Stanford University

Redefining Security Along the Food/Health Nexus

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FSI's second major conference on global underdevelopment brought together worldwide thought leaders to explore the root causes of global underdevelopment and to provide fresh insights on the links between international security and universal access to adequate food, health care and water.

Redefining Security Along the Food/Health Nexus Conference website

Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center

Kofi Annan former Secretary-General, the United Nations, Nobel Peace laureate, chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa Keynote Speaker
Jeff Raikes CEO, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Keynote Speaker
Robert Gates former U.S. secretary of Defense Keynote Speaker
David Bloom Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography; chair, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health Panelist
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar Professor and Deane F. Johnson Faculty Scholar, Stanford Law School; co-director, Center for International Security and Cooperation Panelist

Jenna Davis

473 Via Ortega, Y2E2, Room 255
Stanford, CA 94305-4020

(650) 725-9170
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Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
jennadavis.jpg PhD

Jennifer (“Jenna”) Davis is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Higgins-Magid Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, both of Stanford University. She also heads the Stanford Program on Water, Health & Development. Professor Davis’ research and teaching is focused at the interface of engineered water supply and sanitation systems and their users, particularly in developing countries. She has conducted field research in more than 20 countries, including most recently Zambia, Bangladesh, and Uganda.

Higgins-Magid Faculty Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
Jenna Davis assistant professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; center fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment Panelist
Alex Evans head of research, Program on Resource Scarcity, Climate Change and Multilateralism at the Center on International Cooperation, New York University Panelist
Donald Francis co-founder, Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases Panelist
David Lazarus former senior advisor for rural affairs, Domestic Policy Council, the White House, and former senior advisor to the secretary of agriculture Panelist
Jenny Martinez professor of law and Justin M. Roach Faculty Scholar, Stanford Law School Panelist

Grant Miller

Encina Commons Room 101,
615 Crothers Way,
Stanford, CA 94305-6006

(650) 723-2714 (650) 723-1919
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Henry J. Kaiser, Jr. Professor
Professor, Health Policy
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Professor, Economics (by courtesy)
grant_miller_vert.jpeg PhD, MPP

As a health and development economist based at the Stanford School of Medicine, Dr. Miller's overarching focus is research and teaching aimed at developing more effective health improvement strategies for developing countries.

His agenda addresses three major interrelated themes: First, what are the major causes of population health improvement around the world and over time? His projects addressing this question are retrospective observational studies that focus both on historical health improvement and the determinants of population health in developing countries today. Second, what are the behavioral underpinnings of the major determinants of population health improvement? Policy relevance and generalizability require knowing not only which factors have contributed most to population health gains, but also why. Third, how can programs and policies use these behavioral insights to improve population health more effectively? The ultimate test of policy relevance is the ability to help formulate new strategies using these insights that are effective.

Faculty Fellow, Stanford Center on Global Poverty and Development
Faculty Affiliate, Stanford Center for Latin American Studies
Faculty Affiliate, Woods Institute for the Environment
Faculty Affiliate, Interdisciplinary Program in Environment & Resources
Faculty Affiliate, Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
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Grant Miller assistant professor of medicine, Center on Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research core faculty member Panelist
Onesmo K. ole-MoiYoi chair, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute & Consortium; senior advisor, Aga Khan University Panelist
Gary Schoolnik professor of medicine (infectious diseases), and microbiology and immunology, Stanford School of Medicine; senior fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment and FSI Panelist
Ray Yip director, China Program, Global Health Program, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Panelist
Conferences

Kofi Annan warns of worldwide hunger, political unrest if climate change persists

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Blaming leaders in America and abroad for not doing enough to combat climate change, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said continued failure to tackle the problem will result in worldwide hunger, social unrest and political turmoil.

“Without action at the global level to address climate change, we will see farmers across Africa – and in many other parts of the world including here in America – forced to leave their land,” the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize winner told a crowd of about 1,400 people at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium on Thursday. “The result will be mass migration, growing food shortages, loss of social cohesion and even political instability.”

Citing numbers from the World Bank, Annan said rapidly rising food prices since 2010 have “pushed an additional 70 million people into extreme poverty.” He called a lack of food security for nearly 1 billion of the world’s population “an unconscionable moral failing” that is also a stumbling block to a strong international economy.

“It affects everything from the health of an unborn child to economic growth,” he said.

Annan’s talk, “Food Security Is a Global Challenge,” was delivered as part of a daylong conference on global underdevelopment sponsored by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The event drew the world’s leading experts in the field and featured panel discussions that explored the connections between global security and food supplies, health care and governance. Keynote speeches were delivered by Annan and Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also planned to deliver a talk to a private audience.

