Stanford University

Environment

Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Shapes the Fate of Societies

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Michael Albertus seminar

For millennia, land has been a symbol of wealth and privilege. But the true power of land ownership is even greater than we might think. Who owns the land determines whether a society will be equal or unequal, whether it will develop or decline, and whether it will safeguard or sacrifice its environment. Modern history has been defined by land reallocation on a massive scale. From the 1500s on, European colonial powers and new nation-states shifted indigenous lands into the hands of settlers. The 1900s brought new waves of land appropriation, from Soviet and Maoist collectivization to initiatives turning large estates over to family farmers. The shuffle continues today as governments vie for power and prosperity by choosing who should get land. Drawing on a career’s worth of original research and on-the-ground fieldwork, Land Power shows that choices about who owns the land have locked in poverty, sexism, racism, and climate crisis—and that what we do with the land today can change our collective fate.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michael Albertus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and the author of five books. His research examines democracy and dictatorship, inequality and redistribution, property rights, and civil conflict. His newest book, Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies, was published by Basic Books in January 2025. In addition to his books, Albertus is also the author of nearly 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, including at flagship journals like the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and World Politics. The defining features of Albertus' work are his engagement with big questions and puzzles and the ability to join big data and cutting-edge research methods with original, deep on-the-ground fieldwork everywhere from government offices to archives and farm fields. He has conducted fieldwork throughout the Americas, southern Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere. His books and articles have won numerous awards and shifted conventional understandings of democracy, authoritarianism, and the consequences of how humans occupy and relate to the land.
 

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Michael Albertus Professor of Political Science Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago University of Chicago
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Leveraging Technology and Deliberation to Revitalize Democracy

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Alice Siu seminar

This talk will examine how technology can amplify deliberative democracy to foster a more informed and engaged society. Drawing on findings from two nationally representative online Deliberative Polls called America in One Room, the talk will demonstrate how online deliberation is alleviating polarization and producing lasting effects with hopes for a more deliberative society. The talk will also explore how the AI-assisted Stanford Online Deliberation Platform, which has logged over 100,000 deliberation hours in over 35 countries and 25 languages, has been used to facilitate high-quality, structured discussions on complex issues, including democratic reform and the implications of generative AI and metaverse governance. By integrating insights from research and practice, the session will demonstrate how deliberation can empower voters, improve decision-making, and counteract the polarization threatening democracy.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alice Siu received her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication at Stanford University, with a focus in political communication, deliberative democracy, and public opinion, and her B.A. degrees in Economics and Public Policy and M.A. degree in Political Science, also from Stanford.

Siu has advised policymakers and political leaders around the world at various levels of government, including leaders in China, Brazil, and Argentina. Her research interests in deliberative democracy include what happens inside deliberation, such as examining the effects of socio-economic class in deliberation, the quality of deliberation, and the quality of arguments in deliberation.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Room E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Alice Siu

Encina Hall, E103
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Senior Research Scholar
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Siu received her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication at Stanford University, with a focus in political communication, deliberative democracy, and public opinion, and her B.A. degrees in Economics and Public Policy and M.A. degree in Political Science, also from Stanford.

Siu has advised policymakers and political leaders around the world, at various levels of government, including leaders in China, Brazil, and Argentina. Her research interests in deliberative democracy include what happens inside deliberation, such as examining the effects of socio-economic class in deliberation, the quality of deliberation, and the quality of arguments in deliberation.

Associate Director, Deliberative Democracy Lab
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Climate Change and Political Behavior in the Global South

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Amanda Kennard and Brandon de la Cuesta seminar

How does climate volatility alter citizen demands, change voting behavior, and affect the long-term reputation of elected (and unelected) officials? Does this effect come primarily through the economic damages caused by climate volatility or through alternative channels? Are they persistent or transitory?

As climate volatility becomes more extreme, so too will its destabilizing impact on politics. Yet we know relatively little about its effects on voting behavior, particularly in the developing world, and even less about downstream effects on the reputation of candidates and political institutions. Exploring the mechanisms behind these effects is also difficult due to a lack of data with the spatial and temporal resolution necessary for credible subnational analysis.

