Stanford University

Health and Medicine

FSI’s researchers assess health and medicine through the lenses of economics, nutrition and politics. They’re studying and influencing public health policies of local and national governments and the roles that corporations and nongovernmental organizations play in providing health care around the world. Scholars look at how governance affects citizens’ health, how children’s health care access affects the aging process and how to improve children’s health in Guatemala and rural China. They want to know what it will take for people to cook more safely and breathe more easily in developing countries.

FSI professors investigate how lifestyles affect health. What good does gardening do for older Americans? What are the benefits of eating organic food or growing genetically modified rice in China? They study cost-effectiveness by examining programs like those aimed at preventing the spread of tuberculosis in Russian prisons. Policies that impact obesity and undernutrition are examined; as are the public health implications of limiting salt in processed foods and the role of smoking among men who work in Chinese factories. FSI health research looks at sweeping domestic policies like the Affordable Care Act and the role of foreign aid in affecting the price of HIV drugs in Africa.

Sanjeev Khagram — Innovating an AI-Powered Global Resilience Intelligence Platform and Partnership (GRIPP) for Good Governance, Human Security, and Sustainable Development

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Sanjeev Khagram seminar

This seminar will introduce the prototype of an innovative new AI-powered decision-making intelligence platform that forecasts country trajectories with scenario analysis, predictive analytics, hotspot detection, causal explanations through large language models, etc., for a range of outcomes central to CDDRL and FSI's missions — effective governance, human security, and sustainable development. The initial use case is for political resilience and its inverse, fragility, conflict, and violence.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Sanjeev Khagram is a world-renowned leader, entrepreneur, scholar, and professor across the academic, private, public, and civic sectors. His specialities include global leadership and management across sectors, entrepreneurship and innovation, the data revolution and 4th Industrial Revolution — including AI, sustainable development and human security, good governance and accountability, globalization and transnationalism, public-private partnerships and multi-stakeholder networks. Dr. Khagram holds all of his transdisciplinary bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. He has lived and worked for extended periods in Australia, Brazil, China, Kenya, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, the GCC, Germany, South Africa, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.

Dr. Sanjeev Khagram is currently a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and Department of Management Science and Engineering.  He is also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow with the Hoover Institution's Emerging Markets Working Group, where he leads the Global Reslience Intelligence Platform Partnership (GRIPP), and at the Center for Sustainable Development and Global Competitiveness, where he leads the AI and Sustainability Initiative at Stanford.

Khagram was most recently CEO, Director-General, and Dean of the Thunderbird School of Global Management, 2018-2024, which he took to #1 in International Trade with QS World University Rankings. He is on leave from his position as Foundation Professor of Global Leadership and Global Futures at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University.  Previously, he was the inaugural Young Professor of Global Political Economy at Occidental College, Wyss Scholar at the Harvard Business School, Founding Director of the Lindenberg Center for International Development, Professor at the University of Washington, and Associate Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Dr. Khagram is an award-winning scholar and teacher. Dr. Khagram has published widely including the award winning book Dams and Development with Cornell University Press; Restructuring World Politics with University of Minnesota Press; The Transnational Studies Reader with Routledge Press; Open Budgets: The Political Economy of Transparency, Participation and Accountability with Brookings Press; "Inequality and Corruption" in the American Journal of Sociology; "Future Architectures of Global Governance" in Global Governance, "Environment and Security" in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, “Towards a Platinum Standard for Evidence-Based Assessment,” in Public Administration Review, “Social Balance Sheets” in Harvard Business Review, “Evidence for Development Effectiveness” in the Journal of Development Effectiveness, and “From Human Security and the Environment to Sustainable Security and Development,” in the Journal of Human Development.

Dr. Khagram has worked extensively in global leadership roles across international organizations, government, business, and civil society from the local to the international levels around the world. Dr. Khagram has established and led a range of global multi-stakeholder initiatives over the last three decades, including the Global Carbon Removal Partnership, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency, and the World Commission on Dams, authoring its widely acclaimed final report.  

