Stanford University

Tribute to Jasper Cummeh III

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Jasper Cummeh III ('07) from Liberia passed away on January 25, 2014 following a brief illness. Cummeh was a good friend to many and worked as an activist, researcher and mentor to young civil society members working on issues of transparency and accountability, policy analysis and advocacy. He was the senior policy director of Actions for Genuine Democratic Alternatives, a civil society organization in Liberia that is working to promote citizen participation, promote good governance and increase transparency in fiscal policy management. 
 
The CDDRL family would like to express our condolences to his family and the broader civil society community in Liberia for this great loss. Please keep Cummeh and his family in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.
 
 
"Jasper Cummeh III, was a dedicated Civil society actor in Liberia, who took interest in fighting corruption in Liberia from an activist point of view. He has written and published several anti-corruption policy briefs. Until his demise Jasper served as Senior Policy Director of the Actions for Genuine Democratic Alternatives, AGENDA and Chairman of the Liberia Freedom of Information Coalition. Jasper's passion for anti-corruption and pro-democracy work in Liberia is demonstrated by the fact that he was doing what he loved doing best when he collapsed and was later pronounced dead. Jasper died on January 25, after he collapsed on January 24th while conducting a policy advocacy training workshop in Monrovia. The Liberian Civil society community will indeed miss Jasper."

- Malcolm W. Joseph ('09)
 
 
"The passing on of Jasper is a sad loss not just to Liberia but to the African Continent as a whole. I had the privilege of working with Jasper at the time he was with CENTAL and the organisation applied to be a contact group for Transparency International, where I am privileged to serve on the Board of Directors. Jasper, had a clear vision of what needed to be done in Liberia to fight the evils of corruption, and promote greater transparency and accountability in the public sector. Jasper was a fearless, and consummate civil activist who was prepared to serve humanity to the best of his abilities. He did not see obstacles in his working environment as insurmountable challenges but rather as opportunities to seek new ways of addressing the many governance issues affecting his country Liberia and in turn, the continent of Africa. We have lost a young visionary and leader, who held so much promise and still had a lot to offer. My sincere condolences to his family, his organisation and country. May His Soul Rest In Eternal Peace."
 
- Rueben L. Lifuka ('11)
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Cummeh during the 2012 regional workshop in Nairobi, Kenya.
Sadaf Minapara
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<i>The Act of Killing (Director's Cut)</i> Film Screening and Panel Discussion

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*This event is free and open to the public.*

 

PANELISTS

Don Emmerson - Director of the Southeast Asia Forum, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies; Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL

Erik Jensen - Professor of the Practice of Law, Stanford Law School; Senior Advisor for Governance and Law, The Asia Foundation; Senior Research Scholar, CDDRL; Director, Rule of Law Program, Stanford Law School

Norman Naimark - Director of the Stanford Global Studies Division; Professor of History

Diane H. Steinberg (Panel Chair) - Visiting Scholar at Stanford's Program on Human Rights, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL)

 

 
The Act of Killing visits former Indonesian death squad killers who wreaked havoc in 1965 and 1966 in the aftermath of Indonesia's military coup and yet have never been held accountable for slaughtering between 200,000 to 2 million people in a genocide often forgotten.  The dramatic reenactments of the murders in the documentary catalyze an unexpected emotional journey for Anwar Congo from arrogance to regret as he confronts for the first time in his life the full implications of what he has done.
 
The Act of Killing is an award-winning documentary film directed by Joshua Oppenheimer with co-director Christine Cynn and and an anonymous co-director from Indonesia. It is a Danish-British-Norwegian co-production, presented by Final Cut for Real in Denmark and produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen. It was recently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

"Director Joshua Oppenheimer has made a documentary in which he interviews the leaders of Indonesian death squads, who were responsible, collectively, for the deaths of millions of Communists, leftists and ethnic Chinese in 1965 and 1966. But he doesn't just interview them. He has them re-enact their crimes and even invites them to write, perform and film skits dramatizing their murders." Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle, 8/8/2013
 
"The Act of Killing is a bold reinvention of the documentary form, as well as an astounding illustration of man's infinite capacity for evil." Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald, 8/15/2013
 
After the screening of the  Director's Cut of The Act of Killing (160 minutes), there will be a thirty-minute panel discussion.
 
