Stanford University

Democracy

A Revolution for Whom?: Measuring Political Bias in Venezuelan Land Reform using Maisanta

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Michael Albertus, post-doctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law will present a paper that details the first analysis of a distributive program – a Venezuelan land reform initiative known as Misión Zamora – at the individual level using data on revealed voter preferences and the receipt of particularistic benefits. Using data from a list of millions of voters that signed petitions to recall President Chávez, Albertus will match information on all recent land grant applicants to petition signers to measure the effect of political preferences on the likelihood of applying for land, receiving land, and being effectively rejected. He will present evidence for both strategic core voter targeting and punishment of opposition voters, although both of these effects are modified by local political actors. The lack of a complete property registry and ambiguity in key provisions of the Land Law have enabled considerable administrative discretion in the application of the program.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Michael Albertus

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CDDRL Visiting Scholar, Winter-Spring 2026
CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow, 2011-2012
albertus_2024_-_mike_albertus.jpeg PhD

Michael Albertus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and the author of five books. 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. It tells the story of how land came to be power within human societies, how it shapes power, and how its allocation determines the major social ills that societies grapple with.

Albertus studied math, electrical engineering, and political science at the University of Michigan and earned degrees in all three in 2005. He then did a PhD in political science at Stanford University, completing in 2011. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Albertus joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2012 and has since been on sabbatical twice back at Stanford, including as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavior Sciences. In addition to his books, Albertus is also the author of over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, including at flagship journals like the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and World Politics. He has taught courses to undergraduate, Masters, and PhD students on topics including inequality and redistribution, democracy and dictatorship, comparative politics, and political and economic development and policy in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula.

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.

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Applications for summer fellowships open

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The Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), together with the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society are offering four summer fellowships in human rights for 2012. The application period has now opened to talented Stanford undergraduates interested in working for organizations, government agencies, NGOs or international organizations that promote or defend human rights. The deadline to apply is December 9, 2011.

“We hope that these fellowships will enable students to make valuable contributions to human rights theory and practice, while incorporating human rights work into their future careers,” said Helen Stacy, director of the Program on Human Rights at CDDRL. 

This is a very prestigious fellowship and rare opportunity for undergraduate freshman, sophomore, junior, and non-graduating seniors to gain practical experience at human rights-based organizations. Previous fellows have worked at Human Rights Watch in Washington, DC; UNICEF in Cairo; and Bethune House in Hong Kong.

Human rights fellows may undertake projects focusing on issues that include; freedom of speech; discrimination against women; the rights of children, elderly and minorities; and access to food, health, education and housing. To apply for the fellowship, the student applicant must contact and obtain the support of a sponsoring organization in either the U.S or abroad.  

Fellowships of up to $5,000 are awarded by a committee of faculty members, senior administrators and/or full-time professional staff at Stanford University based on the applicant's project proposal and budget For more information and to apply, please visit the website: http://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/grants-fellowships/human-rights/

Office hours for additional information will be posted on the website with:

Joan Berry, Assistant Director, Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society - jberry@stanford.edu

Helen Stacy, Director, Program on Human Rights - hstacy@stanford.edu

Nadejda Marques, Manager, Program on Human Rights - nmarques@stanford.edu

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Cuéllar, Magaloni on Iranian assassination plot and link to Mexican cartels

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As if the alleged Iranian plan to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. wasn’t strange and sinister enough, it offered an outlandish twist: American officials say the Iranian plotters wanted to hire a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the murder.

The charges laid out earlier this week are raising questions about how the United States should respond to Iran, skepticism about the Mexican underworld’s possible involvement and concerns about the growing, borderless network of global terrorism.

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, a law professor and co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Beatriz Magaloni, an associate professor of political science and affiliated faculty of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, discuss the developing events.

President Obama is vowing to impose tougher sanctions on Iran. What good will they do?

