Honors students explore challenges of policy implementation, assessment in Washington, D.C.
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In mid-September, honors students from the Interschool Honors Programs convened by FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Center for International Security and Cooperation traveled to Washington, D.C., with their faculty advisors for senior-level meetings and policy briefings. They met with senior U.S. government officials from the White House, State Department, Homeland Security, and the intelligence community, with representatives of international organizations such as the World Bank, and NGOs, think tanks and other policy forums engaged in international affairs.
CDDRL Policy Briefings
Led by CDDRL Director and FSI Senior Fellow Larry Diamond, Deputy Director and FSI Senior Fellow Kathryn Stoner, and FSI's %people5%, CDDRL students engaged in policy discussions with the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, the World Bank, the National Security Council, the Center for International Private Enterprise, the Inter-American Dialogue and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Sessions were held at the Open Society Institute founded by George Soros and the Community of Democracies. Students met at the U.S. State Department with Policy Planning staff and the Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs for frank discussions of U.S. policy priorities, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and the transformative effects that emerging economic powers, such as China, India and Brazil are exerting on trade, credit, investment, innovation and governance of major and political and economic institutions.
During these sessions, CDDRL students delved into efforts to advance and secure democracy, economic development, good governance, rule of law, corruption control, civil society, and a free media. In the current environment, marked by repression in many countries, multi-pronged efforts to help ensure that the pluralistic institutions of a vibrant civil society are allowed to prosper took on particular importance. Another key issue was the role of information technologies, in building and supporting democracy, by creating a robust network of activists and promoting collective action.
“It was eye-opening to see the diverse mechanisms through which one can effect positive social change. I learned that it is possible to successfully bridge the two worlds of policy and academe. The meetings made me think about the many different routes to a possible career in the dynamic world of Washington politics.” Kamil Dada ’11, CDDRL
"A key objective of the Washington trip is to expose these talented students to the challenges of policy formulation, implementation, and assessment, as they prepare to write their honors theses this academic year," said Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. For some students, it was a first exposure to the policy process in Washington. Others had interned in policy positions in the nation's capital and overseas, and used their opportunities in September to report back on findings of their previous work, renew contacts and glean new insight and information on evolving issues.
"The discussions we held with senior officials were full, frank, and often, off-the-record to give the students a firsthand opportunity to engage in candid exchange on major issues and to pose probing questions," said Larry Diamond, CDDRL Director. "The players, issues, and dilemmas that arise in the policy process are not always evident from the outside."
CISAC: Focus on Security Issues
The students in CISAC's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies-led in Washington by Martha Crenshaw, FSI Senior Fellow and professor (by courtesy) in the Political Science Department; Lynn Eden, Senior Research Scholar and CISAC Associate Director for Research; and teaching assistant Michael Sulmeyer, a CISAC pre-doctoral fellow and third-year Stanford law student-focused on major national and international security issues, including nuclear weapons policy like the new START Treaty to reduce nuclear arms and the Nuclear Posture Review, and counter-terrorism issues such as intelligence gathering and regional analysis. CISAC students first met with four veteran national security reporters at The New York Times, and later with members of the intelligence community, including the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, and the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Christopher Kojm.
“This was my first visit to Washington, and I could not have asked for a more comprehensive or enjoyable introduction to the nation’s capital. The broad array of institutions and people we experienced was a salient reminder of just how diverse this country truly is.” Devin Banerjee ’11, CISAC
Students also met with Paul Stockton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs. Prior to his government service, Stockton had been a scholar at CISAC and had taught CISAC honors students for three years. CISAC students met with Antony Blinken, who serves as National Security Adviser to Vice President Biden. The students also were exposed to research and publication think-tanks like the Brookings Institution, RAND Corporation, the Center for a New American Security and the New America Foundation. At the end of CISAC's first week in the capital, the students met a dozen Washington-based alumni of the program over dinner, where alumni provided valuable research resources and job advice to their younger counterparts.
"The Washington component of CISAC's honors program provides an invaluable opportunity for our students to learn how the policy-making process works, explore the complexities of international security, and test their preliminary ideas about the topic they have chosen for their honors thesis," said Martha Crenshaw. "In turn, the officials we meet invariably wish to spend longer with our students, some even rearranging their schedules (or trying!) to continue a fascinating and candid conversation."
