California School of Law (Boalt Hall), Berkeley, California, USA, a doctoral degree in International Relations from Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA, and a JSD degree from the University of California School of Law (Boalt Hall), Berkeley.

Following graduation from Kent State University, Dr. Song taught at Department of Political Science, Indiana State University as Assistant Professor in 1988. He then returned to his country and taught as an Associate Professor at Institute of Maritime Law, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan in 1990. Currently, Dr. Song is a research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan, and distinguished professor of the Graduate Institute of International Politics at National Ching Hsing University (NCHU), Taichung, Taiwan. He is also dean of the Office of International Affaris at NCHU.

Dr. Song's research interests are in the fields of International Law of the Sea, International Fisheries Law, International Environmental Law, National Ocean Policy Study, Naval Arms Control and Maritime Security. He has published articles in journals such as Political Geography Quarterly, Asian Survey, Marine Policy, Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, Issues and Studies, The American Asian Review, Ocean Development and International Law, EurAmerica, Ecology Law Review, the International Journal of Coastal and Marine Law, The Indonesian Quarterly and others.

Born in Tunis in 1957, Laurent Cohen-Tanugi is a Paris-based international lawyer, policy adviser and public intellectual.

A member of the Paris and New York Bars, his practice focuses on cross-border mergers and acquisitions, international arbitration, competition law, and policy advisory work. In the fall of 2007, he was appointed by the French government to lead a task force on the future of the European Union's Lisbon Strategy, ahead of the French Presidency of the EU ("Beyond Lisbon: A European Strategy For Globalisation", Peter Lang, 2008, www.euroworld2015.eu).

He was previously a partner of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP (2005-2007), Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Sanofi-Synthélabo, a European pharmaceutical group (2004), and a partner of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton (1991-2003). In recent years, he was involved in substantial cross-border mergers such as Vivendi Universal, Sanofi-Aventis and Alcatel-Lucent.

Mr Cohen-Tanugi is an alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and holds an agrégation in French literature from the University of Paris and a degree from the Institute of Political Studies of Paris.  He graduated from the University of Paris Law School in 1981 and received an LL.M. degree from the Harvard Law School in 1982. 

He is the author of numerous influential books, including Le Droit sans l'Etat (PUF, 1985), a comparative essay on the French and American legal and political traditions, prefaced by Professor Stanley Hoffmann of Harvard University; La Métamorphose de la Démocratie (Odile Jacob, 1989), on the changes affecting the French and European democratic cultures since the late sixties; L'Europe en danger (Fayard, 1992), anticipating the current crisis of political Europe; Le Choix de l'Europe (Fayard, 1995), on the future of European unification, and Le Nouvel ordre numérique (Odile Jacob, 1999), a multi-disciplinary analysis of the communications and information technology revolution. 

His latest English-language works include An Alliance At Risk, The United States And Europe After September 11 (Johns Hopkins University Press, September 2003), exploring the present state and future prospects of transatlantic relations, and The End of Europe? (Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005, Volume 84., No. 6), an analysis of the state of the EU following the French and Dutch rejections of the EU constitutional treaty, and most recently, The Shape of the World to Come, on the geopolitics of globalization (Columbia University Press, 2008), which will also be published in China.

Laurent Cohen-Tanugi is a regular columnist in French newspapers Les Echos and Le Monde, and lectures on a variety of subjects internationally. A director of Notre Europe, a think-tank founded by former EC Commission President Jacques Delors, he is actively involved in European policy-making. He is also a member of the French Academy of Technologies and a director of several think-tanks, including the Fondation pour l'innovation politique. A frequent consultant to the French government, he sat on the Commission on Judicial Reform set up by President Chirac in 1997, and on the Commission on the Intangible Economy set up by the French government in 2006. He is also a member of the Policy Advisory Council of the French-American Foundation.