The conference marked the launch of FSI’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

“With this facility, and the creative thinkers and inquisitive minds for which Stanford is famous, you are well-equipped to undertake research which advances our knowledge and helps to shape our response to the many global challenges we face,” Annan said. “And with the resources at your disposal, you also have the capacity to actively engage to influence policy, implement solutions and thus improve the lives of the most vulnerable people on the planet.”

Annan also lauded government initiatives such as America’s Feed the Future program that focus on alleviating global hunger. He recently met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Raj Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to discuss ways to address food insecurity.

“If we pool our efforts and resources, we can finally break the back of this problem,” he said.

But he challenged wealthier nations to do more than pay lip service to the problem.

“We need to make sure that promises of extra support from richer countries are kept and involve fresh funds rather than the repackaging of existing financial commitments,” he said.

Annan, who is the chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, the Africa Progress Panel, and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, said Africa represents both the greatest problem and the greatest promise when it comes to food security.

The continent is home to 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, but cannot produce enough food to feed its own people, he said. But if Africa can grow just half the world’s average yield of staple crops like wheat, corn and rice, it would end up with a food surplus.

Transforming Africa into one of the world’s biggest crop producers will take more than supporting farmers, he said. It entails sound environmental stewardship.

 “I hope this is an area where the Center on Food Security and the Environment can make a major contribution to finding solutions,” Annan said.

Without those solutions, the future is bleak.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where global warming brings the threat of persistent drought, current crop production is expected to be cut in half by the end of the century and 8 percent of the region’s fertile land is expected to dry up.

“Those arguing, here and elsewhere, for urgent action and a focus on opportunities to green our economies still find themselves drowned out by those with short-term and vested interests,” Annan said. “This lack of long-term collective vision and leadership is inexcusable. It has global repercussions, and it will be those least responsible for climate change – the poorest and most vulnerable – that will pay the highest price.”

Annan's speech was sponsored by FSI, Stanford in Government and the Stanford University Speakers Bureau.

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Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivers a keynote address on food security and climate change during FSI's global underdevelopment conference on Nov. 10, 2011.
Ben Chrisman
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Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program recruitment opens

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The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program is recruiting rising leaders from around the world to join the 2012 program scheduled for July 22-August 10 at Stanford University. Entering its eighth year, the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program is run by the faculty and staff at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The deadline to apply is December 12, 2011.

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

A life changing experience I will never forget. I leave a much more informed and networked civil society leader. -Titus Gwemende, Zimbabwe (Class of 2011)

Each year, the program brings together a group of 25 to 30 mid-career practitioners in law, politics, government, private enterprise, civil society, and development from emerging and aspiring democracies. The three-week program provides a unique forum for emerging leaders to connect, exchange experiences, and receive academic training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work. Academic sessions are taught by an interdisciplinary team of leading Stanford faculty who are joined by an all-star roster of outside guest speakers.

Fellows emerge from the training program better equipped with new techniques and approaches to build democracy and economic development in their home countries. The 2012 class of Draper Hills Summer Fellows will join a network of 186 alumni from 57 developing democracies worldwide.

Previous Summer Fellows have served as presidential advisors, senators, lawyers, journalists, civic activists, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, and development practitioners, among others. Strong candidates should have substantial practical experience and play important emerging roles in their country's economic and social development. The program seeks applicants from countries where democracy and development are not firmly established, in the regions of Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Arab world. Successful applicants will have academic credentials necessary to participate and contribute to advanced academic sessions and a working knowledge of English.

The program is highly selective, receiving several hundred applications each year. To learn more about the program and to apply, please visit: http://draperhills.stanford.edu/. Applicants are encouraged to apply as early as possible, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

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Stern discusses strengthening grassroots in Africa providing the “last mile”

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In the October 13 seminar entitled, "The Last Mile: Grassroots Development and Technology in Africa” Joshua Stern, executive director of Envaya, and Jesse Young, CTO of Envaya, shared their insights into how software could be used to strengthen grassroots development in Africa. Envaya’s mission is to build and deploy a software platform that provides “the last mile” of connection between grassroots activists and the larger development sector. 