Here, we provide some of the first large-scale evidence on climate volatility’s effect on several measures of political accountability by combining several sources of survey data with high-resolution meteorological and climatic data. We also utilize a novel source of subnational economic data generated by combining remote sensing data with a convolutional neural network to generate annual, high-resolution estimates of growth at the 1x1km level for all of Africa. This ML-generated measure is a considerable improvement over nightlights-based alternatives and permits credible mediation analysis linking negative political outcomes to climate volatility through reductions in economic growth. We supplement our focus on Africa with companion estimates from Latin America, exploiting variation in national-level institutions to examine whether they can explain the substantial effect heterogeneity we observe in our reduced-form results.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Amanda Kennard is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She studies the politics of decarbonization and the impacts of climate change on political systems. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, an M.S. from Georgetown University, and a B.A. from New York University.

Brandon de la Cuesta is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE), working primarily with Marshall Burke and other members of the Environmental Change and Human Outcomes (ECHO) lab to estimate the impact of climate change on various measures of political accountability. Brandon specializes in comparative political economy and causal inference with a strong regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Many of his current projects involve the use of remote sensing data and machine learning algorithms, particularly convolutional neural nets, to create global, high-resolution data that can be used for downstream inference tasks. A development economics application of this data was recently featured as the cover article in Nature.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Amanda Kennard

Brandon de la Cuesta

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Brandon is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Center on Food Security and the Environment, working primarily with Marshall Burke and other members of the Environmental Change and Human Outcomes (ECHO) lab to estimate the impact of climate change on various measures of political accountability. He specializes in comparative political economy and causal inference with a strong regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Many of his current projects involve the use of machine learning algorithms, particularly convolutional neural nets, to create global, high-resolution data that can be used for downstream inference tasks. A development economics application was recently featured as the cover article in Nature.

Brandon received his PhD in Politics from Princeton University in August 2019. Prior to coming to Princeton, he earned an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of California, Irvine, where he received a B.A. in Political Science.

FSE/CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow, 2022-25
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Under Fire and Under Water in the American West

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Bruce Cain seminar

Extreme weather in the wake of climate change, causing wildfires, drought, and flooding, threatens to turn the American West into a region hostile to human habitation — a “Great American Desert” as early U.S. explorers once mislabeled it. Bruce Cain suggests that the unique complex of politics, technology, and logistics that once won the West must be rethought and reconfigured to win it anew in the face of these accelerating threats. These challenges are complicated by the region’s history, the deliberate fractiousness of the American political system, and the idiosyncrasies of human behavior.

Cain analyzes how, in spite of coastal flooding and spreading wildfires, people continue to move into, and even rebuild in, risky areas, how local communities are slow to take protective measures, and how individual beliefs, past adaptation practices and infrastructure, and complex governing arrangements across jurisdictions combine to flout real progress. Driving this analysis is Cain’s conviction that understanding the habits and politics that lead to procrastination and obstruction is critical to finding solutions and making necessary adaptations to the changing climate. In his new book, Under Fire and Under Water, Cain offers a detailed look at the rising stakes and urgency of the various interconnected issues. Join us in-person to hear Cain lay out the rethinking and reengineering that will allow people to live sustainably in the American West — even under the conditions caused by future global warming.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Bruce Cain is an expert in U.S. politics, particularly the politics of California and the American West. A pioneer in computer-assisted redistricting, he is a prominent scholar of elections, political regulation, and the relationships between lobbyists and elected officials. Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Cain was director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley from 1990-2007 and executive director of the UC Washington Center from 2005-2012. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and has won awards for his research (Richard F. Fenno Prize, 1988), teaching (Caltech, 1988 and UC Berkeley, 2003), and public service (Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service, 2000).