Dr. Khagram was selected as a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, was a senior advisor to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Dean of the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, and Founder/CEO of Innovations for Scaling Impact – a global technology enterprise solutions network. He is currently Chair of the Board of United Platform Solutions (an African AI-IOT Pollution Monitoring Venture) and Vice Chair of Altos Bank (the first new bank in Silicon Valley since 2008).

Dr. Khagram was born in Uganda as a fourth-generation East African Indian.  He and his family were expelled by Idi Amin and spent several years in refugee camps before being provided asylum in the United States in the 1970s.  He has lived and worked across all regions of the world and travelled to over 140 countries.

Kathryn Stoner
Kathryn Stoner

Virtual to Public. If prompted for a password, use: 123456
Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Philippines Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Sanjeev Khagram

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CDDRL Visiting Scholar, 2025-26
CISAC Visiting Scholar, 2024-25
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Dr. Sanjeev Khagram is a world-renowned leader, entrepreneur, scholar, and professor across the academic, private, public, and civic sectors. His specialities include global leadership and management across sectors, entrepreneurship and innovation, the data revolution and 4th Industrial Revolution — including AI, sustainable development and human security, good governance and accountability, globalization and transnationalism, public-private partnerships and multi-stakeholder networks. Dr. Khagram holds all of his transdisciplinary bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. He has lived and worked for extended periods in Australia, Brazil, China, Kenya, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, the GCC, Germany, South Africa, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.

Dr. Sanjeev Khagram is currently a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and Department of Management Science and Engineering.  He is also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow with the Hoover Institution's Emerging Markets Working Group, where he leads the Global Reslience Intelligence Platform Partnership (GRIPP), and at the Center for Sustainable Development and Global Competitiveness, where he leads the AI and Sustainability Initiative at Stanford.

Khagram was most recently CEO, Director-General, and Dean of the Thunderbird School of Global Management, 2018-2024, which he took to #1 in International Trade with QS World University Rankings. He is on leave from his position as Foundation Professor of Global Leadership and Global Futures at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University.  Previously, he was the inaugural Young Professor of Global Political Economy at Occidental College, Wyss Scholar at the Harvard Business School, Founding Director of the Lindenberg Center for International Development, Professor at the University of Washington, and Associate Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Dr. Khagram is an award-winning scholar and teacher. Dr. Khagram has published widely including the award winning book Dams and Development with Cornell University Press; Restructuring World Politics with University of Minnesota Press; The Transnational Studies Reader with Routledge Press; Open Budgets: The Political Economy of Transparency, Participation and Accountability with Brookings Press; "Inequality and Corruption" in the American Journal of Sociology; "Future Architectures of Global Governance" in Global Governance, "Environment and Security" in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, “Towards a Platinum Standard for Evidence-Based Assessment,” in Public Administration Review, “Social Balance Sheets” in Harvard Business Review, “Evidence for Development Effectiveness” in the Journal of Development Effectiveness, and “From Human Security and the Environment to Sustainable Security and Development,” in the Journal of Human Development.

Dr. Khagram has worked extensively in global leadership roles across international organizations, government, business, and civil society from the local to the international levels around the world. Dr. Khagram has established and led a range of global multi-stakeholder initiatives over the last three decades, including the Global Carbon Removal Partnership, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency, and the World Commission on Dams, authoring its widely acclaimed final report.  

Dr. Khagram was selected as a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, was a senior advisor to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Dean of the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, and Founder/CEO of Innovations for Scaling Impact – a global technology enterprise solutions network. He is currently Chair of the Board of United Platform Solutions (an African AI-IOT Pollution Monitoring Venture) and Vice Chair of Altos Bank (the first new bank in Silicon Valley since 2008).

Dr. Khagram was born in Uganda as a fourth-generation East African Indian.  He and his family were expelled by Idi Amin and spent several years in refugee camps before being provided asylum in the United States in the 1970s.  He has lived and worked across all regions of the world and travelled to over 140 countries.

