Steve Hilton, senior advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, will join Stanford as a visiting scholar at the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Hilton, who will also be a visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, will arrive in May and spend his year on campus teaching, researching and writing.

“We look forward to having Steve Hilton in residence at FSI starting later this spring,” said Coit Blacker, FSI’s director. “Lively and engaging, Steve is certain to bring a fresh perspective to many of the issues and challenges that are of ongoing concern to our faculty, fellows and students.”

As Cameron’s top advisor, Hilton’s primary responsibility is the development and implementation of domestic policy. He specializes in the promotion of enterprise and economic growth, public service reform, family policy, decentralization, and government transparency and accountability.

Hilton will focus on innovation in government, public services and communities around the world while at Stanford. He will work with a wide range of centers and organizations across the university, including FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and The Europe Center; the Graduate School of Business' Center for Social Innovation; the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society; and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.

"I'm delighted to be joining the academic community at Stanford and greatly look forward to an exhilarating and productive year,” Hilton said. “It will be a huge pleasure to be able to focus on our most pressing social and governmental challenges."

Before Cameron’s election as prime minister in 2010, Hilton served as his chief strategist and developed the ideas associated with the modernization of the British Conservative Party.

Hilton previously ran Good Business, a corporate responsibility consulting firm, and is the author of Good Business: Your World Needs You. The book makes the case for businesses to play a more direct and active role in advancing social progress.

The Program on Human Rights presented the seventh installment of the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Speakers Series on February 28, which focused on anti-trafficking measures in the Bay area. Lt. John Vanek and Sgt. Kyle Oki from the San Jose Police Department Human Trafficking Task Force and Captain Antonio Parra from the San Francisco Police Department Human Trafficking Task Force spoke about their unit’s recent implementation of a victims-based approach in law enforcement, speaking frankly about its importance and the challenges it presents.

Lt. Vanek explained how the San Jose Police Department had transitioned from a criminal approach to prostitution to a multi-disciplinary model to combat modern-day slavery. The San Jose human trafficking task force was created in 2005 but the victim-centered approach is still developing. He spoke about some of the ongoing challenges, namely that all police officers need training on program management and victim assistance, and also deeper expertise on criminal investigations of human trafficking cases.

Sgt. Oki argued that a victim-centered approach is often restricted to identifying and rescuing victims of human trafficking. He noted that while it would be ideal to prosecute offenders, that is often not possible because police officers must ensure that they respect the victims’ agency and also guarantee their safety and confidentiality. He mentioned that sometimes trafficked children are safer in juvenile hall than in shelters, where they could be repeatedly exposed to traffickers. 

Although the San Francisco Special Victims Unit (SVU) is relatively new – it was created in October 2011— it already includes 60 members. “The SVU represents a philosophical transition that shifts from enforcement to investigation,” explained Captain Parra. “The SVU maintains a proactive stance and integrates related disciplines to investigate specialized crimes such as: human trafficking, elder abuse, internet crimes against children, financial crimes, missing persons, domestic violence and sex crimes,” he continued.

The three presenters agreed that cooperation and coordination is key for a successful victim-based approach. There is need for coordination mechanisms established to stimulate deeper reflection and cooperation in dealing with the problem among different counties, states and countries.

In an opinion piece for The New York Times, CDDRL postdoctoral scholar Landry Signé discusses Senegal's backsliding democracy and the threat that President Abdoulaye Wade's third presidential bid poses to a country that was once West Africa's most stable. By manipulating the legal system, Wade was able to violate the constitution's two-term limit, but was unsuccessful in securing the necessary 50 percent of votes in Sunday's presidential race to avoid a runoff. Signé depicts the corruption, repression, and institutional manipulation Wade has committed to this young electoral democracy, impressing on the international community the urgency of supporting and defending Senegal's democratic traditions.