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Bruce E. Cain

Jerry Yang & Akiko Yamazaki
Environment & Energy Building
473 Via Ortega, First Floor
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4225

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Charles Louis Ducommun Professor, Humanities and Sciences
Director, Bill Lane Center for the American West
Professor, Political Science
CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
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Bruce E. Cain is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. He received a BA from Bowdoin College (1970), a B Phil. from Oxford University (1972) as a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph D from Harvard University (1976). He taught at Caltech (1976-89) and UC Berkeley (1989-2012) before coming to Stanford. Professor Cain was Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley from 1990-2007 and Executive Director of the UC Washington Center from 2005-2012. He was elected the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and has won awards for his research (Richard F. Fenno Prize, 1988), teaching (Caltech 1988 and UC Berkeley 2003) and public service (Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service, 2000). His areas of expertise include political regulation, applied democratic theory, representation and state politics. Some of Professor Cain’s most recent publications include “Malleable Constitutions: Reflections on State Constitutional Design,” coauthored with Roger Noll in University of Texas Law Review, volume 2, 2009; “More or Less: Searching for Regulatory Balance,” in Race, Reform and the Political Process, edited by Heather Gerken, Guy Charles and Michael Kang, CUP, 2011; and “Redistricting Commissions: A Better Political Buffer?” in The Yale Law Journal, volume 121, 2012. He is currently working on a book about political reform in the US.

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Boosting Civic Behaviors: Experimental Evidence From a Lebanese Recycling Program

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Salma Mousa seminar

As the climate crisis grows more urgent, so does the question of how we can encourage citizens to mitigate it. We partner with a municipal government and NGO in Lebanon to evaluate a program that tracks and inspects citizens’ waste and then sends personalized feedback on how they can improve sorting quality. Two months after the intervention, the program improved sorting quality by an average of 0.3 out of 5 stars (14%) overall and 1.1 stars (42%) among those who complied with the program. Treated households were also over three times as likely to sign up for a raffle for ‘green’ prizes four months later (5.4% vs. 1.6%) — demonstrating an impact on other environmentally-conscious behaviors. However, positive effects disappear after the program ends. We find null results on sorting quality at the 12-month mark for all but a select few households who continue complying with the program even after inspections stop. We also observe negative treatment effects on the likelihood of volunteering for other environmental initiatives, indicating fatigue. The results suggest that information combined with monitoring can boost civic behaviors — but that continuous monitoring is likely needed to unlock durable results.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Salma Mousa is a scholar of social cohesion — typically using field experiments and partnerships with local governments and NGOs to explore the question of how to build it in the Middle East and beyond. Currently an Assistant Professor at UCLA's political science department, her research has been published in Science and covered by The Economist, BBC, Der Spiegel, the Times of London, and PBS NOVA. Salma received her PhD from Stanford University's political science department in 2020 and was previously an Assistant Professor of political science at Yale University.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Salma Mousa

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CDDRL Postdoctoral Scholar, 2020-21
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An Egyptian-Canadian raised in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Canada, Salma Mousa received her PhD in Political Science from Stanford University in 2020. A scholar of comparative politics, her research focuses on migration, conflict, and social cohesion.  Salma's dissertation investigates strategies for building trust and tolerance after war. Leveraging field experiments among Iraqis displaced by ISIS,  American schoolchildren, and British soccer fans, she shows how intergroup contact can change real-world behaviors — even if underlying prejudice remains unchanged.   A secondary research agenda tackles the challenge of integrating refugees in the United States. Combining a meta-analytic review, ethnographic fieldwork, and field experiments with resettlement agencies, this project identifies risk factors and promising policies for new arrivals.  Salma has held fellowships at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Stanford’s Immigration Policy Lab, the Freeman Spogli Institute, the Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation, the McCoy Center for Ethics in Society, and the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. Her work has been supported by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL), the Innovations for Poverty Action Lab (IPA), the King Center on Global Development, the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS), the Program on Governance and Local Development (GLD), and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Her research has been featured by The Economist, BBC, and Der Spiegel,  on the front page of the Times of London and on PBS NOVA.

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Alon Tal Joins the Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies Program at FSI

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The Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) is pleased to welcome Professor Alon Tal as a visiting fellow. He will be based at FSI’s Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE). 

Professor Tal’s research looks at a broad range of issues involving public policy and sustainability, primarily considering the effect of rapidly growing populations on natural resources and the environment. Over the course of his career, Tal has balanced the demands of both academia and public interest advocacy. He has worked in government as a member of Israel’s parliament and as a professor with appointments at Tel Aviv University, Stanford, Ben Gurion, Hebrew, Michigan State, Otago, and Harvard Universities.

Prior to joining FSI, Tal was a visiting professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is also the founder of several environmental organizations in Israel, including Adam Teva V’Din, the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, and the Arava Institute.

