Lina Khatib is the co-founding Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She joined Stanford University in 2010 from the University of London where she was an Associate Professor. Her research is firmly interdisciplinary and focuses on the intersections of politics, media, and social factors in relation to the politics of the Middle East. She is also a consultant on Middle East politics and media and has published widely on topics such as new media and Islamism, US public diplomacy towards the Middle East, and political media and conflict in the Arab world, as well as on the political dynamics in Lebanon and Iran. She has an active interest in the link between track two dialogue and democratization policy. She is also a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and, from 2010-2012, was a Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

Amr Adly has a Ph.D. from the European University Institute-Florence, Department of political and social sciences (Date of completion: September 2010). His thesis topic was "The political economy of trade and industrialization in the post-liberalization period: Cases of Turkey and Egypt". The thesis was published by Routledge in December 2012 under the title of State Reform and Development in the Middle East: The Cases of Turkey and Egypt.

He has several other academic publications that have appeared in the Journal of Business and Politics, Turkish Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies, in addition to articles in several other periodicals and newspapers in English and Arabic.

Before joining Stanford, he worked as a senior researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, heading the unit of social and economic rights, and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat.

At Stanford, he is leading a research project on reforming the regulatory environment governing entrepreneurship after the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, which will result in policy papers as well as conferences in the two countries.

Adel Iskandar is a scholar of media and international communication. He is the author and coauthor of several works including Al-Jazerra: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (co-authored with Mohammed el-Naway, Basic Books, 2003). Iskandar's work deals with the intersections of media (pring, electronic, and digital) culture, identity, and politics, and he has lectured extensively on these topics at universateries worldwide. His latest publications include two coedited volumes titled Edward SAid: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (co-edited with Hakem Rustom, University of California Press, 2010) and Mediating the Arab Uprisings (Tadween, 2013). His just published title the uthored anthology Egypt In Flux: Essay on an unfinished Revolution (OUP/AUC Press, 2013. Iskandar is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.

Hesham Sallam is a doctoral candidate in government at Georgetown University and co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine. He is former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on Islamist movements and the politics of economic reform in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Past institutional affiliations include Middle East Institute, Asharq Al-Awsat, and the World Security Institute. He is editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013).

Bio:

Emily Arnold-Fernández is the executive director of Asylum Access, an innovative international nonprofit that transforms the human rights landscape for refugees in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Using a unique combination of grassroots legal assistance and broader advocacy and strategic litigation efforts, Emily leads a team of refugee rights advocates to make human rights a reality for refugees, so they can live safely, work, send children to school and rebuild their lives. 

Emily was a fall 2012 Social Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford's Program on Social Entrepreneurship. 

Abstract: 

For the last half-century, the international response to refugees has been internment.  Today, the average time in a refugee camp has reached 17 years. 

When refugees reach “safety,” we imprison them behind barbed wire fences, often for years, sometimes for generations.  We relegate them to starvation rations if aid runs low or politics intervenes.  They almost never have adequate access to police, courts, or other mechanisms that could protect them from crime or ensure justice for victims.  Adults are not allowed to go out and get a job, to feed their families and fill their days.  Children grow up knowing no other life. 

And refugees are protesting.  Recently, a riot broke out in Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan after Syrian refugees attempted to leave the camp without permission. Hundreds of other refugee protests never make the news. 

Answers to this problem have so far focused on supporting so-called “urban refugees” – refugees who have chosen to leave camps, usually illicitly, to move to the city.  But what if we brought the city to the refugees? 

Building cities, not camps, in refugee arrival zones has the potential to transform refugee response.    Developing urban centers that can attract and support both locals and refugees creates the conditions for refugees to meet their own needs and make choices about their own lives, while also growing the regional and national economy and increasing opportunities for locals to thrive. 

Building a city in place of a camp won't be easy.  It requires convincing and coordinating multiple actors to make long-term investments in a refugee arrival area.  National and local governments must work with development funders to implement roads, high-volume sanitation systems, and other infrastructure.  Corporations must be invited, and at times incentivized, to locate factories, IT centers or other labor-intensive operations in the new location.  Underemployed local populations in other urban centers must be made aware and take advantage of opportunities in the emerging city, so that refugees do not vastly outnumber the local population.  This (correctly) sounds complex, but coordinating diverse actors for rapid development in the context of a mass influx lies exactly within the UN refugee agency's area of expertise. 

To build a successful city also requires a policy framework and enforcement infrastructure that can ensure resources are equitably distributed.  Refugees currently in urban areas often experience deep discrimination, exploitation, and poverty when their rights are not effectively protected.  Refugees must be able to access resources and opportunities equitably with locals if the new city is to live up to its promise. 