Stern suggested that one of the biggest challenges in the development space currently was the lack of coordination between the community-based organizations, the NGOs and the foundations. He further argued that a system is only as strong as its weakest links. He therefore suggests that it is important to strengthen the weakest links. In the case of Tanzania and many other developing countries, Stern argued that the weakest link was in the connection between the community-based organizations and the international NGOs that often provided critical financial support. The community-based organizations are essential to focus on because they are embedded within the communities they are working in and have institutional memory, and they stay with the communities unlike international organizations and volunteers that come and go.

In Africa, Stern argued, there is a pretty robust grassroots civil society but often people are working on very similar work and do not know one another. Furthermore, organizations have trouble navigating secure funding. There is therefore a huge potential for collaboration. In particular, there is room for greater leveraging technology. Stern argued, “Despite leaps and bounds in hardware infrastructure, software is still tailored to the developed world.” Community organizations have therefore not been able to take advantage of the IT revolution. Envaya fills this gap by providing software that is optimized to work with infrastructure in these localities, thus enabling these organizations to make use of the connectivity that is now becoming available to them.

Josh and Jesse inspired us with the vision of Envaya to provide a technology platform for civil society organizations in developing countries so that communication and collaboration can take place beyond the occasional conference.  Young discussed the technical details Envaya’s innovation that enabled the rapid spread of their platform among the grassroots organizations in Tanzania and elsewhere.

 

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Expulsions: Inequality's Fifth Circle

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In the last two decades there has been a sharp growth in the numbers of people that have been “expelled,” numbers far larger than the newly “incorporated” middle classes of countries such as India and China. I use the term “expulsion” to describe a diversity of conditions: the growing numbers of the abjectly poor, of the displaced in poor countries who are warehoused in formal and informal refugee camps, of the minoritized and persecuted in rich countries who are warehoused in prisons, of workers whose bodies are destroyed on the job and rendered useless at far too young an age, able-bodied surplus populations warehoused in ghettoes and slums. One major trend is the repositioning of what had been framed as sovereign territory, a complex conditions, into land for sale on the global market – land in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Central Asia and in Latin America to be bought by rich investors and rich governments to grow food, to access underground water tables, and to access minerals and metals. My argument is that these diverse and many other kindred developments amount to a logic of expulsion, signaling a deeper systemic transformation in advanced capitalism, one documented in bits and pieces but not quite narrated as an overarching dynamic that is taking us into a new phase of global capitalism. The paper is based on the author’s forthcoming book Expulsions.


Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com). Her recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2008), A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007), both translated into Spanish by Editorial Katz (Madrid y Buenos Aires), and the 4th fully updated edition of Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2012). Among older books is The Global City (Princeton University Press 1991/2001). Her books are translated into over 20 languages. She is the recipient of diverse awards and mentions, ranging from multiple doctor honoris causa to named lectures and being selected as one of the 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2011 by Foreign Policy Magazine.

Recommended readings:

 

Sponsored by The Europe Center, the Abassi Program in Islamic Studies, and the Mediterranean Studies Forum

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CISAC Conference Room

Saskia Sassen Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair of the Committee on Global Thought Speaker Columbia University
David Palumbo-Liu Professor and Director of Comparative Literature and Director of the Asian American Studies Program Speaker Stanford University
Seminars

Incomplete Assimilation among Muslims in France

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Recognizing the political consequences for Europe of Muslim immigration, and relying on a novel identification strategy, this paper investigates why Muslim assimilation into French cultural norms is incomplete, and provides experimental and survey evidence that reveals the low expected payoffs that Muslim immigrants in France receive for full assimilation. While the data show that rooted French people initially distrust Muslims (compared to a matched set of Christians)  in part due to their unwillingness to fully assimilate, the real source of Muslim reluctance to fully assimilate is their perception that in anonymous transactions (i.e., through French institutions) they will always be perceived as foreign and face discrimination.

Workshop paper is available to Stanford affiliates upon request by email to khaley@stanford.edu

David Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He received his B.A. in Political Science from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include comparative politics, nation-state formation, ethnic conflict, and religion. Among his publications are Politics, Language and Thought: The Somali Experience (1977), Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba (1986), Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa (1992), Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (1998), and Nations, States and Violence (2007). Prof. Laitin has been a recipient of fellowships from the Howard Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

 

Event Summary

Professor Laitin opens the seminar by providing background on the research project that motivated the paper. This examined: whether Muslim immigrants in France faced unique social and economic barriers; the source of the barriers; and whether French republicanism exacerbated or lessened the barriers. He provides a brief summary of studies examining the first and third points, but the focus of his talk was on the second point: if there are higher barriers for Muslims, who is building them?