Cuéllar: Countries use sanctions to achieve multiple goals. Sanctions often put pressure on the regime and disrupt the regime’s capacity to move money, pay for resources, and offer goods and services on the international market. Even if they are imperfectly enforced, sanctions can affect particular individuals or organizations within states. Separately, sanctions signal the resolve of the nation imposing them, and thus the United States can force discussion among governments and diplomats regarding how the international community will respond to a state violating international norms.

Do Mexican drug cartels have the ability and willingness to be the hired guns in global terrorist operations?

Magaloni: Drug cartels are increasingly diversifying their portfolios of crime. They’re not exclusively engaging in the trading of drugs. They’re also engaged in many other criminal activities, including kidnapping, and extortion. And some have engaged in human trafficking.

Can this extend to acts of terror beyond Mexico? At this moment – with the evidence I see – I find it difficult to believe.

Mexican drug gangs do not seem to have that much capacity to operate in the U.S. There is an implicit agreement between government officials in some states and the cartels, and that’s what allows them to operate, often with impunity. But right now, I don’t think they can orchestrate the same type of terror once they cross the border because they do not have the same networks in the US.

How do you expect the criminal case to play out?

Cuéllar:  The criminal complaint alleges that accused individuals sought the assistance of a Mexican drug cartel. Instead of negotiating with that organization, however, the accused ended up interacting with a confidential informant working for American law enforcement agencies. Prosecutors will nonetheless focus on the motivation of the accused and the possibility that individuals with such goals might succeed in forging alliances with transnational criminal organizations in the future.  

How is the criminal activity in Mexico affecting security in the region?

Cuéllar: Although Mexico is a country that faces considerable challenges involving security and state capacity, it is certainly not Somalia or Afghanistan. And the Attorney General indicated that the Mexican government worked closely with U.S. authorities investigating the alleged criminal conspiracy. Nonetheless, Mexico has become a focal point for the activity of certain large criminal organizations with the ability to operate across large territories and to harness different forms of expertise. 

While these criminal networks certainly affect the security environment in both Mexico and the United States, there is often something of a paradox in the nature of the threat they pose. The organizations with the greatest capacity to engage in complicated operations across borders tend to be the ones with the tightest hold on lucrative pieces of the drug trade. And they are probably the most skeptical of getting involved in something that will draw a massive response from the United States.

What may complicate the situation is that some of the criminal organizations are beginning to fragment in response to changing dynamics in illicit markets and conflict with Mexican authorities. Fragmentation tends to weaken hierarchies, disrupting the ability of leaders to discipline the subordinates capable of engaging in violent activity. Continuing fragmentation may further affect the security context, as individuals and smaller organizations compete for resources and seek new markets for illicit activity.

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Democracy and Human Rights Policy in the Obama Administration

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Co-sponsored by Stanford in Government (SIG)

 

Michael H. Posner was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor on September 23, 2009.

 

Prior to joining State Department, Mr. Posner was the Executive Director and then President of Human Rights First. As its Executive Director he helped the organization earn a reputation for leadership in the areas of refugee protection, advancing a rights-based approach to national security, challenging crimes against humanity, and combating discrimination. He has been a frequent public commentator on these and other issues, and has testified dozens of times before the U.S. Congress. In January 2006, Mr. Posner stepped down as Executive Director to become the President of Human Rights First, a position he held until his appointment as Assistant Secretary.

 

Mr. Posner played a key role in proposing and campaigning for the first U.S. law providing for political asylum, which became part of the Refugee Act of 1980. In 1998, he led the Human Rights First delegation to the Rome conference at which the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted.

 

Mr. Posner also has been a prominent voice in support of fair, decent, and humane working conditions in factories throughout the global supply chain. As a member of the White House Apparel Industry Partnership Task Force, he helped found the Fair Labor Association (FLA), an organization that brings together corporations, local leaders, universities, and NGOs to promote corporate accountability for working conditions in the apparel industry. He also was involved in the development of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at promoting free expression and privacy rights on the internet.

 

Before joining Human Rights First, Mr. Posner was a lawyer with Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal in Chicago. He lectured at Yale Law School from 1981 to 1984, and again in 2009. He was a visiting lecturer at Columbia University Law School since 1984. A member of the California Bar and the Illinois Bar, he received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall) in 1975, and a B.A. with distinction and honors in History from the University of Michigan in 1972.