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Informal Capacity and California Local Government Responses to COVID-19

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Argument and Contribution


At the national level, the United States struggled to effectively respond to the COVID-19 pandemic: federal policy was delayed and inconsistent, supply shortages were widespread, and political pressure undermined accurate public health guidance. At the state and local levels, however, there was a great deal of variation in terms of the capacity to respond to COVID. While indicators of state capacity often focus on “formal” indicators like institutional resources, staffing, and finances, translating formal capacities into effectively implemented policies is neither a simple nor an automatic process. 

In “Building the Plane While Flying,” Didi Kuo and Andrew S. Kelly draw our attention to the importance of informal indicators of public health capacity. These include strong relationships within and across government agencies, the embeddedness of health officers in local communities, and prior experience with responding to disasters, among other factors. The authors argue that local governments with strong informal capacity were better able to communicate with and learn from one another, as well as to gain the trust of community members, during the pandemic. Conversely, localities with otherwise strong formal capacities often failed to respond to the challenges at hand. This is because they were unable to effectively leverage their relationships and organizational networks.
 

The authors argue that local governments with strong informal capacity were better able to communicate with and learn from one another, as well as to gain the trust of community members, during the pandemic.


Kuo and Kelly’s paper is informed by qualitative analysis of California’s public health institutions as well as in-depth interviews with health officers across seventeen Northern, Central, and Southern California counties. The interviews illuminate the concrete processes by which local governments responded (or struggled to respond) to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the paper’s key contributions is to push us to conceptualize state capacity more broadly and to focus on the factors that drive not just policy development, but policy implementation. 

The Importance of Informal Capacity


The bulk of the paper disaggregates informal capacity into its various mechanisms and processes. Each of these proves to be crucial in explaining different pandemic outcomes at the local level. One such mechanism is coordination within local governments. To illustrate this, consider public health officers, who enjoy broad legal powers to protect public health as well as financial resources and personnel at their disposal. By law, officers possess significant capacities to mitigate health crises. Yet across the interviews, health officers reported that effectively implementing COVID-19 policy required their cooperation and communication with a host of actors, including the County Counsel (the county’s top lawyer), Chief Administrative Officer, and Board of Supervisors, which is charged with appointing health officers.
 

Closely related to intra-governmental coordination is the importance of autonomy, particularly in the face of political pressure.


Closely related to intra-governmental coordination is the importance of autonomy, particularly in the face of political pressure. For example, boards of supervisors sometimes undermined the public guidance provided by health officers. (This guidance could range from the need to close schools to officers simply communicating truthfully with localities about COVID-19 risks.) Overcoming efforts by board members to ignore or muzzle officers required coordination between those actors who were more insulated from political pressure.

Another key component of informal capacity was prior experience responding to emergencies and California’s myriad of natural disasters, such as fires, floods, or mudslides. Health officers from more experienced counties noted their ability to draw upon established emergency procedures and partnerships. For example, some counties had previously cooperated with each other, as well as with independent agencies like the Red Cross, to provide aid and shelter to those affected by wildfires. These experiences — for which no amount of financial resources or personnel can substitute — served as templates to help coordinate COVID-19 policy responses.

Informal capacity also depended upon health departments effectively communicating with the public. Many departments initially lacked the infrastructure to do this, and therefore relied on cooperation with other actors like school superintendents, sheriffs, and community leaders. Some counties created toolkits to improve their community’s understanding of personal protective equipment (PPE) or even produced local TV shows. Still others scheduled conference calls with local hospitals, faith leaders, and nursing homes. Given that many of these communication efforts were improvised, public health officers stressed the importance of formalizing coordination between state and nonstate actors so as to improve emergency preparedness in the future.
 

In addition to coordination within local governments, effective policy-making and communication required coordination across governments.