These and other challenges must be explored and overcome: Refugee camps may be built in a day (or at least a matter of weeks), but transforming our response from internment to urban center will take careful planning, piloting of iterations, and a willingness to learn from mistakes.  The possibilities if we get it right are enormous: In place of segregated, aid-dependent camps, we'll have integrated, emerging urban economies offering opportunities for millions. 

Join CDDRL’s Program on Social Entrepreneurship and the Stanford Association for International Development (SAID) for an afternoon discussion with three social entrepreneurs pursuing community-based approaches to development in Africa. Working in Sierra Leone, Malawi, and E. Africa these leaders will share their innovative models for change and engage in a larger conversation on social entrepreneurship.

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2013 Summit Schedule

Monday, April 15

12:00 – 1:00 PM

1:30-3:00 Gunn-SIEPR Building AMENDS Talks: Impact Entrepreneurship
Session I Speakers:
Mohammad Agzar, Agam Rafaeli, Rena Zuabi, Ruchi Dana, Samer Azar, and Yad Faeq
3:00-3:45 Networking Session
3:45-5:15 AMENDS Talks: Impact Entrepreneurship

Session II Speakers:
Sabera Daqiq, Al Nasir Bellah Al-Nasli, Ali Chehade, Frank Fredericks, Ibrahim Mothana, and Sarah Mousa

Tuesday, April 16

1:30-3:00 Gunn-SIEPR Building AMENDS Talks: Education and the Environment
Session I Speakers:
Dari AlHuwail, Ghadeer al-Khenaisi, Yasmeen Makarem, Farshad Ghodoosi, and Majda Rahal
3:00-3:45 Networking Session
3:45-5:15 AMENDS Talks: Education and the Environment

Session I Speakers:
Adi Gilgi, Ala Queslati, Hamza Arsbi, Laura McAdams, Sarafina Midzik, Alia Mahmoud, and Becca Farnum

Wednesday April 17

10:00- 11:30 MacKenzie Room, Huang Engineering Center AMENDS Talks: Activism and the Art of Change
Session I Speakers:
Alana Marie Levinson, Nadia Arouri, Nargiz Azaryun, Que Newbiil, Soumaya Boughanmi, and Abdellah Yassine Boukourizia

11:30- 12:30 Networking Lunch

12:30-2:00 AMENDS Talks: Activism and the Art of Change
Session II Speakers:
Arez Hussein, Ashley Lohman, Todd Ruffner, Salma Hegab, Nicholas Glastonbury, and Nihal Saad Zaghloul

Abstract:

Does formalization really matter for developing economies? Informality has been considered as a negative economic factor as it has been associated with low productivity, high barriers to growth (dead capital), low government revenues and lack of access to credit and property rights. The remedy has been often sought in the formalization of informal economic activities, firms, workers and transactions. However, is formalization anyway a good option for development and growth in such hostile institutional settings like the ones existent in most developing countries including the Middle East? Will formalization save small entrepreneurs from rampant corruption, high interest rates, dependent judiciary, and weak rule of law? or are there alternative means to render the present informal settings more productive and developmental?

Speaker Bio:

Abstract:

Mazibuko Jara, one of the Social Entrepreneurs in Residence this fall through CDDRL’s Program on Social Entrepreneurship, will be discussing the August 16 massacre of striking mineworkers at the Lonmin Marikana mine in S. Africa and the subsequent wave of mineworker strikes which continue to this day. Since the April 1994 historic democratic breakthrough and defeat of apartheid, South Africa has seen 18 years of rule by Mandela's African National Congress (ANC). What has this meant for democracy? What changes have there been in the lives of poor and working people? In November, the ANC government released results of a national census which confirmed that the socio-economic inequalities inherited from apartheid persist including the fact that white families earn six times the average income of black families. These statistics and anti-democratic laws being proposed by government (the Protection of State Information Bill and the Traditional Courts Bill) epitomize the crisis facing South Africa 18 years into democratic rule. The event will provide a critical discussion of the democratic challenges facing South Africa today.

About the speaker:

Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara a 2012 Social Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at Stanford and a research associate at UCT Law, Race and Gender Research Unit examines the future of the underdeveloped rural areas in the former homelands, which are increasingly shaped by various conflicts and contradictions: between the Constitution and the official version of customary law; between custom and rights; between traditional councils and municipalities; between rural dwellers and tribal authorities; between rural women and patriarchal tribal institutions; and between imposed tribal institutions and local experiments with community-based systems.

This event is co-sponsored with the Center for African Studies