To get a better understanding of how environmental issues are intersecting with other challenges unfolding in Israel and the region, we spoke to Dr. Tal about his research, his time in government, and his recommendations for what can be done to affect more action to address climate change.


Can you give us a general overview of how the Middle East as a region currently approaches climate-related and environmental policies?

Given the availability of inexpensive oil, it is not the surprising that many countries in the Middle East have a significant “carbon footprint.” Historically, there has been resistance to modify that energy profile. This is now starting to change. Just in December 2023, at the UN climate conference in Dubai, for the first time all Middle Eastern countries signed a pledge which ostensibly should lead to a decarbonized region. It’s fairly clear what needs to be done to achieve this, but there are enormous institutional and political obstacles to actually doing it. Each country in the Middle East functions as an “energy island” making renewable deployment much more difficult. Creating a regional electricity grid is a good place to start.

Israel has an extremely creative climate tech ecosystem that’s producing everything from green hydrogen and fuel cells to cultured meat and milk. I am encouraged that countries like the United Arab Emirates have already begun to invest in Israeli start-ups and more established companies to provide the muscle they need to become transformative. A year ago, Israel, Jordan, and the UAE signed an agreement which, for the first time, will provide clean solar energy from Jordan (which has ample open space in its deserts) to Israel. In exchange, Israel will deliver inexpensive desalinized water to Jordan, which is perhaps the world’s most water scarce country.

Beyond the sustainability dividends, given the prevailing tensions, I believe that such cooperative efforts in the environment will not only make the region healthier, but will serve as a basis to reduce the historic enmity. Indeed, I have been involved in a range of cooperative projects with Palestinian and Jordanian partners for almost thirty years.

Ready or not, the climate crisis is here, and making these issues part of the country’s political agenda and keeping them in the spotlight is important. The younger generations know this and are speaking out, and we have a responsibility to make sure they are heard.
Alon Tal
Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies


You have firsthand experience working on policy as a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. What success did you see there, and what challenges remain in addressing environmental issues? 

Israeli politics is quite polarized, not unlike the U.S., but issues relating to the environment generally enjoy support from all political parties. I did a lot of work with partners on the Israeli right and amongst religious politicians to engage them and receive support for a green agenda. The press made a big deal about this “bi-partisan” orientation, but it feels very natural to me. Regardless of people’s political orientation, everyone wants their children to breath clean air, drink potable war, and live in a planet with a stable climate.

That being said, I worry that public awareness of these issues remains deficient in Israel even though we are considered a “climate hotspot.” Other issues, particularly those involving security, don’t leave our citizens very much bandwidth to think about other matters, even urgent ones like climate change.

That’s why having a committee that convenes regular meetings and pushes the executive branch to be more conscientious in its mitigation and adaptation efforts from inside government is so critical. While I was serving, we held hearings on increasing shading in urban areas, removing bureaucratic obstacles to installation of “agrovoltaic” systems (solar panels on farmlands), expediting sales of electric vehicles through tax incentives, and many other topics. 

Our paramount objective was to pass a “climate law,” which would provide a statutory basis for the energy transition that needs to be accelerated. This is a step many state and national governments have taken in recent years. Unfortunately, the “Government of Change” that my party was part of in Israel fell apart before this critical legislation could be passed. That’s truly unfortunate. But the cabinet did make a commitment to reach net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.  

Ready or not, the climate crisis is here, and making these issues part of the country’s political agenda and keeping them in the spotlight is important. The younger generations know this and are speaking out, and we have a responsibility to make sure they are heard.


What environmental implications does the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel have for the region?

For me, the war is not just about personal security, but also environmental security. Extremist, Islamist forces, and proxies for the Iranian government all threaten the kind of cooperation which is critical for the region.

I am encouraged that not one of my environmental colleagues from Arab countries — including many Palestinian colleagues — has broken off interactions with me since the war began. We continue to do research with a West Bank Palestinian group from Al Quds University about exposures to pharmaceutical products from wastewater reuse. We urgently need more of this kind of cooperation if we are going to address the pressing needs being created by this crisis.