For more information regarding the film, please visit: http://theactofkilling.com/.
 
This event is presented and sponsored by Stanford Global Studies, CDDRL's Program on Human Rights, and the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education.

Cubberley Auditorium

Conferences

Poverty and Violence: The Hidden Plague the World Has Missed

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We invite you to join Gary Haugen, former director of the UN investigation of the Rwanda Genocide and President and CEO of the International Justice Mission, to discuss his latest book The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence. Haugen will discuss the devastating impact that everyday violence is having on the global fight to reduce poverty and how we can help make the poor safe enough to thrive. Haugen has been recognized by the U.S. State Department as a Trafficking in Persons “Hero” – the highest honor given by the U.S. government for anti-slavery leadership. Book purchase and signing available.
 

Book purchase and signing available.

 

This event is sponsored by: IJM, Bay Area Anti-Trafficking Coalition & the Stanford Program on Human Rights.

 

For more Information please contact:

Betty Ann Boeving   bettyann@baatc.org

 

 

 

 

Bechtel Conference Center

Gary Haugen President and CEO of International Justice Mission Speaker
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Diamond honored with Lyman award for alumni engagement at Stanford

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Larry Diamond, director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), received the 2013 Richard W. Lyman Award at a ceremony on January 22.

The Stanford Alumni Association (SAA) presents the annual Lyman Award to a faculty member who has gone "above and beyond" to engage alumni through volunteer activities that further the SAA's goal of lifelong learning.  

Stanford Provost John Etchemendy presented the Lyman award to Diamond, recognizing him as "a university citizen of the highest degree," noting his willingness to engage Stanford alumni "whenever and wherever around the globe."

Along with his academic and administrative roles at Stanford, Diamond has dedicated time and enthusiasm to engaging Stanford's alumni community through events and travel study trips.

Diamond, a senior fellow at FSI, also is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and serves as the faculty co-director of the Haas Center for Public Service. He earned three degrees at Stanford: a bachelor's degree in political organization and behavior in 1974; a master's degree at the Food Research Institute in 1978; and a doctorate in sociology in 1980.

In accepting the award, Diamond described his first visit to Stanford as a high school debate student where his eyes were as big as saucers when he first saw the campus. From that moment forward he set his sights on doing everything he could to study at Stanford.

"My smartest decision was to turn down Harvard to come to Stanford," said Diamond. "It has been a gift to be at Stanford for the most of the past 45 years and to witness the remarkable growth of the university."

Diamond also recognized the leadership of Stanford's seventh president, Richard Lyman, who Diamond got to know when he was a student leader on campus during the turbulence of the early 1970's.

Since 1991, Diamond has presented talks at regional alumni meetings in cities across the country, including Honolulu, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York. He also spoke at Leading Matters, a series of events that shared Stanford's vision for the future with nearly 13,000 alumni, family members and friends around the world during the five-year Stanford Challenge fundraising campaign.  

Diamond recently returned from a two-week Stanford Travel-Study trip to Burma. He also has served as the faculty leader on alumni trips to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Korea, South Africa, and the Middle East.

On campus, Diamond has presented "Classes Without Quizzes" at Reunion Homecoming. During last year's Commencement weekend, he gave the Class Day Lecture. In 2007 Diamond received Stanford's Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for outstanding contributions to undergraduate education.

The award was established in 1983 in honor of the late Richard W. Lyman, Stanford’s seventh president, who died in 2012. In addition to the award, the prize includes funding toward books and materials designated by the recipient for the Stanford University Libraries.

Recent Lyman Award winners include Hank Greely, a law professor; Lyman P. Van Slyke, professor emeritus of history; and Al Camarillo, professor of history and special assistant to the provost for faculty diversity.

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The Current Conflict in South Sudan: A Conversation with John Prendergast

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Speaker Bio:

John Prendergast is Co-founder of the Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity. During the Clinton administration, John was involved in a number of peace processes in Africa while he was director of African Affairs at the National Security Council and special advisor at the Department of State. John has also worked for members of Congress, the United Nations, humanitarian aid agencies, human rights organizations, and think tanks.