In addition to coordination within local governments, effective policy-making and communication required coordination across governments. One such institution was the Association of Bay Area Health Officers (ABAHO), founded in the 1980s during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. ABAHO members had also coordinated policy responses to the H1N1 outbreak. These cross-county partnerships enabled early, rapid, and unified responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. By contrast, the authors find that regions without such networks faced greater challenges in developing and implementing public policy.

A final aspect of informal capacity is the social embeddedness of health officials in their communities. This includes partnerships with leaders of businesses and faith groups, teachers, and restaurant owners. Not only did these partnerships increase the scope of outreach, but they also often established relationships that had not existed beforehand. Gaining a foothold in local communities thus increased the likelihood that community members would support policies and enabled local governments to access hard-to-reach populations.
 

For federal, decentralized countries like the US, informal capacities and relationships are essential not only for delivering services but for generating legitimacy and trust among those receiving services.


Kuo and Kelly’s analysis of informal capacity should give us pause when considering existing indices of public health preparedness; some of these have ranked the United States quite high despite its often ineffective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. That this mismatch occurs is arguably a function of observers prioritizing formal capacities. For federal, decentralized countries like the US, informal capacities and relationships are essential not only for delivering services but for generating legitimacy and trust among those receiving services.

*Research-in-Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

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A Danger to Self and Others: Health and Criminal Consequences of Involuntary Hospitalization

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Involuntary hospitalization of people experiencing a mental health crisis is a widespread practice, 2.4 times as common as death from cancer and as common in the U.S. as incarceration in state and federal prisons. The intent of involuntary hospitalization is to prevent individuals from harming themselves or others through incapacitation, stabilization, and medical treatment over a short period of time. Does involuntary hospitalization achieve its goals? We leverage quasi-random assignment of the evaluating physician and administrative data from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, to estimate the causal effects of involuntary hospitalization on harm to self (proxied by death by suicide or overdose) and harm to others (proxied by violent crime charges). For individuals whose cases are judgment calls, where some physicians would hospitalize but others would not, we find that hospitalization nearly doubles both the probability of dying by suicide or overdose and also nearly doubles the probability of being charged with a violent crime in the three months after evaluation. We provide evidence of earnings and housing disruptions as potential mechanisms. Our results suggest that, on the margin, the system we study is not achieving the intended effects of the policy.

SEE ALSO:

Statement from Allegheny County DHS: Improving outcomes for people with serious mental illness 

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Valentin Bolotnyy
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Building the Plane While Flying: Informal State Capacity, Policy Autonomy, and Public Health

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Public health infrastructure varies widely at the local, state, and national levels, and the COVID-19 response revealed just how critical local health authority can be. Public health officials created COVID policies, enforced behavioral and non-pharmaceutical interventions, and communicated with the public. This article explores the determinants of public health capacity, distinguishing between formal institutional capacity (i.e., budget, staff) and informal embedded capacity (i.e., community ties, insulation from political pressures). Using qualitative data and interviews with county health officers in California, this article shows that informal embedded capacity—while difficult to measure—is essential to public health capacity. It concludes by relating public health capacity to broader issues of state capacity and democracy.

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CDDRL Honors Alumna Named 2025 Knight-Hennessy Scholar

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Nora Sulots
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Congratulations to Liza Goldberg, a graduate of CDDRL's 2023-24 Fisher Family Honors Program, on her selection as a 2025 Knight-Hennessy Scholar. Knight-Hennessy Scholars cultivates and supports a multidisciplinary and multicultural community of graduate students from across Stanford University and delivers engaging experiences that prepare graduates to be visionary, courageous, and collaborative leaders who address complex challenges facing the world.

Originally from Columbia, Maryland, Liza “is pursuing a PhD in Earth System Science at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability. She received a bachelor’s degree in Earth Systems at Stanford University and a master’s degree in climate change and planetary health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Liza pairs satellite remote sensing and qualitative analysis to build climate change resilience in settings of poverty and humanitarian emergencies, especially across South Asia. She has worked as an earth scientist at NASA since age 14 and has presented her published research worldwide. As a National Geographic Explorer, Liza founded and directs a global initiative to build remote sensing capacity in low-resource institutions across climate front lines. She leads an international team leveraging space technology to monitor the Rohingya refugee crisis and preserve multigenerational refugee histories.”