Mr. Cohen-Tanugi taught a seminar in European affairs at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris from 2005 to 2008 and will be teaching a course on Transatlantic Merger and Acquisitions at the Harvard Law School in the spring of 2009. Laurent Cohen-Tanugi is the advisor to the Polish government in preparation for his upcoming presidency of the EU in 2011.

A well-known puzzle in the study of Asian democratization is the inverse relationship between the level of democracy and the support for the "D" word. According to the latest Asian Barometer survey, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Cambodia have a much higher level of overt support for democracy than those well-recognized democracies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. To unravel this puzzle, the authors develop a new regression method for the two-dimensional typological analysis including the "D" word and the liberal democratic attitude. Four ideal types of democratic orientation are defined and analyzed: Consistent Democrats (high support for democracy, high liberal democratic value), Critical Democrats (low support for democracy, high liberal democratic value), Non-Democrats (low support for democracy, low liberal democratic value), and Superficial Democrats (High support for democracy, low liberal democratic value). Different from most of the regression methods, the dependent variables in typological regression include the radius and the azimuth and therefore transform the categorical nature of the two-by-two typology into distinctive types with a continuous character. The preliminary result indicates the high support rate of the "D" word in those less democratic countries is associated with a phenomenon that the word "democracy" has lost its distinctive semantic meaning and could embrace all desirable political values, covering any variety of political systems in the world.

Professor Min-hua Huang received his Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Michigan, and his B.A. in Business Administration from National Taiwan University. He is currently teaching at the Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University. In this special seminar, he will address the above issues, leading us to reconsider democracy and democratization in Asia.

Abstract
While the Internet can be a profoundly empowering force, it will not fulfill its potential unless we recognize and address a number of "inconvenient truths." Authoritarian regimes are evolving and adapting to the Internet age. China is "exhibit A" in this regard, and has become a model for others to emulate. With the help of multinational companies, some non-democratic and quasi-democratic governments are working to shape the Internet's architecture, coordination, and legal governance in a direction more conducive to their survival. Other even more "inconvenient truths" involve democracies themselves: democratically elected lawmakers in a range of countries are passing laws to address immediate domestic problems of crime, terror, and copyright theft, but are doing so by implementing legal norms and technical standards that both enable and help to justify censorship and surveillance in repressive countries. These "inconvenient truths" lead to complicated questions about the future of authoritarianism, democracy,  and sovereignty in the Internet age which challenge many 20th-century assumptions.

Rebecca MacKinnon is a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy where she is working on a book about China, the Internet, and the future of freedom in the Internet age.

MacKinnon is cofounder of Global Voices Online, an award-winning global citizen media network that amplifies online citizen voices from around the world. She is a founding member of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative to advance principles of freedom of expression and privacy among Internet and telecommunications companies. She is also on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon has lived in China on and off since childhood. She worked for CNN in Beijing for nine years, serving as CNN's Beijing Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 1998-2001 and then as CNN's Tokyo Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 2001-03.

MacKinnon spent 2004-2006 as a Research Fellow at Harvard: first at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, and then at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

In 2007 and 2008 she was Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre, teaching online journalism and conducting research on the Internet, China, censorship, and the role of technology companies promoting or preventing free expression. While there she launched Creative Commons Hong Kong. In 2009 she carried out research and writing on China, the Internet and freedom of expression as an Open Society Fellow, supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute.

MacKinnon graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College. Her blog can be found at: http://rconversation.blogs.com

While information technologies have transformed our way of life in rich countries, in developing regions there remain many barriers to adopting new technologies, including high costs, unreliable power and network infrastructures, and lack of real or perceived benefits.  Consequently, technology ownership and usage in resource-poor environments is often limited to a small number of near-and-dear devices, which may include a television, video player, or mobile phone.  Devices that are unfamiliar are unlikely to be used.

In this talk, I will describe three projects that seek to adapt or apply familiar technologies to advance new goals in socio-economic development:

1. A new platform for citizen journalism that enables tribal communities to record and share audio newscasts over a mobile phone,
   
2. A new platform for interactive educational content using ordinary TVs and DVD players, and
   
3. A new system for monitoring and improving healthcare delivery by using off-the-shelf biometric technologies. 
   

While all projects are in their early stages, they have each been deployed in India; I will relate our experiences gained and highlight recurring themes at the intersection of technology and development.