Consider, for example, the groundwater situation in Gaza. When Egypt held the Gaza Strip in the 1960s, the aquifers were contaminated by salt water intrusion from the Mediterranean Sea caused by over pumping. It is absolutely critical that the people of Gaza have desalinated water (like Israel does) both to meet their immediate needs now and as climate-driven droughts continue to change local hydrological conditions in the future. For this to happen, whoever rules Gaza will have to stop investing limited local resources in military weaponry and focus on environmental infrastructure.

The human toll of this war is heartbreaking on all sides. But I believe that when the dust settles, there will be a victory for those who want to work together on critical environmental issues.

If we are going to meet the unprecedented challenges posed by the climate crisis, the world as we know it will have to change. And that won’t happen without effective public policies.
Alon Tal
Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies


How can institutions like Stanford help in addressing these issues?

There’s no question that higher education is evolving. Universities generally divide up their departments according to disciplinary distinctions that were germane at the advent of the twentieth century but often make less sense today. In the fields I work in, it’s common lip service to talk about “interdisciplinary solutions.” But what that actually means in practice is that students need to be given literacy in topics ranging from chemistry and biology to economics, social science, and even aesthetics. I am very impressed with Stanford’s new Doerr School of Sustainability, which is aspiring to serve as an example of how this can be done. 

The course I am currently teaching, “Public Policy and Sustainability Challenges: Israel and the Middle East,” is designed to give the students a sense of what policies appear to work and which ones do not.  For instance, carbon taxes used to be a theoretical idea. But with 61 countries having introduced policies that monetize carbon, we can now dispassionately evaluate these interventions.

The students I see in my class are a healthy mix of MBA and sustainability scholars. They break up into groups of four and serve as consultants for a variety of climate tech companies, applying what they have learned to the real-life regulatory challenges which these promising ventures face. Stanford is preparing leaders, many of whom are committed to working in the climate space. I hope that the class provides them with valuable insights and tools to do this.


Looking to the future, what policies would you like to see put in place to precipitate meaningful action on climate-related issues in both the short and long term?

It is increasingly clear that despite increased global awareness, humanity is not meeting its goals for reducing greenhouse emissions. The population is growing, and billions of people are justifiably seeking a higher standard of living. If we are going to meet the unprecedented challenges posed by the climate crisis, the world as we know it will have to change; we are going to have undergo a complete technological makeover. This means an end to the fossil fuel era, beef as it is raised today, steel, cement, plastics – you name it. And this won’t happen without effective public policies.

One of the things that we started doing in Israel is requiring every school child from kindergarten to grade 12 to take 40 hours of classes about climate related topics during the course of the school year. That’s only a start, but it’s an important one. At Tel Aviv University, ten different departments have collaborated to produce a massive online open class, or “MOOC,” to get that expertise out of the university and into the hands of people. Education, coupled with urgency and action, is crucial. These are the kinds of initiatives that I believe are needed if we are going to see any real progress. 

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Professor Tal’s expertise in sustainability and public policy will offer students valuable insight into the intersection of climate change issues and politics in the Middle East.

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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 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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Social Justice and Environmental Activist Kumi Naidoo Named Payne Distinguished Lecturer

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The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) is pleased to welcome Kumi Naidoo as the next Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer. Effective November 7, 2023, Naidoo will be based at FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), with a simultaneous affiliation at the Center for Food Security and the Environment (FSE).

The Payne Lectureship at FSI aims to raise public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community and advance international cooperation.

Naidoo has a distinguished career as an activist, including in South Africa, where he was an organizer of anti-apartheid activities. He was forced into exile in the United Kingdom under pressure from the pro-apartheid South African Security Police, but returned in 1990 following Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, whereupon he organized for the legalization of the African National Congress.

Naidoo turned his activism to the issues of climate change in 2009, when he joined Greenpeace International, serving as the executive director until 2015. In 2010, he released his first book, “Boiling Point: Can Citizen Action Save the World?”, in which he urges unity and cooperation in facing the urgency of the climate crisis. He has also served as the secretary general of Amnesty International and other global human rights organizations.

"FSI is lucky to be able to bring leaders like Dr. Naidoo to Stanford to help our community think about global challenges like climate change and development from new perspectives. With all of his experience as a frontline activist, Kumi is going to be a wonderful resource to our students and scholars,” says Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute.