Highlight: The National Security Council
A major highlight of this year's trip, for both the CISAC and the CDDRL students, was a policy discussion at the National Security Council with two leading Stanford political scientists and foreign policy experts serving in the Obama administration. Political Science Professor Michael A. McFaul, former director of CDDRL and deputy director of FSI, is now Senior Director for Russia on the National Security Council and the president's top advisor on Russia, and Assistant Professor Jeremy M. Weinstein, an affiliated CISAC and CDDRL faculty member, serves as Director for Democracy on the National Security Staff. Students engaged in a lively discussion of U.S. foreign policy priorities, U.S.-Russian relations, democracy, human rights and economic development.
"Our honors students are fortunate to have the chance to engage in high-level policy discussions, especially with Stanford faculty members serving in Washington," said Coit D. Blacker, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, who directs the CISAC honors program with Martha Crenshaw and who, under President Clinton, served as special assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council. "Direct exposure to the policymaking process, with all its promise and pitfalls, will make them better scholars and future thought leaders."
"I was struck by the innovative ways in which certain agencies approach democracy promotion," said CDDRL honors student Ayeesha Lalji '11. "I think the struggle is often in packaging programs in the right way so that an impervious nation becomes more open to a vital component of social, political, or economic development."
"The discussions with prominent policy thinkers and current and former senior officials made a deep impression on our students," said Larry Diamond, CDDRL Director. "These young people--who will go on themselves to be leaders in these fields-- got a vivid sense of how the policy process really works, and why service in government and public affairs is, despite the frequent frustrations, an exciting and noble mission."
"CISAC's ten days in Washington provide our students exceptional access to practitioners of various types and at all levels of the policy world, as well as inside knowledge of today's critical issues," said Martha Crenshaw. "The experience also establishes a solid foundation for a year-long intellectual experience in a weekly research seminar devoted to producing a thesis that makes an original contribution to the field of international security."
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Erik Jensen's Afghan Legal Education Project wins new grant
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An Afghan legal education project led by CDDRL affiliated faculty Erik Jensen, co-director of Stanford Law School's Rule of Law Program, and former Stanford law students Alexander Benard and Eli Sugerman has won adherents among Afghan students eager to learn the country's new laws and top Afghan officials, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court. The group's three online text books, with a fourth to be published this fall, have been so successful that the U.S. State Department has just awarded Stanford $1.3 million to continue the work.
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Economic Modernization in Late British India: Hindu-Muslim Differences
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The Muslims of South Asia made the transition to modern economic life more slowly than the region’s Hindus. In the first half of the twentieth century, they were relatively less likely to use large-scale and long-living economic organizations, and less likely to serve on corporate boards. Providing evidence, this paper also explores the institutional roots of the difference in communal trajectories. Whereas Hindu inheritance practices favored capital accumulation within families and the preservation of family fortunes across generations, the Islamic inheritance system, which the British helped to enforce, tended to fragment family wealth. The family trusts (waqfs) that Muslims used to preserve assets across generations hindered capital pooling among families, and they were ill-suited to profit-seeking business. Whereas Hindus generally pooled capital within durable joint family enterprises, Muslims tended to use ephemeral Islamic partnerships. Hindu family businesses facilitated the transition to modern corporate life by imparting skills useful in large and durable organizations.
Timur Kuran is Professor of Economics and Political Science, and Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. His research focuses on social change, including the evolution of preferences and institutions. He has just completed a book, The Long Divergence (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2010), on the role that Islam played in the economic rise of the Middle East and, subsequently, in the institutional stagnation that accompanied the region's slip into a state of underdevelopment. Some of the archival work on which this book was based will be published, also in 2010, as a ten-volume bi-lingual set entitled Kadı Sicilleri. Among Kuran's earlier publications are Private Truths,(Harvard University Press, Işığında 17. Yüzyıl İstanbul'unda Ekonomik Yaşam / Economic Life in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul, as Reflected in Court Registers Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification 1995) and Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton University Press, 2004), each translated into several languages, including Turkish.