 

CISAC Conference Room

John Prendergast Founder Speaker Enough Project
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Krish Seetah

Main Quad, Building 50
450 Serra Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2034

(650) 723-3421
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Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Europe Center Affliated Faculty
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Krish Seetah's research covers a range of issues relating to colonialism and colonization within three main contexts, using archaeo-historic datasets as source evidence. The first looks specifically at the late-medieval expansion of the Venetian Republic around the Adriatic, from the perspective of diet and cuisine as markers of identity. The second explores the role played by fauna during the religious crusades that took place in the Baltic and later spread to Spain and North Africa. Finally, his main fieldwork focuses on 'European influence in non-European contexts', specifically Mauritius and the Indian Ocean World.  Prof.  Seetah is the director of Stanford's ‘Mauritian Archaeology and Cultural Heritage’ (MACH) project, which studies European Imperialism and colonial activity.Much of his work uses bioarchaeological materials, with a strong emphasis on human-environmental interactions. He is keen to use the long duree perspective to help contextualize the most recent phase of globalization witnessed in the IOW, and study both the impacts of imperialism on ecology, identity and the development of nationhood following mass diaspora.

His main teaching focuses on osteoarchaeology, and he has a recent volume (with Brad Gravina: published by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge) focused on the interplay of inanimate objects and human agency. His current writing project centers on the anthropology of consumption, specifically of meat. Seetah gained his Ph.D. in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge, holds two MSc degrees, the first in Ecology and a second in Osteoarchaeology, with a BA in Biology. He has held visiting fellowships at Cambridge University, UK, the Scientific Research Center, Slovenia, and is currently an ERC Research Fellow at Reading University, UK.

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Frontiers in Food Policy: Perspectives on Sub-Saharan Africa

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Frontiers in Food Policy: Perspectives on sub-Saharan Africa is a compilation of research stemming from the Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series, hosted by the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The series, and this volume, have brought the world's leading policy experts in the fields of food and agricultural development together for a comprehensive dialogue on pro-poor growth and food security policy. Participants and contributing authors have addressed the major themes of hunger and rural poverty, agricultural productivity, resource and climate constraints on agriculture, and food and agriculture policy, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

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Stanford Center on Food Security and the Environment
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Rosamond L. Naylor
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978-1497516557
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Empirical Studies of Conflict

The Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC) addresses critical challenges to international security through methodologically rigorous, evidence-based analyses of insurgency, civil war and other sources of politically motivated violence. The project is comprised of leading scholars from across the country from a variety of academic disciplines. ESOC aims to empower high quality of conflict analysis by creating and maintaining a repository of micro-level data across multiple conflict cases and making these data available to a broader community of scholars and policy analysts.

The Contested Corners of Asia: Subnational Conflict and International Development Assistance: A Report of The Asia Foundation

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Abstract:

Subnational conflict is the most widespread, enduring, and deadly form of conflict in Asia. Over the past 20 years (1992-2012), there have been 26 subnational conflicts in South and Southeast Asia, affecting half of the countries in this region. Concerned about foreign interference, national governments limit external access to conflict areas by journalists, diplomats, and personnel from international development agencies and non-governmental organizations. As a result, many subnational conflict areas are poorly understood by outsiders and easily overshadowed by larger geopolitical issues, bilateral relations, and national development challenges. The interactions between conflict, politics, and aid in subnational conflict areas are a critical blind spot for aid programs. This study was conducted to help improve how development agencies address subnational conflicts.

 

Speaker Bios:

Ben Oppenheim is a Fellow (non-resident) at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. His research spans a diverse set of topics, including fragile states, transnational threats (including pandemic disease risks and terrorism), and the strategic coherence and effectiveness of international assistance in fragile and conflict-affected areas.

Oppenheim has consulted for organizations including the World Bank, the United Nations, the Asia Foundation, the Institute for the Future, and the Fritz Institute, on issues including organizational learning, strategy, program design, foresight, and facilitation. In 2009, he served as Advisor to the first global congress on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, supported by the World Bank and the UN.

In 2013, Oppenheim was a visiting fellow at the Uppsala University Forum on Democracy, Peace, and Justice. His research has been supported by a Simpson Fellowship, and a fellowship with the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. He was also a research fellow with UC Berkeley's Institute of International Studies, affiliated with the New Era Foreign Policy Project.