 

We need to reach people in their hearts, body and soul. I look forward to continuing to work on one of the solutions I have been pursuing which is the need to harness the power of arts and culture.
Kumi Naidoo
Payne Distinguished Lecturer


As the Payne Distinguished Lecturer, Naidoo will have the opportunity to teach a seminar to the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy, mentor undergraduate and graduate students across FSI’s centers, and present the annual Payne Lecture in the winter of 2024. Naidoo’s multi-disciplinary expertise at the crossroads of social justice and environmental advocacy will bring welcome perspectives to the intellectual communities at CDDRL, FSE, and FSI, and across Stanford’s campus to places like the new Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

“At a time when we are seeing a convergence of multiple crises in the world and some troubling trends, including the rise of fascism, continuing climate denialism, a challenge to the multilateral system and more, I am pleased to have this opportunity to engage in reflective work on the question of ‘How can activism win bigger and faster?’” says Naidoo. 

He continues, “One of the key reasons we are not getting as much urgency and momentum to act on climate and intersecting challenges is the communications deficits activism comes up against: at an objective level, we face a challenging ownership structure of mainstream media which leaves little place for narratives and perspectives pushing for substantive structural and systemic change.”

“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Naidoo as this year’s Payne Lecturer,” shared Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL. “With his remarkable background as a human rights activist and a global leader in environmental and social justice, Kumi brings a wealth of knowledge and insight that will undoubtedly spark meaningful conversations and inspire our students, faculty, and the greater Stanford community."

Previous Payne Distinguished Lecturers include Rose Gottemoeller, former deputy secretary of NATO; Ertharin Cousin, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture; Brett McGurk, former presidential envoy to defeat ISIS; and Jung-Seung Shin, former Ambassador for the Republic of Korea, among others.

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. 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. 

Speaking to his upcoming time at Stanford, Kumi Naidoo outlined some of his goals for his research and lectureship while at FSI.

“At a subjective level, change agents tend to try to move people primarily by facts, figures, policy and rational arguments. This approach has tended to ignore the need to reach people in their hearts, body and soul. I look forward to continuing to work on one of the solutions I have been pursuing which is the need to harness the power of arts and culture, what increasingly is referred to as Artivism. I am hoping to use my time at Stanford University to interrogate these issues and share through my writing and podcast (Power, People and Planet) some of the perspectives that challenge the way that conventional activism has tried to foster structural and systemic change.”

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Applications for the 2024 Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program are Now Open

The program will run from Sunday, July 21, through Friday, August 9, 2024. Applications are due by 5:00 pm PST on Sunday, January 14, 2024.
Applications for the 2024 Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program are Now Open
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Naidoo brings a multi-disciplinary perspective from his experiences as a leader at Greenpeace International, Amnesty International, and other causes to the students and scholars at FSI and beyond.

Kumi Naidoo

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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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A hazard analysis of federal permitting under the national environmental policy act of 1970

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The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1970 requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impact of proposed federal actions. NEPA thus affects delivery of a wide range of infrastructure projects. NEPA requires the completion of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for environmentally impactful federal actions. For infrastructure projects this can entail significant delays. A typical EIS now takes about four and one-half years and is over 600 pages long. Some EIS’s take over a decade to complete. We provide the first detailed analysis of project approval times under NEPA by examining 1269 EIS permitting processes. We analyze empirically the well-defined interval from Notice of Intent to file to Record of Decision (ROD). We use a Cox proportional hazard model to estimate the impact of several factors on EIS duration. Factors include permits featuring major construction, those including private investment, those for projects located in states with restrictive environmental laws, those using the federal permitting “dashboard,” and those publishing a Supplemental EIS prior to the ROD. We find that privately financed projects receive faster permitting, while projects involving major construction, those undertaken in restrictive states, and those utilizing the federal permitting dashboard, face slower permitting times. We also explore links between EIS page counts and permitting time. Greater EIS page counts are associated with longer permitting times. We conclude by examining EIS completion during economic stimulus programs such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), as well as the frequency of EIS completion by the federal government.

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Journal of Regulatory Economics
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Michael Bennon
Daniel De La Hormaza
R. Richard Geddes
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