Bill Thies is a researcher at Microsoft Research India, where he is a member of the Technologies for Emerging Markets Group.  His research focuses on creating appropriate information and communication technologies to promote socio-economic development, as well as the description and automation of biology protocols on platforms such as microfluidic chips.  Bill was trained as a computer scientist and received all of his degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completing his Ph.D. in 2009.  His graduate research focused on programming languages and compilers for parallel computing.

Abstract
In the same world where there are 1.4 billion Internet users, a very different 1.4 billion people live below the World Bank's poverty line. As if in sudden recognition of this gap, the past decade has seen incredible interest in applying information and communication technologies for global development, an endeavor often abbreviated "ICT4D." How do you design user interfaces for an illiterate migrant worker? Can you keep five rural schoolchildren from fighting over one PC? What value is technology to a farmer earning $1 a day?

Interventionist ICT4D projects seek to answer these kinds of questions, but the excitement has also generated a lot of hype about the power of technology to solve the deep problems of poverty. In this talk, I will present 10 myths of ICT4D which continue to persist, despite increasing evidence to the contrary. My hope is to temper the brash claims of technology with realism about its true potential.

Summary of the Seminar
Kentaro identified a number of myths that surround the field of ICT4D and argued that these can confuse our thinking about the proper role for technology in addressing development problems.

Myth 1: Technology x will save the world: The history of writing on technology shows that each new advance tends to be greeted with unbridled enthusiasm about its potential impact. Where once people were convinced television could solve all social and political problems, today we are putting that burden onto mobile phones.

Myth 2: Poor people have no alternatives:  We can often assume that technology is the only way that poor people will be access certain goods. In reality, there are usually non-technological routes to information and services that are free and therefore preferable.

Myth 3: ‘Needs' are more pressing than desires: A high proportion of the income of the very poor goes on what Western observers might view as ‘luxury' items: (music, photos, festivals & weddings) rather than ‘basics' such as healthcare.

Myth 4: ‘Needs' translate into business models: Building a business model around the needs of poor communities is possible, but there are significant barriers. Poor populations are harder to reach, and they may not want to pay for the services you provide, even if their value seems obvious to you.

Myth 5: If you build it, they will come: Spending is not always rational. An eye hospital in India offers extremely high quality cataract operations for free and covers all related costs. 10% of those offered the service will still refuse to have the operation.

Myth 6: ICT undoes the problem of the rich getting richer: In contexts where literacy and social capital are unevenly distributed, technology tends to amplify inequalities rather than reduce them. An email account cannot make you more connected unless you have some existing social network to build on.

Myth 7: Hardware and software are one-time costs: Kentaro estimates that the average One Laptop per Child will in fact cost $250 per child per year to cover breakage, connectivity, power, maintenance and training.

Myth 8: Automated is always cheaper and better: Where labor is cheap and populations are illiterate, automated systems are not necessarily preferable. Greater accuracy may be another reason to favor voice and human mediated systems.

Myth 9: Information is the real bottle-neck:  Those in the ICT4D world are prone to overestimate the significance of information gaps. Even if you connect a farmer to an agricultural expert via a PC, there are a host of other barriers to be overcome before he can actually increase his yields, including: literacy, poor transport links, and a lack of volume buyers for seeds, pesticides etc.

Kentaro contends that when technology makes a difference in development, it is always as much to do with the input of committed and competent individuals and organizations. Despite this, the focus when reporting ICT4D projects quickly slips into extolling the virtues of the technology itself, not the human component. This says much about the seductive quality of technology. Myths about its potential persist because we have a strong desire to see the triumph of clever ideas and ingenuity, and to believe that one time catalytic investments can have such an impact. The reality is always more complex.

Kentaro Toyama is a visiting scholar at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.