Liza is a Marshall Scholar, a Google Developer Expert, and a Sigma Squared Fellow. In 2024, she was inducted into the academic honors society Phi Beta Kappa.

At CDDRL, Liza received the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for her honors thesis, “The Psychology of Adolescent Poverty Under Climate Change: Evidence from Bangladesh,” based on extensive fieldwork and groundbreaking research into gender and climate adaptation. When asked what initially attracted her to the Fisher Family Honors Program, she shared at the time: “I am excited to have the opportunity to formally cross my interests in climate science and development policy through this program. I have also been very fortunate to receive extensive mentorship from my two CDDRL advisors throughout my time at Stanford, and I very much look forward to continuing to work together, as well as with the entire outstanding CDDRL faculty group, throughout the course of writing my thesis.”

Regarding her future aspirations post-Stanford, Liza shared upon her acceptance into the Fisher Family Honors Program, "I seek to dedicate my education and career to applying groundbreaking satellite technology in aiding climate adaptation across low- and middle-income nations."

You can read the full Knight-Hennessy Scholars press release here.

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CDDRL 2024 Honors Thesis Awardees Liza Goldberg and Melissa Severino de Oliveira
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CDDRL Fisher Family Honors Program Graduates Recognized for Outstanding Theses

Liza Goldberg ('24) is a recipient of the 2024 Firestone Medal, and Melissa Severino de Oliveira ('24) has won CDDRL's Outstanding Thesis Award.
CDDRL Fisher Family Honors Program Graduates Recognized for Outstanding Theses
Phi Beta Kappa graduates
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CDDRL Congratulates Newly Elected 2024 Phi Beta Kappa Members

Liza Goldberg and Melissa Severino de Oliveira (Fisher Family Honors Program class of 2024) are among the newest members of this prestigious academic honors society.
CDDRL Congratulates Newly Elected 2024 Phi Beta Kappa Members
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Senior Liza Goldberg named 2024 Marshall Scholar

The scholarship will support Goldberg’s graduate studies in climate change, planetary health, and environment and development.
Senior Liza Goldberg named 2024 Marshall Scholar
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Liza Goldberg
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Liza Goldberg (Fisher Family Honors Program class of 2023-24) is among 84 scholars in the Knight-Hennessy Scholars' eighth cohort.

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Epidemiological Shocks, Governance, and Extraction in Colonial Mexico

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Alberto Diaz Cayeros seminar

The conquest of the Americas produced a radical transformation of pre-colonial Empires and City States. Europeans established a new institution, the Encomienda, which “entrusted” indigenous communities to individual conquistadores, which resulted in the dismemberment and fragmentation of prior political authority. Using a simple model of temporal horizons and rent extraction, I explore demographic change and epidemic disease after the conquest of Mexico. Data is drawn from the legal and census records of Tepetlaoztoc, a polity within the Acolhua Kingdom, one of the three parts of the Aztec Empire. This rich dataset allows for the reconstruction of demographic change and the calculation of individual and household level epidemiological models. The analysis suggests that the dramatic demographic decline of the 16th century in Mexico, rather than an inevitable result of exposure to unknown pathogens or epidemic diseases beyond human control, was a consequence of colonial rent extraction and the loss of political autonomy and sovereignty.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros joined the FSI faculty in 2013 after serving for five years as the director of the Center for US-Mexico Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Ph.D at Duke University in 1997. He was an assistant professor of political science at Stanford from 2001-2008, before which he served as an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Diaz-Cayeros has also served as a researcher at Centro de Investigacion Para el Desarrollo, A.C., in Mexico from 1997-1999. His work has focused on federalism, poverty, and violence in Latin America and Mexico in particular. He has published widely in Spanish and English. His book Federalism, Fiscal Authority and Centralization in Latin America was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007 (reprinted in 2016). His latest book (with Federico Estevez and Beatriz Magaloni) is The Political Logic of Poverty Relief Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico. His work has primarily focused on federalism, poverty and economic reform in Latin America, and Mexico in particular, with more recent work addressing crime and violence, youth-at-risk, and police professionalization.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Willliam J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros

