Program on Social Entrepreneurship
"Transforming ripples into waves of transformational change across the world"
FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.
Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.
The Program on Social Entrepreneurship
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The Program on Social Entrepreneurship at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law seeks to actively integrate the on-the-ground experience of social entrepreneurs from around the world with cutting-edge academic research at Stanford University. Building a tangible bridge between academia and practice, the Program exposes students to new models of social change through innovative courses and provides practitioners the opportunity to build their individual and personal capacities as social change leaders.
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Anoop K. Sarbahi
616 Serra Street
Encina Hall West, Room 462
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6044
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sarbahi@stanford.edu
Affiliated Postdoctoral Scholar
Anoop Sarbahi is currently a visiting scholar in the Department of Political Science at Stanford. Previously, in addition to being a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford, Anoop has also held pre- and post-doctoral positions at Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his PhD in Political Science from UCLA in December 2011. He also holds an MPhil degree in Development Studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.
Anoop’s PhD dissertation is stimulated by the prevalence of a multitude of long-enduring ethnic insurgencies in a vast stretch of landmass extending between Northeast India and the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Drawing from these cases, which are often referred to as peripheral civil wars, his dissertation offers a nuanced understanding of civil war outcomes. His findings – based on a new dataset on 166 peripheral rebel groups and in-depth analysis of three ethnic secessionist movements in Northeast India – demonstrates that the social embeddedness of a peripheral rebel group is a better predictor of conflict outcome than more commonly studied correlates. He is currently revising the dissertation into a book manuscript and the cross-case empirical analysis presented in this work is forthcoming in Comparative Political Studies.
Sarbahi’s expertise is particularly in geospatial and geostatistical analysis involving satellite imagery and geographical information systems (GIS). His research on drone strikes in Pakistan, co-authored with Patrick Johnston at RAND, has been widely cited in academic, policy and media publications. His other current research projects involve investigating the determinants of rebel recruitment, the effects of the post-World War II occupation and division of Germany, the impact of development on conflict dynamics in India and identifying and accounting for peripheral groups and regions within countries.
Sarbahi's research has received recognition and support from numerous sources, including the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) at the University of California, San Diego, and UCLA’s International Institute and Asia Institute.
Stanford researchers fight human trafficking
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Human trafficking is a global phenomenon that each year forces millions into lives as prostitutes, laborers, child soldiers, and domestic servants. Traffickers prey on the weak and vulnerable, targeting young victims with promises of a better life. This modern form of slavery impacts every continent and type of economy, while the industry continues to grow with global profits reaching nearly $32 billion annually. In spite of these mounting figures, prosecution and conviction rates are not increasing relative to the surge in these crimes. According to the U.S. State Department, for every 800 people trafficked in 2006, only one person was convicted.
As the size and scope of human trafficking increase, less is known about the root causes of human trafficking on this new scale. A better understanding of the conditions that give rise to human trafficking – income inequality, rural poor populations, cultural norms, and gender disparities – will bring the international community closer to curbing the growth of this criminal industry. Understanding how multi-lateral institutions – from the World Bank to the United Nations – may unwittingly encourage the industry will lead to more informed policies for its eradication.
The Program on Human Rights (PHR) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law is launching a new research initiative on human trafficking to address these challenges and generate new knowledge on this issue of international concern. Working in collaboration with Stanford faculty and students, this project will draw on research underway across the university to create a forum on human trafficking. The goal is to produce collaborative research and policy recommendations to better address the multiple dimensions of human trafficking.
"This research collaborative will shift the agenda on human trafficking from one that has adopted a criminal-legal paradigm to one that focuses on all the pre-conditions for trafficking," said Helen Stacy, director of the Program on Human Rights. "Interdisciplinary tools drawing on law, health, gender, and psychology will introduce an integrated approach to this critical area of study."