Until 2009, he was assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India, which he co-founded in 2005. At MSR India, he started the Technology for Emerging Markets research group, which conducts interdisciplinary research to understand how the world's poorer communities interact with electronic technology and to invent new ways for technology to support their socio-economic development. He co-founded the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) to provide a global platform for rigorous academic research in this field.

Prior to his time in India, Kentaro did computer vision and multimedia research at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, USA and Cambridge, UK, and taught mathematics at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana. Kentaro graduated from Yale with a PhD in Computer Science and from Harvard with a bachelors degree in Physics.

Abstract
The historic focus of development has rightfully been on macroeconomics and good governance, but technology has an increasingly large role to play.  In this talk, I review several novel technologies that we have deployed in India and Africa, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of this new subfield of EECS research.  Working with the Aravind Eye Hospital, we currently supporting doctor/patient videoconferencing in 30 rural villages; more than 25,000 people have had their blindness cured due to these exams.

Dr. Brewer focuses on all aspects of Internet-based systems, including technology, strategy, and government.  As a researcher, he has led projects on scalable servers, search engines, network infrastructure, sensor networks, and security. His current focus is (high) technology for developing regions, with projects in India, Ghana, and Uganda among others, and including communications, health care, education, and e-government.

In 1996, he co-founded Inktomi Corporation with a Berkeley grad student based on their research prototype, and helped lead it onto the NASDAQ 100 before it was bought by Yahoo! in March 2003.

In 2000, he founded the Federal Search Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization focused on improving consumer access to government information. Working with President Clinton, Dr. Brewer helped to create USA.gov, the official portal of the Federal government, which launched in September 2000.

He was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering for leading the development of scalable servers (early cloud computing), and also received the ACM Mark Weiser award for 2009.  He received an MS and Ph.D. in EECS from the MIT, and a BS in EECS from UC Berkeley. He was named a "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum, by the Industry Standard as the "most influential person on the architecture of the Internet", by InfoWorld as one of their top ten innovators, by Technology Review as one of the top 100 most influential people for the 21st century (the "TR100"), and by Forbes as one of their 12 "e-mavericks", for which he appeared on the cover.

Summary of the Seminar
Eric Brewer is Professor of Computer Science at the University of California Berkeley where he leads the Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER) research group.

Dr. Brewer spoke about the role for technology in effective development strategies at the base of the pyramid.

The history of development to date has been characterized by large agencies funding big projects with strings attached, usually in the form of debt or demands for political allegiance. These kinds of projects are hampered by their scale and the requirement to work with corrupt governments. They typically include little role for new technology as projects move slowly and lack the expertise to facilitate this.

Outside the sphere of traditional development, technology is having a major impact on economic prosperity. The mobile phone revolution, driven by bottom up demand, provides enormous advantages to any worker operating in a large radius. A taxi driver given a mobile phone, for example, will increase his revenue by 60% on average. Other bottom-up businesses have seen major success. The Village Phone scheme, which runs as a franchise model with capital coming from microfinance, now covers the majority of Bangladeshi villages. A village phone lady will make on average two times the income she would have done from farming.

However, the mobile phone remains a largely urban phenomenon since cellular networks require a certain density of users before they can economically justify the installation of a base station. The availability of an internet connection is crucial for the viability of businesses and services in rural areas.  WiFi-based Long Distance networks (WiLDNet) are emerging as a potential low-cost alternative to traditional connectivity solutions for rural regions. Unlike mesh networks, which use omni-directional antennas to cater to short ranges, WiLD networks are comprised of point-to-point wireless links that use directional antennas with line of sight over long distances.

Eric's Berkeley research team has partnered with Aravind Eye Hospital in Theni in the southern India state of Tamil Nadu to use this technology to address the problem of blindness in the region, 70% of which is treatable. The long-distance wireless network they have installed is allowing eye specialists to interview and examine patients in five remote clinics via high-quality video conferencing. 25,000 patients have recovered sight using this system and it is set to expand to 50 centers covering 2.5 million people.