Link to paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1656038
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Timur Kuran
Professor of Economics and Political Science
Speaker
Duke University
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From Beirut to Baghdad to Kabul: Civil War, Sectarianism, Occupation, Resistance and Counterinsurgency
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Born in New York in 1977, Nir Rosen has been reporting from Iraq since April of 2003 and has spent most of the last seven and a half years in Iraq. He recently returned from a trip to seven provinces in the country. He has also reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Mexico, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Turkey and Egypt. He has written for magazines such as The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and most major American publications. He has filmed documentaries. He is a Fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security. His new book, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World, is about occupation, resistance, sectarianism and civil war from Iraq to Lebanon to Afghanistan.
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Nir Rosen
Writer, journalist, filmaker and Fellow
Speaker
The Center on Law and Security, NYU School of Law
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Database of Political Institutions
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Philip Keefer is a Lead Research Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. Since receiving his PhD in Economics from Washington University at St. Louis, he has worked continuously on the interaction of institutions, political economy and economic development. His research has included investigations of the impact of insecure property rights on economic growth; the effect of political credibility on the policy choices of governments; and the sources of political credibility in democracies and autocracies. It has appeared in journals that span economics and political science, ranging from the Quarterly Journal of Economics to the American Review of Political Science, and has been influenced by his work in a wide range of countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, México, Perú, Pakistan and the Philippines.
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Philip Keefer
Lead Research Economist
Speaker
World Bank
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Democracy and Conflict: Lessons from Afghanistan
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Ben Rowswell is a Canadian diplomat with a specialization in statebuilding and stabilization. As Representative of Canada in Kandahar from 2009 to 2010 he directed the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team, leading a team of more than 100 American and Canadian diplomats, aid workers, civilian police and other experts in strengthening the provincial government at the heart of the Afghan conflict. Having served before that as Deputy Head of Mission in Kabul, Rowswell brings a practitioner's knowledge of Afghanistan and of statebuilding in general to the CDDRL.
His previous conflict experience includes two years as Canada's Chargé d'Affaires in Iraq between 2003 and 2005, and with the UN in Somalia in 1993. He has also served at the Canadian embassy in Egypt and the Permanent Mission to the UN, and as a foreign policy advisor to the federal Cabinet in Ottawa. An alumnus of the National Democratic Institute, he founded the Democracy Unit of the Canadian foreign ministry.
Rowswell is a Senior Associate of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the co-editor of "Iraq: Preventing a New Generation of Conflict" (2007). He studied international relations at Oxford and at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
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Ben Rowswell
Encina Hall
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CDDRL Visiting Scholar 2010-11
Ben Rowswell is a Canadian diplomat with a specialization in statebuilding and stabilization. As Representative of Canada in Kandahar from 2009 to 2010 he directed the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team, leading a team of more than 100 American and Canadian diplomats, aid workers, civilian police and other experts in strengthening the provincial government at the heart of the Afghan conflict. Having served before that as Deputy Head of Mission in Kabul, Rowswell brings a practitioner's knowledge of Afghanistan and of statebuilding in general to the CDDRL.
His previous conflict experience includes two years as Canada's Chargé d'Affaires in Iraq between 2003 and 2005, and with the UN in Somalia in 1993. He has also served at the Canadian embassy in Egypt and the Permanent Mission to the UN, and as a foreign policy advisor to the federal Cabinet in Ottawa. An alumnus of the National Democratic Institute, he founded the Democracy Unit of the Canadian foreign ministry.
Rowswell is a Senior Associate of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the co-editor of "Iraq: Preventing a New Generation of Conflict" (2007). He studied international relations at Oxford and at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
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Progress, pitfalls as U.S. troops leave Iraq
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With the departure of the last U.S. combat brigade from Iraq, the Obama administration has taken a big step toward its goal of American military withdrawal form Iraq by the end of 2011, writes Larry Diamond for cnn.com. Although there are many other signs of progress, the new milestone in U.S. military disengagement comes at a moment when Iraq is starting to slip backward on the political and the security fronts.