 

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Schwab Residental Center
Vidalakis Room (Across from the Graduate School of Business)

Michael Posner Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Speaker
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Roots and Dynamics of the 2011 Revolutionary Upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa

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The lecture is co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy and Stanford Humanities Center

This lecture will assess the social-economic and political roots of the ongoing revolutionary process in the MENA region in light of the explanation of revolutions as expressions of the contradiction between the development of productive forces, the mode of production and the political structure. It will address the variety of situations and processes in MENA as related to the differences in social structures and types of states. The social dynamics of the revolutionary process will be examined, pointing to the social-political nature of the forces involved – whether those forces that pre-existed the upheaval or the new forces that emerged during the upheaval. Finally, it will reflect on the perspectives of the process at the regional level.

 Gilbert Achcar is Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London, where he is based since 2007, after Beirut, Paris and Berlin. He is the author of several books on politics and international relations in general, and the Middle East and North Africa in particular, including most recently The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder (2006), Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy (co-authored with Noam Chomsky, 2007), and The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010).

Stanford Humanaities Center
Levinthal Hall

Gilbert Achcar Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Speaker University of London
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The Rise of China and Taiwan's Response: Implications for the United States

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The complex triangular relationship between China, Taiwan, and the United States has a long and storied history, and most recently, China’s meteoric economic rise has forced a reconsideration of positions by all parties involved. China is on target to become the largest world economy in terms of purchasing power parity within the next decade, and this explosive economic growth is coupled with military expansion that challenges the existing security circumstances in the region. These developments, in turn, have put Taiwan on a path towards economic dependence, international isolation, and security threats, and Beijing’s increasing leverage in Washington allows for yet further indirect influence on cross-Strait relations.

Dr. Yeong-kuang Ger will discuss the background surrounding these issues to provide a context for analysis on the future of this important triangular relationship, and will address in particular the policy moves made by all three parties in adjustment to this changing status quo, as well as the strategy of President Ma’s administration since his election in 2008. Dr. Ger will conclude with a discussion of the implications of these developments for the United States moving forward, with an emphasis on Taiwan’s geopolitical importance to the peace and prosperity of the region as a whole.

Dr. Yeong-kuang Ger is a Member of the Control Yuan of the Republic of China, and a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University. Dr. Ger received his undergraduate degree from National Taiwan University, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2009 he was awarded the Freedom Medal of Honor by the Philippine Council for World Freedom. 

In addition to his responsibilities with the Yuan and NTU, he acts as a Board Member of the American Association for Chinese Studies; and he is also a Member of the Review Committee, Center for Asian Studies, Chu Hai College in Hong Kong. Dr Ger has authored nine books and over 80 journal articles and conference papers on politics, culture, development and security in Taiwan and East Asia. His recent books include: Political Parties and Electoral Politics (2011); Security Challenges in the Asia Pacific Region: The Taiwan Factor with M.J. Vinod and S.Y. Surendra Kumar (2009); Ideology and Development: Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Thoughts and Taiwan’s Developmental Experience (2005); and Party Politics and Democratic Development (2001).

Philippines Conference Room

Dr. Yeong-kuang Ger Member of the Control Yuan, Republic of China; Professor of Political Science, National Taiwan University Speaker
Conferences

Human rights curriculum for the 21st century

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"The Stanford Report" covered the recently launched Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative, which brings human rights curriculum into the classrooms of California community colleges to transform students into globally-conscious citizens. Piloted in partnership with the Program on Human Rights, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), and the Division of International Comparative and Area Studies, the Initiative appoints human rights fellows to develop new curriculum for broader application in California and beyond.

Stanford helps bring human rights to community college classrooms

Globalization has meant that the whole world is connected to the whole world's problems. Yet most of today's students live in a world no bigger than a cell phone keypad.

So how do you explain to them that the clothes on their backs may be sewn by slave labor in Asia, or how international human trafficking may be behind an Internet porn site?