The speaker series will begin Dec. 12 at a private research workshop featuring Madeleine Rees, the United Nation's representative in post-genocide Bosnia, and Laryssa Kondracki, director of The Whistleblower. Rees is known for her efforts to expose the U.N. for its failure to shut down brothels in Bosnia where they were actively used for human trafficking. The Whistleblower documents this story and helped ignite a debate at the U.N. over this problem.
The Dec. 12 workshop will bring together a multidisciplinary group of Stanford faculty, researchers, and students working on aspects of human trafficking in preparation for the launch of the 2012 speakers series offered in the winter quarter. The 2012 roster of speakers represent a diverse group of those advancing research, policy and activism on human trafficking.
Participants include: Rosi Orozco, Mexican congressional representative and anti-trafficking leader; Bradley Myles, executive director and CEO of Polaris-USA; and Dr. Mohammed Mattar, executive director of the Protection project at Johns Hopkins Univeristy. Stanford researchers will be paired with speakers to pursue original research on the causal factors impacting this field of study.
The 2012 Human Trafficking is Global Slavery speakers series is funded by Diana Jenkins, founder of the Sanela Diana Jenkins Foundation for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The series is free and open to the public. It will meet on Tuesdays from Jan. 10 to Mar. 13 at the Bechtel Conference Center at Encina Hall, Stanford. It is available to Stanford students as a 1-unit course cross-listed under INTNLREL 110, IPS 271, and POLISCI204.
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CDDRL now accepting applications for Pre and Postdoctoral Fellowship
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The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is currently accepting applications from pre-doctoral students at the write-up stage and from new postdoctoral scholars working in any of the four program areas of democracy, development, evaluating the efficacy of democracy promotion, and rule of law. Applicants working at the intersection of two or more of these issue areas will receive preferential consideration. The Center expects to award three to four fellowships for the 2012-13 academic year.
For additional information about the program and application procedures, please visit our fellowship page at: http://cddrl.stanford.edu/fellowships/cddrl_fellowships
Applications are due by January 31, 2012.
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Mexico’s Fight for Security
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Since 2006, more than 40,000 people in Mexico have died in drug-related homicides, and recent figures indicate that the pace and severity of drug-related violence is increasing. Experiencing a significant breakdown of its rule of law, the population of Ciudad Juárez alone suffered more than 3,000 homicides in 2010, making it the most dangerous city anywhere in the world. Dr. Poiré Romero will address the characteristics of the security situation in Mexico, the historical events and situations that made it what it is now, and the current strategy that the Federal Government is implementing to achieve security. Dr. Poiré’s talk will be completely off-the-record, and is by invitation only.
Speaker biography:
On September 9, 2011, Dr. Alejandro Poiré Romero was appointed as Director of Mexico´s National Security Agency by President Felipe Calderón. Prior to that, Dr. Poiré served as Secretary of the National Security Council and Cabinet, and has held a variety of cabinet-level positions since 2007. He also worked as an adviser to the National Institute of Statistics on the creation of the first National Survey on Political Culture and Citizenship Practices. He has published several academic pieces analyzing public opinion, campaign dynamics and voting behavior in Mexico, in addition to two books on Mexico’s democratic process, Towards Mexico’s Democratization: Parties, Campaigns, Elections, and Public Opinion and Mexico's Pivotal Democratic Election.
Dr. Poiré holds a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University, and a Bachelor’s degree in the same field from Mexico’s Autonomous Technological Institute (ITAM), where he has been a professor and the Political Science Department Chair. He has also been a visiting researcher and lecturer at several institutions in the USA, including MIT, and Latin America.
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Alejandro Poiré Romero
Director of Mexico’s National Security Agency
Speaker
Seminars
Jorge Olarte
Encina Hall
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jolarte@stanford.edu
Undergraduate Intern
Jorge Olarte is a senior at Stanford University majoring in Political
Science and pursuing the Research Honors Track Program. At Stanford he
has been involved with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International
Studies through the Rural Education Action Program (REAP) and CDDRL’s
Program on Poverty and Governance. His areas of interest include
criminal violence, authoritarian regimes, democratization, governance,
and state building. He is currently studying the patterns of violence
in Mexico throughout the democratization period and the effects of
government interventions on drug trafficking networks. Other research
projects have involved fieldwork in China and Guatemala. During 2010
he studied at Peking University through Stanford’s Bing Overseas
Studies Program.