With the departure of the last U.S. combat brigade from Iraq, the Obama administration has taken a large stride toward its goal of complete American military withdrawal from Iraq by the end of next year. And there are many other signs of progress.
The rate of Iraqi civilian deaths in political violence has fallen by 90 percent from its awful peak in 2006, before "the surge" in American forces and strategy began to roll back the insurgent challenge.
American military deaths in Iraq have fallen to 46 so far this year, by far the lowest level since the American invasion in March 2003, and again a 90 percent decline from the pace of casualties in 2007. In March of this year, Iraq held the most democratic election any Arab country has held in a generation (with the possible exception of Lebanon).
Unfortunately, however, the new milestone in U.S. military disengagement from Iraq comes at a moment when the country is starting to slip backward on both the political and security fronts.
Since the March 7 parliamentary election results were announced, the country's major political alliances have remained hopelessly deadlocked on the formation of a new coalition government. Despite months of negotiations and repeated imploring from high-level U.S. government officials, Iraq's major leaders and parties remain unable to agree on who should be prime minister or how power should be shared.
As Iraq staggers on essentially without a government, electricity and other services remain sporadic, economic reconstruction is delayed and terrorist violence is once again filling the breach. In the deadliest single incident in months, at least 48 people died and more than 140 were injured on Tuesday when a suicide bomber struck outside an army recruiting center in downtown Baghdad.
As the American troops withdraw, Iraq is also losing top government officials, judges and police officers to a rising pace of targeted assassinations. All of this has the familiar signature of al Qaeda in Iraq, although it is difficult to attribute responsibility among the shadowy web of insurgent groups.
Complicating the political impasse are deep continuing divisions along sectarian lines. Iraq's Sunni Arab minority -- which ruled under Saddam Hussein but was marginalized in the wake of his downfall -- bet heavily on the electoral process this time, in marked contrast to the first parliamentary election in 2005.
But the Sunni Arabs were the main group affected when more than 400 parliamentary candidates were disqualified earlier this year for alleged Baathist ties. Now they feel doubly aggrieved in that the political alliance they overwhelmingly supported in March -- former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's al-Iraqiya list -- is being blocked from leading the new government, even though it finished a narrow first in the voting.
The obstacle to a political solution in Baghdad is not only the pair of Shiite-dominated political lists (including that of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who finished second in the vote), but, it is widely believed, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which cannot abide an Iraqi prime minister over whom it does not exercise substantial leverage. Indeed, the only two interests that benefit from Iraq's drift are al Qaeda in Iraq and the hardliners in Iran.
President Obama deserves more than a little sympathy as he confronts this thorny situation. Although he opposed the war in Iraq, he essentially accepted the Bush administration's measured timetable for American military drawdown. Particularly at a time when the budget deficit is soaring and the war in Afghanistan demands more military and financial resources, Obama and most other Americans would like to be out of Iraq completely by yesterday.
But accelerating or even completing the timetable for American military withdrawal in Iraq may only compound the gathering crisis there, for two reasons.
First, as the recent spike in violence is meant to suggest, it is not yet clear that Iraq's security forces are even close to being able to handle the country's security on their own. Privately, most Iraqi political actors (Sunni, Shia and Kurd) would like to see some sort of continued American military presence well beyond 2011. Many worry not only about Iraq's internal security but also about growing Iranian dominance once the United States is completely gone.
And second, U.S. political influence declines markedly as the American military presence phases out.
The worst thing the United States could do at the moment is to take Iraq for granted.
The Obama administration has had the right instinct in trying to press for and facilitate a political breakthrough in Baghdad, but more needs to be done and soon, while the United States still retains significant leverage.
The situation may now require the designation of a high-level American official or envoy to devote sustained attention to the stalemate in Iraq, while working closely with high-level representatives from the United Nations and the European Union. Such combined diplomatic leverage and mediation broke a dangerous political stalemate in Iraq in 2005 and might help again.
One thing should be clear. No matter what one may think of the original decision to invade Iraq (which I still believe was a mistake), Iraq has come too far and the United States has paid too dearly to now stand by and watch it sink back needlessly into chaos.
