Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford’s Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the HANDA Center for Human Rights and International Justice, UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center, and the Civic Space Initiative invite you to participate in a roundtable discussion with Clément Voule, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, on the role of technology companies in defending freedom of assembly and association online.
In recent years, the right to free assembly and association online has been challenged from numerous sides, often under the pretext of national security, public order, morality, and prevention of abuse. These restrictions include blocking of groups and websites focused on minority groups, large-scale Internet shutdowns, mass online harassment and doxing campaigns, and the use of facial recognition software to identify protesters. Violations of offline rights are spilling over into online spaces, where their impact ripples through entire societies. This creates an urgent need for the protection of these rights in new domains. The United Nations is seeking input from the private sector, academic experts, and the broader public on how to protect these shrinking spaces.
Participants are invited to share cases in which individual and collective rights to peacefully assemble online were violated. The conversation will inform the Special Rapporteur’s report to the United Nations Human Rights Council on threats to free assembly in the digital realm and how they can be addressed.
Lunch will be provided prior to the event.
We Look forward to your attendance at this special event.
CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.
In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.
In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.
In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.
His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).
Encina Hall, C150
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Didi Kuo is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is a scholar of comparative politics with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform. She is the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t (Oxford University Press) and Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
She has been at Stanford since 2013 as the manager of the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective and is co-director of the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL. She was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America and is a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Emory University.
Francis Fukuyama sits down with Cameron Munter to discuss his latest book. Listen here.
Francis Fukuyama sits down with The World's Carol Hills to go over the identity politics of 2018. Listen here.
Francis Fukuyama joins Nick Gillespie for a thoughtful Q&A on the rise of populism in the West and the role of identity politics in thwarting the end of history. Read here.
Miriam Golden is Professor of Political Science. She was educated at the University of California at Berkeley, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Cornell University. Professor Golden's research is in the area of political economy. She has conducted field research on issues of corruption and political malfeasance in Europe, Asia, and Africa. With economist Raymond Fisman, Professor Golden has recently authored Corruption: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2017). Her current field project concerns political responsiveness in Pakistan. She is also engaged in a cross-national and historical study of how and when politicians secure reelection.Image
Join members from the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age for a panel discussion and Q&A, moderated by Frank Fukuyama, Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), on the opportunities and challenges for electoral integrity created by technological innovations. The panel will explore the challenges to electoral integrity arising from the global spread of digital technologies and social media platforms, policy measures that can address these challenges, and opportunities that technological innovation offers for strengthening electoral integrity and political participation.
About the Commission:
Kofi Annan was a lifelong advocate for the right of every citizen to have a say in how they are governed, and by whom. He was adamant that democratic governance and citizen empowerment were integral elements to achieving sustainable development, security and lasting peace, and this principle guides much of the work of the Foundation, most notably the Electoral Integrity Initiative. As one of his last major initiatives, in 2018 Mr. Annan convened the Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age. The Commission named Stephen Stedman, senior fellow at FSI and deputy director of CDDRL to serve as its Secretary General. The chair of the commission is former president of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla. They are joined by Nathaniel Persily, Stanford Law Professor, and Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia who is now an affiliate of FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and other members from civil society and government, the technology sector, academia and media.
RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/elections-and-democracy-in-the-digital-age…
Koret-Taube Conference Center, Gunn-SIEPR Building
366 Galvez St.
Stanford, CA 94305
Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.
Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.
Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.
Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.
(October 2025)
Abstract:
"The way that the economy has developed over the past generation is actually gone contrary to a lot of the existing economic models. The Simon Kuznetz phenomenon says it's not just globalization, it's economic growth. As the country is modernizing, as it's growing economically, it does lead to an increase in inequality. When you reach a certain level of income, the inequality starts to decrease. That was the experience in Europe, in the 19th and 20th century, that was the case in the United States and so forth. That has not been the case of the countries that have been growing rapidly in recent years, where inequality has continued to increase," says CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama. Watch here.