Encina Hall, C149
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 725-0500
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
alberto_diaz-cayeros_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and co-director of the Democracy Action Lab (DAL), based at FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL). His research interests include federalism, poverty relief, indigenous governance, political economy of health, violence, and citizen security in Mexico and Latin America.

He is the author of Federalism, Fiscal Authority and Centralization in Latin America (Cambridge, reedited 2016), coauthored with Federico Estévez and Beatriz Magaloni, of The Political Logic of Poverty Relief (Cambridge, 2016), and of numerous journal articles and book chapters.

He is currently working on a project on cartography and the developmental legacies of colonial rule and governance in indigenous communities in Mexico.

From 2016 to 2023, he was the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University, and from 2009 to 2013, Director of the Center for US-Mexican Studies at UCSD, the University of California, San Diego.

Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
Director of the Center for Latin American Studies (2016 - 2023)
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When is enough, enough? Humanitarian rights and protection for children in conflict settings must be revisited

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Protecting the lives of children in Gaza and other conflicts requires changes to the rules of engagement and global responses to all conflicts affecting civilian populations, argue Zulfiqar Bhutta, Georgia Dominguez, and Paul Wise.

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Payne Distinguished Lecture Series: Creative Maladjustment and the Climate Crisis

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2024 Payne Distinguished Lecture Series with Kumi Naidoo

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University are pleased to welcome social justice and environmental activist Kumi Naidoo to deliver the 2024 Payne Distinguished Lecture Series in International Relations Theory and Practice.


As we veer ever closer to a global climate catastrophe, it has become clear that incremental tinkering with our systems — including political, environmental, social, and economic systems — will not be an adequate solution. Drawing on Martin Luther King’s idea of Creative Maladjustment, this lecture will argue that rather than responding to the polycrisis with an approach of system recovery, maintenance, and protection, what is urgently needed now is system innovation, redesign, and transformation.

It is imperative that we change the trajectory we are on as a species. Yet activism is failing to win at the scale and speed necessary to do so. The communications deficit that must be addressed by those seeking transformative change will likely need to be multilayered and imbued with intersectionality. This lecture posits the power of artivism — a fusion of art and activism — as a vital force capable of resonating with diverse audiences, instilling a sense of urgency, and fostering various pathways for participation. At this critical juncture, pessimism is a luxury we simply cannot afford. The pessimism that flows from our analysis, observations, and lived realities can best be overcome by the optimism of our thoughts, actions, and creative responses.

The Payne Lectureship is named for Frank E. Payne and Arthur W. Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations. Their descendants endowed the annual lecture series at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in order to raise public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community today and to increase support for informed international cooperation.

The Payne Distinguished Lecturer is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader, with an emphasis on visionary thinking; a broad, practical grasp of a given field; and the capacity to clearly articulate an important perspective on the global community and its challenges.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Kumi Naidoo is a prominent South African human rights and environmental justice activist. At the age of fifteen, he organized school boycotts against the apartheid educational system in South Africa. His courageous actions made him a target for the Security Police, leading to his exile in the United Kingdom, where he remained until 1990. Upon his return to South Africa, Kumi played a pivotal role in the legalization of the African National Congress in his home province of KwaZulu Natal.

Kumi also served as the official spokesperson for the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), responsible for overseeing the country's first democratic elections in April 1994. His dedication to democracy and justice led to notable international roles, including being the first person from the global South to lead Greenpeace International as Executive Director from 2009 to 2016. He later served as the Secretary General of Amnesty International from 2018 to 2020.

