This eight-week multimedia course taught by The World House Project's Clayborne Carson and Johnny Mack will explore the enduring significance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a global community where all people may realize the ideals of human rights in their lives. Its goal is to give students a comprehensive understanding of the critical concepts of human rights, nonviolence, and the “world house” and practical skills, action tools, and strategies for resolving conflict from the local to the global community.

Through discussions of historic social justice movements, the course will challenge students to analyze the complex interrelationships of ideas such as universal rights and national sovereignty, civil disobedience, and the rule of law. It will offer critical reviews of their meaning and application to social change and social movement episodes throughout history and the new challenges emerging in this century, including threats to democracy and the rise of autocracy. The course will use digital, multimedia resources to reveal the religious and philosophical roots of human rights and struggles to overcome colonialism and authoritarian government and secure liberation from oppression through violence and nonviolent resistance strategies.

The readings and discussions will focus on history, theory, and the intersection of the current practice of nonviolence and human rights. Course readings will include Martin Luther King Jr.’s Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, Stephen Hopgood’s The Endtimes of Human Rights, Upendra Baxi’s The Future of Human Rights, and Johan Galtung’s Human Rights in Another Key.

Stanford Continuing Studies has lowered the tuition for this course as part of our mission to increase access to education around diversity, equity, inclusion, and issues related to social justice and participatory democracy.

“Larry Diamond has no equal in the field of democracy studies. He is a giant not only in scholarship regarding how democracies rise, function and sometimes fail, he has long applied his knowledge to improve the practice of democracy through his work with international organizations and here at Stanford.” said Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL and FSI Senior Fellow. She added that “Larry Diamond is truly an inspiration. I can think of no better way to celebrate this extraordinary person than with an extraordinary honor like the Mosbacher Senior Fellowship in Global Democracy. I am so grateful to the Mosbacher family for all that they have done for CDDRL, and for this especially wonderful tribute to Larry’s life and work.”

Diamond has served on the Stanford faculty since 1985. He is a senior fellow at FSI and the Hoover Institution and holds courtesy appointments in the departments of political science and sociology. He has taught and mentored thousands of students, including those in the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL, FSI’s Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy (MIP) program, and democracy activists from around the world through CDDRL’s Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, among others at Stanford. Among his many accolades, Larry received the Richard W. Lyman Award in 2013 for his service and generosity to Stanford alumni, as well as the Dinkelspiel Award in 2007 for excellence in teaching and mentoring Stanford undergraduates.

Diamond has also been an institution-builder both inside and outside of Stanford, having made contributions not only to CDDRL and Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service (where he served as co-director from 2010-2016) but also to the National Endowment for Democracy where he serves as senior consultant to the International Forum for Democratic Studies. He has worked to shape public policy in many ways, from working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, to campaigning more recently on behalf of ranked-choice voting initiatives in a variety of American states and cities.

“What Larry presciently labeled a ‘democratic recession’ a decade ago has metastasized into a very dark period for global politics,” said Michael McFaul, the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. “This newly endowed position will ensure FSI continues to be at the cutting edge of research, policy impact and education in the field of global democracy for many years to come.”

During his career of service to FSI and Stanford, Diamond has authored books like The Spirit of Democracy and Ill Winds, countless articles and edited books on democracy in various country and regional settings. He also served as a founding editor of The Journal of Democracy, which has become the most important academic source for writing on the subject.

“I am deeply honored by this generous gift from the Mosbacher family,” said Diamond. “Their extraordinary support will enable us to sustain and deepen our study of global democracy during an era when it faces its greatest challenge in decades. Working closely with brilliant Stanford colleagues, students and visitors is a great privilege, and I look forward to advancing the field well into the future.”

Learn More About Larry Diamond's Research

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is an interdisciplinary center for research on development in all of its dimensions:  political, economic, social, and legal, and the ways in which these different dimensions interact with one another.

"It has been a great honor to lead CDDRL over the past seven years," said Francis Fukuyama. "This has been a turbulent time for global democracy, which has forced many changes in the Center's research and training agenda. CDDRL has become a focal point for the study of democratic institutions, and is well-positioned to take on coming challenges. I'd like to thank the faculty and staff of CDDRL for all of their hard work and comradeship over this period, and wish Kathryn Stoner the best as she takes over the directorship."

An equally important aspect of CDDRL’s mission is engagement with future and current policymakers. CDDRL hosts an undergraduate honors program and graduate fellowships for students, and four unique leadership development programs to train and mentor emerging public service leaders from around the world.

“We really want our students to be not just multidisciplinary, but interdisciplinary,” Stoner emphasizes. “Different disciplines often look at the same problem and don't always come up with the best solution, because they're ignoring what another discipline can offer. We’re trying to develop unique perspectives and solutions to enduring developmental problems by working across disciplines.”

Prior to arriving at Stanford in 2004, Stoner was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Princeton School for International and Public Affairs (formerly known as the Woodrow Wilson School). She was awarded the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship for outstanding junior faculty while at Princeton, and also served as a visiting associate professor of political science at Columbia University, and an assistant professor of political science at McGill University. A dual Canadian/American citizen, Kathryn Stoner has a B.A and M.A. in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University. She was also awarded an honorary doctorate from Iliad State University in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.

At Stanford she continues her research and teaching on contemporary Russia and nations in democratic transitions. She is the author or co-editor of six books, including her most recent, Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order (Oxford, 2021).

“I am thrilled to take the torch at CDDRL from Francis Fukuyama," said Stoner. "He has provided outstanding leadership at CDDRL, and I look forward to continuing its successful undergraduate, graduate and faculty programming and to establishing new research directions on democracy, global populism, and modern autocracy, among others. CDDRL’s work is especially vital at a time when the veracity and efficacy of democracies worldwide is in question."

On April 21, 2021, the APARC China Program hosted Professor Erin Baggott Carter, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern California, and Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Her program, "When Beijing Goes to Washington: Autocratic Lobbying Influence in Democracies," explored how lobbying from China and China-based companies can affect policy in the United States. Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

Professor Baggot Carter based her talk on a dataset drawn from the public records of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act, which includes over 10,000 lobbying activities undertaken by the Chinese government between 2005 and 2019. According to Baggot Carter, the evidence suggests that Chinese government lobbying makes legislators at least twice as likely to sponsor legislation that is favorable to Chinese interests. Moreover, US media outlets that participated in Chinese-government sponsored trips subsequently covered China as less threatening. Coverage pivoted away from US-China military rivalry and the CCP’s persecution of religious minorities and toward US-China economic cooperation. These results suggest that autocratic lobbying poses an important challenge to democratic integrity. Watch now: