Dr. Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; a Stanford professor of political science, and sociology by courtesy; and coordinator of the Democracy Program at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). A specialist on democratic development and regime change and U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad, he is the founding co-editor of the Journal on Democracy.

He has written extensively on the factors that facilitate and obstruct democracy in developing countries and on problems of democracy, development, and corruption, particularly in Africa. He is the author of Squandered Victory:The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq; Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation; and Promoting Democracy in the 1990s.

He received a BA, MA, and PhD from Stanford University, all in Sociology.

For more information about this event, please refer to the article in The Stanford Report.

The Honorable Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

This is the second lecture in a series of lectures Dr. Toledo will give. His final lecture will be on May 14th.

Pamela Constable is the deputy foreign editor of The Washington Post. Previously she covered South Asia for The Washington Post for several years from April 1999, with extensive coverage of Afghanistan as well as both India and Pakistan.n She continues to visit and report from Afghanistan.

Before arriving in New Delhi in 1999, Constable worked for The Post from 1994 to 1998 covering immigration and Hispanic affairs in the Washington area, and reported from Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti and Cuba.

Prior to joining The Post, Constable worked for The Boston Globe as deputy Washington bureau chief and foreign policy reporter from June to September 1994. From 1983 until 1992, she was The Globe's roving foreign correspondent, Latin America correspondent and diplomatic correspondent. During this time she reported from Haiti, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, the Soviet Union and Brazil, as well as in Washington.

Her latest book is Fragments of Grace: My Search For Meaning in the Strife of South Asia. She is the co-author with Arturo Valenzuela of A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet and has written articles for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Current History and other publications. She was awarded an Alicia Patterson Fellowship in 1990 and the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for coverage of Latin America in 1993. Constable is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She received a B.A. from Brown University.

Levitsky received his doctoral degree from UC-Berkeley. His areas of research include political parties and party change, informal institutions and organizations, and political regimes and regime change. His primary regional interest is Latin America, with a particular focus on Argentina and Peru. He is author of Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2003). He is currently writing a book on the rise of competitive authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Africa, Asia, East-Central Europe, and the former Soviet Union during the post-Cold War era. He is also co-editing a book (with Gretchen Helmke) on informal institutions in Latin America.