Creating Sustainable Livelihoods in Poor Regions
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Claire Hunsaker, VP of Product Management and Strategy: Claire manages Samasource's microwork platform, worker training and management tools, and corporate websites. She is responsible for keeping Samasource at the leading edge of virtual work technologies and integrating Samasource products with clients and service partners. Prior to Samasource, Claire was Director of Virtual Agent Acquisition at LiveOps and she has also worked in rural Vietnam with ADAPT to combat anti-human trafficking on the Vietnam/Cambodia border. As a management consultant with Katzenbach Partners, she supported national technology companies and non-profits with strategic planning. Claire holds a BA in English with departmental honors from Columbia College, and an MA in English Literature from the University of London, and an MBA from Stanford.
Co-sponsored by Stanford Association for International Development (SAID).
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Claire Hunsaker
VP of Product Management and Strategy
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Samasource
Seminars
Traditional Governance, Citizen Engagement and Local Public Goods: Evidence from Mexico
In developing countries authority is often wielded unevenly. Tribes, clans, religious groups and other traditional leaders control zones of governance outside of the reach of the state. The accepted view has been that traditional authorities are a historical burden to developing societies striving to modernize.
Alison Renteln speaks on culture as a human right
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On February 22, Professor Alison Renteln of the University of Southern California spoke during the seventh installment of the Sanela Diana Jenkins Speaker Series hosted by the Program on Human Rights at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. During her lecture entitled, "The Right to Culture as a Human Right: Law in a Multicultural World," Renteln challenged the universality of human rights, a claim previously debated by prior series' speakers.
Assessing the "monocultural paradigm of human rights," Renteln argued in favor of what she termed the human right to practice and enjoy one's culture. She maintained that legal systems must protect this fundamental human right by allowing defendants to employ a "cultural defense" and to voice relevant cultural motivations during court proceedings. She cited three main instances in which such a cultural defense has been used: to lessen the sentence in criminal cases, to be granted exemption from a policy, or to receive additional compensation when an abuse disproportionately affects a person because of cultural considerations.
Renteln presented recent court cases in both Canada and the United States brought against members of the Sikh faith. A central tenet of the Sikh faith is to wear the kirpan, a dagger that must constantly be carried on the person of all Sikhs. Renteln contested that in these cases, the courts must respect the cultural meaning of the kirpan, symbol of non-violence or ahimsa, and grant Sikhs the right to uphold their cultural tradition. With this example, Renteln demonstrated how courts must "make room for culture" in the evidence presented during the case.
Renteln concluded with a discussion on the hierarchy of cultural rights and other forms of human rights. For example, she questioned whether the Amish's right to practice their culture superseded the right of all Amish children to be educated. In her consideration of more questionable and often heatedly debated practices, she proposed that no cultural practice that inflicts "irreparable harm" on individuals should be allowed or supported. However, she admitted that defining practices which violate this standard can often be difficult.
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Children in Crisis Project
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Paul Wise is a clinical professor of pediatrics and a CHP/PCOR core faculty member. His work focuses on children's health policy; health disparities by race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status; and the interaction of genetics and the environment as these factors influence child and maternal health.
Before coming to Stanford in July 2004, he was a professor of pediatrics at Boston University and vice-chief of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He previously served as director of emergency and primary care services at the Children's Hospital of Boston, and as director of the Harvard Institute for Reproductive and Child Health at Harvard Medical School. He has also served as a special expert at the National Institutes of Health and as special assistant to the U.S. Surgeon General.
Wise has worked to improve healthcare practices and policies in developing countries. He is involved in child health projects in India, South Africa and Latin America, targeting diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS. He currently chairs the steering committee of the NIH's Global Network for Maternal and Child Health Research, and he has served on many other boards and committees including the Physicians' Task Force on Hunger and the American Academy of Pediatrics' Consortium on Health Disparities. He has received honors from organizations including the American Public Health Association, the March of Dimes, and the New York Academy of Medicine.
He received a BA in Latin American studies from Cornell University, an MD from Cornell University and an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed a residency in pediatrics at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston.
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Paul H. Wise
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Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Dr. Paul Wise is dedicated to bridging the fields of child health equity, public policy, and international security studies. He is the Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society and Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology and Developmental Medicine, and Health Policy at Stanford University. He is also co-Director, Stanford Center for Prematurity Research and a Senior Fellow in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Wise is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been working as the Juvenile Care Monitor for the U.S. Federal Court overseeing the treatment of migrant children in U.S. border detention facilities.
Wise received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in Latin American Studies and his M.D. degree from Cornell University, a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and did his pediatric training at the Children’s Hospital in Boston. His former positions include Director of Emergency and Primary Care Services at Boston Children’s Hospital, Director of the Harvard Institute for Reproductive and Child Health, Vice-Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and was the founding Director or the Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention, Stanford University School of Medicine. He has served in a variety of professional and consultative roles, including Special Assistant to the U.S. Surgeon General, Chair of the Steering Committee of the NIH Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research, Chair of the Strategic Planning Task Force of the Secretary’s Committee on Genetics, Health and Society, a member of the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH, and the Health and Human Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant and Maternal Mortality.
Wise’s most recent U.S.-focused work has addressed disparities in birth outcomes, regionalized specialty care for children, and Medicaid. His international work has focused on women’s and child health in violent and politically complex environments, including Ukraine, Gaza, Central America, Venezuela, and children in detention on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Core Faculty, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Francis Fukuyama discusses the Post-Washington Consensus
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The American version of capitalism is no longer dominant around the world, writes FSI's Francis Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow resident at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and Nancy Birdsall, President of the Center for Global Development, in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. In the next decade, they say, developing countries are likely to continue to trade the flexibility and efficiency associated with the free-market model for domestic policies meant to ensure greater resilience in the face of competitive pressures and global economic trauma.
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''Origins of Political Order - From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution'' book launch for Francis Fukuyama
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Please join the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law as we celebrate the publication of Francis Fukuyama's latest book, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, which will be released in April by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This first of a major two-volume work provides a sweeping account of how today's basic political institutions developed. Professor's Morris and Weingast will provide commentary and reflections on the book to engage in a substantive conversation about the important insights that Fukuyama highlights tracing the evolution of human history through the 18th century.
Book signing and reception to follow.
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), resident in FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, effective July 2010. He comes to Stanford from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.
Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent books are America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, and Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States.
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f.fukuyama@stanford.edu
Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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)
Global Populisms
A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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francis_fukuyama_cv_april_2024.pdf
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Barry Weingast
Professor of Political Science
Commentator
Stanford University
Ian Morris
Professor of History
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Stanford University
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