In 2012, he co-founded the Forum for Cooperation Understanding and
Solidarity (FoCUS), a student-run organization headquartered at
Stanford University and at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de
México (ITAM). Through this partnership, students from both
universities are attempting to develop and strengthen a network of
young leaders committed to improving the academic, cultural and
diplomatic exchange between the United States and Mexico.
Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program recruitment opens
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The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program is recruiting rising leaders from around the world to join the 2012 program scheduled for July 22-August 10 at Stanford University. Entering its eighth year, the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program is run by the faculty and staff at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The deadline to apply is December 12, 2011.
The program is funded by generous support from Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills.
A life changing experience I will never forget. I leave a much more informed and networked civil society leader. -Titus Gwemende, Zimbabwe (Class of 2011)
Each year, the program brings together a group of 25 to 30 mid-career practitioners in law, politics, government, private enterprise, civil society, and development from emerging and aspiring democracies. The three-week program provides a unique forum for emerging leaders to connect, exchange experiences, and receive academic training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work. Academic sessions are taught by an interdisciplinary team of leading Stanford faculty who are joined by an all-star roster of outside guest speakers.
Fellows emerge from the training program better equipped with new techniques and approaches to build democracy and economic development in their home countries. The 2012 class of Draper Hills Summer Fellows will join a network of 186 alumni from 57 developing democracies worldwide.
Previous Summer Fellows have served as presidential advisors, senators, lawyers, journalists, civic activists, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, and development practitioners, among others. Strong candidates should have substantial practical experience and play important emerging roles in their country's economic and social development. The program seeks applicants from countries where democracy and development are not firmly established, in the regions of Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Arab world. Successful applicants will have academic credentials necessary to participate and contribute to advanced academic sessions and a working knowledge of English.
The program is highly selective, receiving several hundred applications each year. To learn more about the program and to apply, please visit: http://draperhills.stanford.edu/. Applicants are encouraged to apply as early as possible, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
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McLaughlin speaks on the expansion of the internet and its risks
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Andrew McLaughlin, a lecturer at the Stanford Law School and the executive director of the Creative Commons delivered this inaugural lecture for the fall season of the liberation technology seminar series at Stanford. McLauglin argues that the internet originally evolved into a diffused and decentralized system amidst a small set of trusted organizations and security was not major concern at that stage. The expansion of the internet has created substantial risks, and some of these risks are in areas over which no entity is in charge. The question of who should address these and what role governments should play in it has implications for sovereignty and free speech.
In the current architecture of the internet, private organizations such as Certificate Authorities, browser makers, internet service providers and ICANN play an important and co-dependent role. Their decisions have implications for the smooth operation of the internet and security of the cyberspace. The growing importance of the internet to economies and increasing security risks makes a case for government intervention, and intervention in turn has implications for free speech. The significance of such entities based in foreign countries also raises questions of sovereignty.
While free speech and other considerations present a case for governments not to intervene in regulating the internet, the decentralized architecture of the internet presents collective action problems. Some of the security risks can be addressed only by collaborative effort between entities, but no entity has the mandate or the incentive to initiate the necessary changes. This presents a dilemma for the governments, and McLauglin argues that instead of dictating solutions governments can play a role in creating solutions by convening meetings amongst various key groups, and thus create the impetus to address the risks.
The talk also deals with issues such as whether the decentralized nature of the internet is under threat, and promising models to address some of the specific risks mentioned above.