Professor Laitin then describes the study his research team carried out on a Senegalese population in France for 15 years, drawing on equal-sized groups of Muslims and Christians from similar social and economic conditions. Through a series of games and surveys, the team observed that within Senegalese Muslims in France, certain groups assimilate more than others, and those that assimilate less are treated worse by French individuals and institutions. Many of the Muslims expected to be treated less generously by French individuals, and reported more experiences of discrimination from French institutions, which Professor Laitin's team found was more difficult to overcome than individual discrimination. This group also exhibited stronger financial ties (measured by investments and remittances sent to Senegal from France) and emotional ties (measured by desire to be buried in Senegal rather than France after death). The results of the study are used to provide a series of decision rules and reward matrixes for incoming Senegalese Muslims, including the likelihood of penalties and rewards for assimilation, such as giving children French names.

During a discussion period following the presentation, such questions were raised as: Do the results of the study have more to do with the respondents being Muslim, or simply not being French - or, do other ethnic or religious groups have the same problems assimilating into French Catholic society? Is the example of preferences for burial locations more about ties to Senegal than lack of ties to France? How much of the effect is due to being black rather than Muslim? Will the results of the study change as the Muslim population in France increases? What has been the reception in France to the prohibition of collecting ethnographic data? Why is "incomplete assimilation" framed as a "response" to the discrimination - is it a choice or is it just the way things are? Where does the fault lie in the discrimination reported in the survey?

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David Laitin

Department of Political Science
Stanford University
Encina Hall, W423
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

(650) 725-9556 (650) 723-1808
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James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science
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David Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science and a co-director of the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford. He has conducted field research in Somalia, Nigeria, Spain, Estonia and France. His principal research interest is on how culture – specifically, language and religion – guides political behavior. He is the author of “Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-heritage Societies” and a series of articles on immigrant integration, civil war and terrorism. Laitin received his BA from Swarthmore College and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
David Laitin Speaker
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Islam and Contemporary Europe

From conditionality to civil protest: the changing political dynamics in Africa

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Joint Africa Table/CDDRL seminar

Andrew M. Mwenda is the founder,  Strategy and Editorial Director (SED) of The Independent Publications Limited, publishers of The Independent, East Africa’s leading current affairs newsmagazine. An admirer of Socrates and Frederick Von Hayek, he is an activist, a journalist, a columnist, a presenter of a prime time daily radio talk-show and a businessman.

Named by Foreign Policy among the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2010, Mwenda was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2008 and by the Africa Study Institute as an Archbishop Tutu fellow, a program for “Africa’s future leaders”. He has also won the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists “in tribute to his commitment to a free press in Uganda and the whole world” and the Outstanding Alumni Award from the British Council.

Philippines Conference Room

Andrew Mwenda Founder, Strategy and Editorial Director (SED) of The Independent Publications Limited Speaker
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Stanford Interdisciplinary Conference on Conscience

Conference organizer: Nancy Ruttenburg

What is conscience, what was conscience, and what is its future?

The purpose of the conference is to examine the authority of conscience as it is presently invoked in various arenas of contemporary life—including law, medicine, journalism, and politics—and as its meaning is inflected by scholarly debates in the fields of history, literature, religious studies, psychology, and philosophy. From their various fields of expertise and interest, participants will address the central question the conference raises: in our post-Freudian and post-Nietzschean age, to what degree does conscience possess the kind of authority that an earlier and less secular age reserved for first things? This question entails a host of others.  Do our invocations of conscience reveal it to be the still-vital residue of a kind of certainty linked to infallible authority from which we cannot alienate ourselves even when we’d like to? If so, is the enduring vitality of conscience a sign that the process of secularization remains incomplete, even in secular rationalists, those who might consider themselves to be exempt from the religiosity that distinguishes United States culture from those of other modern Western democracies? Do we regard conscience as a type of knowledge? Or is it possible to understand conscience ontologically, as a category of self or mind that—insofar as it speaks to all humanity by means of a "small, still voice" issuing from each human heart—bridges the gap between individual and corporate being? Whether or not underwritten by a discipline or a tradition, conscience is commonly invoked to justify a range of acts and behaviors: what relation do these invocations of moral law, even when unexamined, bear to the burgeoning interest in ethics we see across the humanities disciplines and into the legal, medical, and journalistic fields? Between the extremes of authoritarianism and anarchy, where do we place conscience in American political life and how do we understand its peculiar agency?