 

Nils Gilman is the Executive Director of Social Science Matrix. He holds a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley. Gilman’s first scholarly interest was in American and European intellectual history, with a particular focus on the institutional development of the social sciences, the lateral transfer and translation of ideas across disciplinary boundaries, and the impact of social scientific ideas on politics and policy.

Gilman is the author of Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), the co-editor of Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003) and Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century (Continuum Press, 2011), as well as the founding Co-editor of Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development. He also blogs and tweets.

Prior to joining Social Science Matrix in September 2013, Gilman was research director at Monitor 360, a San Francisco consultancy that addresses complex, cross-disciplinary global strategic challenges for governments, multinational businesses, and NGOs. He has also worked at a variety of enterprise software companies, including Salesforce.com, BEA Systems, and Plumtree Software. Gilman has taught and lectured at a wide variety of venues, from the Harvard University, Columbia University, and National Defense University, to PopTech, the European Futurists Conference, and the Long Now Foundation.

 

Bruce Jones is a senior fellow and the director of the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. He is also the director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.

Jones served as the senior external advisor for the World Bank’s 2011 World Development Report, Conflict, Security and Development, and in March 2010 was appointed by the United Nations secretary-general as a member of the senior advisory group to guide the Review of International Civilian Capacities. He is also consulting professor at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and professor (by courtesy) at New York University’s department of politics.

Jones holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, and was Hamburg fellow in conflict prevention at Stanford University.

He is co-author with Carlos Pascual and Stephen Stedman of Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Brookings Press, 2009); co-editor with Shepard Forman and Richard Gowan of Cooperating for Peace and Security (Cambridge University Press, 2009); and author of Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failures(Lynne Reinner, 2001).

Jones served as senior advisor in the office of the secretary-general during the U.N. reform effort leading up to the World Summit 2005, and in the same period was acting secretary of the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee. In 2004-2005, he was deputy research director of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. From 2000-2002 he was special assistant to and acting chief of staff at the office of the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process. 

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Conference Room

Ben Oppenheim Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science Speaker UC Berkeley
Nils Gilman Founding Executive Director, Social Science Matrix Speaker UC Berkeley
Bruce Jones Senior Fellow Speaker Brookings Institution
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Election Observers and Electoral Quality: The (Sometimes Unintended) Effects of Election Observation

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Abstract:

Election observation is central to democracy promotion efforts around the world, yet relatively little is known about observers' effects on electoral quality.  Do election observers deter electoral fraud, violence, and voter intimidation? Or do political parties strategically respond to the presence of observers, thereby negating their impact?  This project leverages the random assignment of 1,000 election observers to polling stations during Ghana's 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections to address these questions.  We show that observers significantly reduce indicators of fraud at the polling stations to which they are deployed. We also find, however, that political parties successfully relocate fraud from observed to unobserved stations in their historical strongholds, where they enjoy social penetration and political competition is low, whereas they are not able to do so in politically competitive constituencies.  The presentation will also report preliminary results from a household survey conducted after the elections designed to measure observers’ effects on patterns of electoral violence and voter intimidation.  The findings have implications for understanding political party behavior and the complex effects of governance interventions.

 

Speaker Bio:

Eric Kramon received his PhD in political science from UCLA in 2013 and is a 2013-14 Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow.  He will be an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University starting in Summer 2014.  While at CDDRL, he is working on a book project on vote buying and clientelism in Africa, as well as additional projects on the impact of election observation on electoral fraud and electoral quality, ethnicity and the politics of public goods provision in Africa, and the political determinants of good governance reforms.

 

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Eric Kramon

Encina Hall, C139
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow 2013-2014, CDDRL Pre-doctoral Fellow 2011-2013
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Eric Kramon received his PhD in political science from UCLA in 2013 and is a 2013-14 Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow.  He will be an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University starting in Summer 2014.  While at CDDRL, he is working on a book project on vote buying and clientelism in Africa, as well as additional projects on the impact of election observation on electoral fraud and electoral quality, ethnicity and the politics of public goods provision in Africa, and the political determinants of good governance reforms.

Eric Kramon Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker CDDRL
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