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Constitution Day
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The Program on Liberation Technology at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law is building a ‘Constitution Explorer’ website that will host a structured database of constitutions to enable people to compare and contrast other countries' constitutions as they undergo their own national projects for constitutional change. For example, this interactive platform will allow users to learn how other emerging democracies have incorporated complex legal, political, and human rights clauses in their constitutions. Currently, most constitutions can be found online, but in order to understand how different constitutions have tackled a challenging issue (e.g. appointment of judges, role of religion, ect), one has to go through each constitution manually. Constitution Explorer will have a database where each article of each constitution is tagged by subject, allowing quick and meaningful searches.
When possible, Constitution Explorer will strive to provide translations of all text to lift the barrier of language and provide a discussion platform for our users to debate these important issues. The website will also host articles by legal and political experts on specific themes like empowerment of women or tackling corruption, helping to contextualize and unpack complex constitutional clauses and terminology for all to benefit from. All constitutional data from Constitution Explorer will be available in an open format for the wider community to contribute to this process.
How you can help: Participate in Constitution Day!
Saturday, November 12, 201
The Program on Liberation Technology is calling all legal enthusiasts, political scientists, and constitutional experts interested in contributing to a project that will aid activists, legal scholars, and the general public with the constitution writing process! Your participation in Constitution Day will help impact post-revolutionary states in the Arab world and beyond to have powerful information available to them as they undergo this historic process and begin to build the foundations of a democratic state.
Constitution Explorer is already a reality with a running prototype. However, it is still missing many constitutions, translations, and most of all categorization. In order for the search experience to be meaningful for our global users, we will "categorize" each article of a constitution by subject, allowing the user to browse not only by country but also by concept. We also want to provide notes that will clarify each article and the issues that it relates to. Many constitutions also require translations to be understandable by the largest number of people possible. And for all this, we need you!
The Program on Liberation Technology is organizing an international Constitution Day on Saturday November 12, 2011 when volunteers will gather in local groups - with computer in hand - to help categorize, translate and annotate. The team has already developed a tagging taxonomy and guidelines to facilitate the categorization process, but needs a little bit of your time to begin tagging articles of select constitutions.
Constitution Day will feature online sessions during the day, so you will be able to connect and talk to other participants internationally. There are no specific requirements, except a basic knowledge and interest in law (especially constitutional law), and an enthusiasm towards this endeavor. There are no specific computer skills required, the team just asks that you participate in a mock training session, follow the taxonomy, and most of all have fun!
The Program on Liberation Technology will be convening a group at Stanford University and there will be similar gatherings with international partners worldwide. This is also something that you can participate in virtually but the team encourages you to have a partner to work with as this is a deliberative process and it helps to work with a small team.
For more information on Constitution Day and how you can participate, please contact estelle.comment@gmail.com for more information. To participate, please fill out the form here.
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Vivek Srinivasan
Encina Hall
Office C149
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vivekdse@stanford.edu
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PhD
I joined the Liberation Technology Program as the Manager in February 2011 after completing my Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Prior to this, I worked with campaigns on various socio-economic rights in India, including the right to food, education and the right to information. Based on these experiences I have written (and co-authored) extensively on issues surrounding the right to food, including Notes from the right to food campaign: people's movement for the right to food (2003), Rights based approach and human development: An introduction (2008), Gender and the right to food: A critical re-examination (2006), Food Policy and Social Movements: Reflections on the Right to Food Campaign in India (2007).
In working with these campaigns, I realised the widespread disparities in the provision of basic public services in India. This led me examine how Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state, developed extensive commitment to providing such services to all its residents in my doctoral dissertation. Oxford University Press published my book based on the dissertation entitled, "Delivering services effectively: Tamil Nadu and Beyond" in 2014.
As a full-time activist, I also experimented with various IT platforms to make the campaigns effective. This interest brought me to the Liberation Technology Program at Stanford. I am currently leading a research project entitled "Combating corruption with mobile phones".
Visiting Scholar
Former Academic Research & Program Manager, Liberation Technology
Sarina Beges
Program Manager
Host
Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Estelle Comment
Consultant
Host
Constitution Explorer Project
Conferences