Tim Maxwell, an award-winning poet who teaches at the College of San Mateo, said the basic task of reading is becoming harder each year for the Facebook generation. "To bring unpleasant and challenging ideas into their world is really difficult," he said. He described "young people's increasing use of social media and other technologies that, rather [than] widening their worlds, effectively narrows them" to what is pleasurably entertaining.

The remedy? In an unusual move, Stanford is linking arms with educators in California community colleges for a four-year project called Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative.  Following a conference last June on "Teaching Human Rights in an International Context," which launched the project, Stanford has named eight new "Human Rights Fellows" from California's community colleges. Maxwell is one of them.

For more than 12.4 million young Americans, teaching takes place in one of the nearly 1,200 community colleges across the nation – and about a quarter of those community colleges are in California. But few major universities have engaged these institutions.

The new initiative will train students to be engaged as global citizens, said William Hanson, another fellow, who holds a law degree from Columbia and teaches at Chabot College. "We have to find a way to wriggle in."

With a stipend and "visiting scholar" status, the human rights fellows will work with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) and the Division of International Comparative and Area Studies (ICA) to develop human rights curricula, plan human rights conferences and develop the initiative's website. The human rights curriculum they design could, they hope, seed similar programs across the country and the world.

My hope is that human rights will form a central part of every college curriculum – not only as a topic, but as a lens through which to see all topics. Helen Stacy

"My hope is that human rights will form a central part of every college curriculum" – not only as a topic, but as a lens through which to see all topics, said Helen Stacy, director of the program on human rights at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

She said that human rights is typically pigeonholed as a "soft subject" in the social sciences or humanities, but such funneling "misses engineering students and IT students and math students."

For example, she said, students of computer science or statistics could be engaged in mapping human trafficking or drug smuggling. Young economists could study the supply-and-demand dynamics of crime.

The effort "to speak a language that speaks to all of the disciplines" could result in a human rights curriculum that extends into the high school and even the elementary school level, Stacy said. Moreover, the planned website with an online curriculum could help educators the world over – even an isolated educator sitting in Uzbekistan, she said.

For the Stanford faculty and staff who created the course, the beginnings go back a long way and are the fruition of years of experience, research and thought.

Gary Mukai's experience of human rights violations was firsthand: the director of SPICE recalls a childhood as a farm worker whose Japanese-American parents, also farm workers, had been detained by their country during World War II. "I grew up puzzled about many of their stories, and their stories certainly influenced my interest in developing educational materials about civil and human rights for young students," he said.

For instance, he recalled uncles and other relatives who volunteered or were drafted by the U.S. Army from behind barbed wire. Or stories about his relatives who received posthumous medals for their sons' service while they still lived behind barbed wire.

Richard Roberts, a Stanford professor of history, remembered reading William Hinton's Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village, years ago. The questions it raised fascinated him: "Who will teach the teacher? Where do we learn? Who do we learn from? Who has the power to teach?"

He said universities typically teach an "isolated, really small segment" of the general population. Roberts, who studies domestic violence and human trafficking in Africa, said that when it comes to human rights, "That's not enough. We have to go beyond the rarefied segment."

One of the people on this frontline of teaching is Enrique Luna, a history instructor at Gilroy's Gavilan College. For him, Stanford represents something of a return: his father had been a cook at the university's dorms. Now Luna is an educator who looks for opportunities for students to participate with direct aid in their local communities and also with groups such as the Zapatistas of Chiapas and the Tarahumara of northern Mexico.

To reach his students, he said, he creates loops "back and forth between reading and doing." When students are doing, they have a reason to read, and when they read, they are able to fix their understandings through application. "They do their best work when they're doing something. That's where the other disciplines pour in," he said.

A lunchtime session last summer was popping with ideas: Hanson was enthusiastic about possibly broadcasting Stanford lectures on human rights on his college's television station.

Another human rights fellow, Sadie Reynolds from Cabrillo College in Aptos, was just happy for the time to think and reflect. "It's hard to articulate hopes this early in the planning. I have a selfish hope of learning about this model so I can apply it in the classroom." She said she will present what she's learned at Stanford to a workshop at Cabrillo.