In the realm of education, Kumi has shared his expertise, lecturing at Fossil Free University and holding a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellowship at the Robert Bosch Academy until early 2022.

Currently, Kumi serves as a Senior Advisor for the Community Arts Network (CAN). He holds the position of Distinguished visiting lecturer at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and is a Professor of Practice at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. Additionally, he continues to represent global interests as a Global Ambassador for Africans Rising for Justice, Peace, and Dignity. He also holds positions as a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and an Honorary Fellow at Magdalen College.

In a testament to his family's commitment to positive change, they have established the Riky Rick Foundation for the Promotion of Artivism, honoring the legacy of their son and brother, the now late South African rapper Rikhado “Riky Rick” Makhado through a commitment to supporting artivism and mental health in South Africa.

Kumi has authored and co-authored numerous books, the most recent being Letters To My Mother (2022), a personal and professional memoir that won the HSS 2023 non-fiction award by the National Institute Humanities and Social Sciences.

Michael A. McFaul
Michael A. McFaul

In-person: Bechtel Conference Center (Encina Hall, First floor, 616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford)

Virtual: Zoom (no registration required)

Kumi Naidoo

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kumi_headshot_-_kumi_naidoo.jpeg

Kumi Naidoo is a prominent South African human rights and environmental justice activist. At the age of fifteen, he organized school boycotts against the apartheid educational system in South Africa. His courageous actions made him a target for the Security Police, leading to his exile in the United Kingdom, where he remained until 1990. Upon his return to South Africa, Kumi played a pivotal role in the legalization of the African National Congress in his home province of KwaZulu Natal.

Kumi also served as the official spokesperson for the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), responsible for overseeing the country's first democratic elections in April 1994. His dedication to democracy and justice led to notable international roles, including being the first person from the global South to lead Greenpeace International as Executive Director from 2009 to 2016. He later served as the Secretary General of Amnesty International from 2018 to 2020.

In the realm of education, Kumi has shared his expertise, lecturing at Fossil Free University and holding a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellowship at the Robert Bosch Academy until early 2022.

Currently, Kumi serves as a Senior Advisor for the Community Arts Network (CAN). He holds the position of Distinguished visiting lecturer at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and is a Professor of Practice at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. Additionally, he continues to represent global interests as a Global Ambassador for Africans Rising for Justice, Peace, and Dignity. He also holds positions as a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and an Honorary Fellow at Magdalen College.

In a testament to his family's commitment to positive change, they have established the Riky Rick Foundation for the Promotion of Artivism, honoring the legacy of their son and brother, the now late South African rapper Rikhado “Riky Rick” Makhado through a commitment to supporting artivism and mental health in South Africa.

Kumi has authored and co-authored numerous books, the most recent being Letters To My Mother (2022), a personal and professional memoir that won the HSS 2023 non-fiction award by the National Institute Humanities and Social Sciences.

Payne Distinguished Lecturer, 2023-25
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VinhHuy Le

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CDDRL Honors Student, 2023-24
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Major: Economics
Hometown: Allen, TX
Thesis Advisor: José Ignacio Cuesta

Tentative Thesis Title: Big Pharma Mergers and Their Effects on Medicare Drug Prices

Future aspirations post-Stanford: Taking a gap year after graduation to teach English abroad, then coming back to go to law school.

A fun fact about yourself: I’m an avid rock climber, and I’m working on my pilot’s license, even though I’m afraid of heights.

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Beyond Climate Dread

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When you think of the climate crisis and the major impact it will have upon all corners of the world, one nation stands out as the epicenter of the unfolding cataclysmic changes: Bangladesh.

When Stephen Luby, MD, began working there two decades ago, the South Asian country was facing tremendous climate stress brought on by intermittent floods, extreme heat, cyclones and drought that threatened human life.

 

Continue reading in Stanford Magazine

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Stephen Luby is among a growing number of Stanford Medicine community members dedicated to finding solutions to urgent problems of planetary and human health.

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