Eric's team has also worked on software that addresses local educational needs in developing regions. In poorly resourced schools, students will often be sharing a mouse and computer screen with a group of others. Metamouse gives each student their own mouse to use; when answering questions all users must agree on a location before progressing. This encourages collaboration between students and has had impressive results in boys in particular, with a 50% improvement in scoring compared to each user having their own PC.

Abstract
One of the biggest themes of the 21st century is interconnection -- specifically, the interconnection of people and data.  These interconnections can change everything about how we see the world, how the world sees us, and how we work together.  Where some people might see "big brother," I see empowerment -- empowerment of groups and individuals to improve quality of life and reduce our impact on the planet. 

Megan Smith oversees teams that manage early-stage partnerships, explorations and technology licensing. She also leads the Google.org team, guiding strategy and developing new partnerships and internal projects with Google's engineering and product teams. She joined Google in 2003 and has led several of the company's acquisitions, including Keyhole (Google Earth), Where2Tech (Google Maps), and Picasa. She also co-led the company's early work with publishers for Google Book Search. Previously, Megan was the CEO and, earlier, COO of PlanetOut, the leading gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender online community. Under her leadership, PlanetOut grew tenfold in reach and revenue. Prior to that, Megan was at General Magic for six years working on handheld communications products and partnerships. She also worked in multimedia at Apple Japan in Tokyo.

Over the years, Megan has contributed to a wide range of engineering projects, such as designing an award-winning bicycle lock; working on a space station construction research project that eventually flew on the U.S. space shuttle; and running a field-research study on solar cookstoves in South America. She was also a member of the MIT-Solectria student team that designed, built, and raced a solar car in the first cross-continental solar car race, covering 2000 miles of the Australian outback. She was selected as one of the 100 World Economic Forum technology pioneers for 2001 and 2002.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from MIT, where she now serves on the board. She completed her master's thesis work at the MIT Media Lab.

Summary of the Seminar
Megan Smith, Vice President, New Business Development and General Manager, Google.org., argued that greater interconnectedness achieved by information technology is a major liberating force in the world. Whether it is aiding the coordination of protests or increasing transparency of governments, the exchange of information has huge benefits. This is not a new phenomenon. In places where people have been able to exchange information easily, social progress has followed. Megan cited the example of Seneca Falls, New York where the canal system allowed for extensive communication; it became significant in both the women's rights and abolition movements.

While a large proportion of the world is benefiting from greater interconnectedness, Africa still lacks the infrastructure to take full advantage. Submarine fiber optic cables are necessary for quick and cheap internet cables and many African countries, particularly in the east, are not connected to these, relying instead on satellites. This is likely to change over the next few years, bringing great potential for further development.

The mission of Google.org is to use technology to drive solutions to global challenges such as climate change, pandemic disease and poverty. The organization was set up as part of a commitment to devote approximately one percent of Google's equity plus one percent of annual profits to philanthropy, along with employee time.  Google.org now places its strategic focus on those projects that can leverage the resources of Google staff, particularly its engineers.

Current projects that harness the power of information include:

• Google Flu Trends: This uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity up to two weeks earlier than traditional methods. This system has almost 90% accuracy in real time flu prediction and is therefore an extremely useful tool for health delivery agencies. It is now being used in 30 countries. Google is also starting to work in Cambodia to collect data around SARS.
• Google Power Meter provides a system for consumers to understand their in-home energy use and to take steps to reducing this. The Meter receives information from utility smart meters and in-home energy management devices and visualizes this information on iGoogle (a personalized Google homepage).The premise underlying this project is that greater information is going to be crucial to tackling climate change and consumers ought to be able to be empowered to make informed decisions about their energy use.
• Disaster relief: In response to the Haitian earthquake, a team of engineers worked with the U.S. Department of State to create an online People Finder gadget so that people can submit information about missing persons and to search the database. Google Earth satellite images have also been used to document the extent of damage.