Those on the frontline of teaching don't get such opportunities very often:  "It's difficult to find time to develop this at community colleges," she said.

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Liberation Technology Seminar Series launches for the fall quarter

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The Liberation Technology Seminar Series is set for an exciting fall quarter. Held on Thursdays from 4.30 to 6 pm at Wallenberg Theater, this 1-unit seminar course is co-taught by CDDRL director Larry Diamond and Professor of Computer Science Terry Winograd. Hosted by the Program on Liberation Technology (LibTech) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, this seminar series features guest speakers who introduce students to cutting-edge theoretical and practical applications of new technologies.

Beginning on October 6, the seminar series will kick off with Andrew McLaughlin an expert on internet regulation who served in the Obama administration and worked with Google’s policy division. The quarter will continue featuring new research, innovative Lib Tech products and stimulating debate on the impact technology has on ‘liberation’.

Technology and revolutions debate

When protestors waged a revolution across the Arab world in January, they did not set out to make life interesting at Stanford. Whether they intended to or not they have achieved just that. We are now mired in the debate on the impact of technology in revolutions that has become more interesting since the Arab Spring. Ramesh Srinivasan Assistant Professor in Design and Media/Information Studies at UCLA, will speak to this debate based on his recent field work in Egypt on October 20. Evgeny Morozov a visiting scholar for the Program on Liberation Technology will revisit the debate at the end of the quarter based on his new work. For those who have heard him caution against the use of technology before the Arab Spring, it may be an interesting time to revisit Morozov's arguments on December 1.

Lib Tech products

At the core of this debate is the idea that technology is ever-evolving. Some are creating systems to give governments greater control, while others seek to protect the activists. New ideas and products are changing this landscape every day. To take an example, at a recent hack-a-thon in San Francisco there was a suggestion to encrypt sensitive messages in a Beyonce song. If that works out, you may be able to swing a leg and send a message at least until a technology comes up to trace your steps. We could not have a LibTech seminar series without taking a look at such innovations. 

Sam Gregory and Bryan Nunez from Witness will give a taste of this evolving drama through their work on the use of videos for human rights. They will offer ideas to harness its power without exposing the activists to its dangers on October 27. 

The Fall series will also feature Joshua Stern, executive director of Envaya, speaking to their ultra fast blogs that are making inroads among African NGOs on October 13. Paul Kim of Stanford University will discuss his experiments with delivering education through mobile phones. For those who enjoy the 'hands on experience,' word is that Paul Kim will bring his mobile phones for us to play with on November 3! On December 8, Jeff Klingner of Benetech will give a presentation on databases that help track human rights abuses.

D-School presentation

One of the season’s highlights is a panel of students who participated in the innovative class taught by Joshua Cohen and Terry Winograd at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school). On November 17, four teams will present their new ICT designs to mitigate water problems and other issues in the slums of Kibera, Kenya. For those who wish to get a taste of this much sought after course, this talk will prove invaluable.

For those interested in registering for the course it is available on Explore Courses as CS 546: Seminar on Liberation Technologies and POLISCI 337S. We encourage others to attend who are interested in the topics, speakers, or liberation technology in general.

To view the complete Liberation Technology Seminar Schedule, please click here.

 

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Advancing energy sector reform in Lebanon

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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, together with the Safadi Foundation USA (SFUSA) and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) announced the winners of the first annual Safadi-Stanford Initiative for Policy Innovation (SSIPI). The title of Safadi Scholar of the Year has been awarded to Katarina Uherova Hasbani, an energy policy expert at the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut, Lebanon. The title of first runner up has been awarded to Miriam Allam, an economist for the Middle East North Africa Governance Program at the Regulatory Policy Division, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

SSIPI was established to promote new scholarship and analysis on Lebanon. “SSIPI represents the link between the academic and policy worlds that Stanford's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy aims to nurture,” said Dr. Lina Khatib, who leads the ARD program at CDDRL. "The research by Hasbani and Allam addresses some of the core challenges impacting governance in Lebanon and the rest of the region. Hasbani’s paper on the reform of the electricity sector and Allam’s discussion on public consultation are both strategic areas vital to linking citizens and institution building,” said Lara Alameh, Executive Director of Safadi Foundation USA.