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Mobile Development Meets Design Thinking
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A class was given in the dSchool last spring. In this class small interdisciplinary teams focused on a term-long design project, taking advantage of the design process structures and methods that have been developed in the d.school. The course developed as a collaboration between Stanford, the University of Nairobi and Nokia Africa Research Center. The focus area was finding ICT solutions to the healthcare needs of people living in Kibera slum outside Nairobi.
Under the guidance of Jussi Impiö at Nokia and the Computer Science faculty, 27 students from the University of Nairobi Computer Science department conducted need finding studies at a number of health-related sites, including clinics, hospitals, community health workers, community leaders, and government offices. They read background materials, made observations, and talked with a wide variety of stakeholders. Their reports became the basis of the Stanford teams' initial understanding of users and needs. Communication with the group in Nairobi was also maintained throughout the course, using a Facebook group to facilitate discussions, as well as several teleconference sessions.
Working in small teams, 20 Stanford students from a wide range of disciplines worked over 10 weeks to develop initial design concepts to respond to some of the needs that had been identified. Click on the title of each project to view their final presentations:
- mNote: an online archive for community health worker notes. This application empowers community health workers by preserving the flexibility and control they appreciate in their current paper notebooks, but adding digital knowledge management capabilities.
- M-MAJI ("mobile water"): an electronic information system that allows people to use their mobile phones to identify clean water sources in their community. The application seeks to decrease the time and money spent searching for water, improve water quality, and foster vendor accountability by providing a mechanism for user feedback.
- Babybank: a dedicated savings plan designed specifically for pregnant women in the slums of Nairobi. By leveraging a popular cell phone payment system, M-Pesa, the application aims to make savings easier, so that expecting mothers can afford the services that will keep themselves and their babies healthy.
- Mazanick: an application to provide support and advice to pregnant women via SMS, with the aim of helping motivate them to attend prenatal appointments.
- PillCheck (Kifaa cha Tenbe): a mobile application to help people in Kibera find information on the availability and pricing of malaria drugs quickly.
- PatientMap :a system to make the waiting process in clinics more transparent, and to increase patient trust in the medical system.
This summer, two follow up trips are planned, with Nairobi students due to spend several weeks at Stanford, while a number of students from the Stanford group will visit Nairobi to explore possibilities for developing their projects further. Building on the success and lessons learnt so far, the Designing Liberation Technologies course will be open to a new set of students next academic year.
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Joshua Cohen
Program on Global Justice
Encina Hall West, Room 404
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
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jcohen57@stanford.edu
Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, and Professor of Political Science, Philosophy, and Law
Joshua Cohen is a professor of law, political science, and philosophy at Stanford University, where he also teaches at the d.school and helps to coordinate the Program on Liberation Technology. A political theorist trained in philosophy, Cohen has written extensively on issues of democratic theory—particularly deliberative democracy and the implications for personal liberty, freedom of expression, and campaign finance—and global justice. Cohen is author of On Democracy (1983, with Joel Rogers); Associations and Democracy (1995, with Joel Rogers); Philosophy, Politics, Democracy (2010); The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays (2011); and Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (2011). Since 1991, he has been editor of Boston Review, a bi-monthly magazine of political, cultural, and literary ideas. Cohen is currently a member of the faculty of Apple University.
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Terry Winograd
Gates Computer Science 3B
Room 388
Stanford, CA 94305-9035
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winograd@cs.stanford.edu
Professor of Computer Science
founding faculty member at Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford
and CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
Terry Winograd is a co-leader of the Liberation Technology program at CDDRL and Professor of Computer Science in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. His research focus is on human-computer interaction design, especially theoretical background and conceptual models. He directs the teaching programs and HCI research in the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group, and is also a founding faculty member of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.
Prof. Winograd was a founding member and former president of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. He is on a number of journal editorial boards, including Human Computer Interaction, ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, and Informatica. Some of his publications includes Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design (Addison-Wesley, 1987) and Usability: Turning Technologies into Tools (Oxford, 1992).
Terry Winograd received a B.A. in Mathematics from The Colorado College in 1966 and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from M.I.T in 1970.
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