Hasbani will begin her four-week residency at CDDRL with the ARD program on October 1 where she will participate in seminars, engage with leading faculty and benefit from the scholarly resources at Stanford. During that time she will produce a publishable paper based on her research, which will then be presented at a policy conference in Washington, DC on December 6, 2011.

"It is an incredible opportunity to receive the support of SSIPI for my research on consensus-based electricity sector reform as a vital element for Lebanon's future economic and social development," said Hasbani.

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The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program on Democracy and Development is now accepting applications for the Class of 2014

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About the Program

Launched in 2005, the Draper Hills Summer Fellowship on Democracy and Development Program  is a three-week executive education program that is hosted annually at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The program brings together a diverse group of 25-30 mid-career practitioners in law, politics, government, private enterprise, civil society, and international development from transitioning countries. This training program provides a unique forum for emerging leaders to connect, exchange experiences, and receive academic training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work.

For three weeks during the summer, fellows participate in academic seminars that expose them to the theory and practice of democracy, development, and the rule of law. Delivered by leading Stanford faculty from the Stanford Law School, the Graduate School of Business, and the Departments of Economics and Political Science, these seminars allow emerging leaders to explore new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote democratic change in their home countries.

Guest speakers from private foundations, think tanks, government, and the justice system, provide a practitioners viewpoint on such pressing issues in the field. Past program speakers have included; Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy; Kavita Ramdas, former president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women; Stacy Donohue, director of investments at the Omidyar Network; Maria Rendon Labadan, Deputy Director of USAID; and Judge Pamela Rymer, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Fellows also visit Silicon Valley technology firms to explore how technology tools and social media platforms are being used to catalyze democratic practices on a global scale.

The program is funded by generous support from Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills.

About the Faculty

The program's all-volunteer interdisciplinary faculty includes leading political scientists, lawyers, and economists, pioneering innovative research and analysis in the fields of democracy, development, and the rule of law. Faculty engage the fellows to test their theories, exchange ideas and learn first-hand about the challenges activists face in places where democracy is at threat. CDDRL Draper Hills Summer Fellows faculty includes; Larry Diamond, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper, Erik Jensen, Francis Fukuyama, Steve Krasner, Avner Greif, Helen Stacy, and Nicholas Hope.

About our Draper Hills Summer Fellows

Our network of 186 alumni who graduated from the Draper Hills Summer Fellows program hail  from 57 developing democracies worldwide. Their professional backgrounds are as diverse as the problems they confront in their home countries, but the one common feature is their commitment to building sound structures of democracy and development. The regions of Eurasia, which includes the former Soviet Union and Central Asia, along with Africa constitute over half of our alumni network. Women represent 40% of the network and the program is always looking to identify strong female leaders working to advance change in their local communities.

Previous Draper Hills Summer Fellows have served as presidential advisors, senators, attorneys general, lawyers, journalists, civic activists, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, think-tank managers, and members of the international development community. The program is highly selective, receiving several hundred applications each year.

Please see the alumni section of the website for a complete listing of our program alumni.

Our Summer Fellows include:

  • The former Prime Minister of Mongolia
  • Political activists at the forefront of the 2011 Egyptian revolution
  • Advocate for the high court of Zambia
  • Deputy Minister of the Interior of Ukraine
  • Peace advocate and human rights leader in Kenya
  • Journalists advocating for a greater role for independent media
  • Leading democratic intellectual in China
  • Social entrepreneur using technology for public accountability in India

 

 Funding

Stanford will pay travel, accommodation, living expenses, and visa costs for the duration of the three-week program for a certain portion of applicants. Participants will be housed on the Stanford campus in residential housing during the program. Where possible, applicants are encouraged to supply some or all of their own funding from their current employers or international nongovernmental organizations.

 

 




 
 
 
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