CONFERENCE VIDEO AND AUDIO RECORDINGS:

Please click on the panel titles and the keynote speaker's name below to view videos and listen to audios of each:

November 8, 2012
Panel 1:  The Pre-Revolutionary Conscience: From Religious Burden to Natural Right (video)
Panel 2:  MIA: Conscience and the First Amendment (video)
Panel 3:  Roundtable: The Religious Conscience in Modernity (audio only)
Panel 4:  Conscience/Ethics: The Secular Conscience (audio only)

November 9, 2012
Panel 5:  Conscience and Reportage (video)
Panel 6:  Roundtable: Embodied Conscience (video)
Panel 7:  Roundtable: Conscientious Objection (video)
Keynote:  Anne Aghion, award-winning documentary filmmaker (video)

 

PROGRAM AND PARTICIPANTS:

Opening Event: Wednesday, November 7, 6:00-8:30 p.m.
Screening of  keynote speaker Anne Aghion’s documentary film, My Neighbor, My Killer, to be introduced by the filmmaker.  Will be held in the Oksenberg Conference Room, Encina Hall Central, 3rd floor.

  • 6:00 p.m.  Reception
  • 6:30 p.m.  Screening

For more information on the film, please visit this event listing on our website by clicking <here>.

 

Thursday, November 8, 9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m:
Conscience and its Conceptual Evolution: Religion/Rights/Ethics

  • 9:00 – 9:30  Opening Remarks:  Nancy Ruttenburg, Organizer

Thursday Morning Panels:  What Was Conscience?  The American Context

  • 9:30 – 11:30:  The Pre-Revolutionary Conscience: From Religious Burden to Natural Right

1) Andrew Murphy, Associate Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy, Rutgers University, author of Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America and Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11.

2) Mark Valeri, E. T. Thompson Professor of Church History, Union Presbyterian Seminary. Among the editors of the multi-volume Works of Jonathan Edwards, he is the author most recently of Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America.

Stanford Respondent:  Caroline Winterer, Professor of History, Professor by courtesy of Classics

  • 11:45 – 1:45:  MIA: Conscience and the First Amendment

1) Jack Rakove, William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and Professor of Political Science at Stanford, where has taught since 1980. He is the author of six books, including Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996), which received the Pulitzer Prize in History, and Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (2010), which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize. He is currently at work on Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience: The Radical Significance of the Free Exercise of Religion, which will be part of the Oxford University Press series on Inalienable Rights.

2) Michael J. Perry, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, and Senior Fellow for the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University School of Law.  Author most recently of The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy; Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court; Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts; and Under God?: Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy.

Stanford Respondent:  Derek Webb, Fellow, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford

 


 Thursday Afternoon Panels:  What Is Conscience:  The Secular/Religious Divide

  • 2:45 – 4:45: Roundtable: The Religious Conscience in Modernity: 

1) Nathan Chapman, Executive Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center who joined the Law School as a Fellow in 2010.  After clerking for the Honorable Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Court, he practiced with WilmerHale in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Duke University School of Law and Duke Divinity School in 2007.  His most recent publications include Disentangling Conscience and Religion, 2013 U. Ill. L. Rev. (forthcoming) and Due Process As Separation of Powers, 121 Yale L. J. 1672 (2012) (with Michael W. McConnell).

2) Steven Knapp, President of the George Washington University since August 2007, former Dean of Arts and Sciences and subsequently Provost at Johns Hopkins University, and Professor of English at UC Berkeley.  Author most recently with Philip Clayton of The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith.  A specialist in Romanticism, literary theory, and the relation of literature to philosophy and religion, Dr. Knapp earned his doctorate and masters degrees from Cornell University and his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University.

3) Arnold Eisen, Chancellor, Jewish Theological Seminary, NYC.  Author most recently of Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community and Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America.

Stanford Moderator: Nancy Ruttenburg, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature, Professor by Courtesy of Comparative Literature and Slavic, Director, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel

  • 5:00 – 7:00: Conscience/Ethics: The Secular Conscience 

1) Jay M. Bernstein, University Distinguished Professor, New School for Social Research.  Author most recently of Against Voluptuous Bodies: Adorno’s Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting; Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics; and a co-authored volume published through UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center entitled Art and Aesthetics After Adorno.

2) Kent Greenawalt, University Professor, former Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Law Review, Columbia Law School.  Author, among many other works, of Religion and the Constitution: Vol. I: Free Exercise and Fairness and Vol. II: Establishment and Fairness, as well as Does God Belong in Public Schools? and Private Consciences and Public Reasons.

Stanford Respondent:  Nancy Ruttenburg, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature, Professor by Courtesy of Comparative Literature and Slavic, Director of Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel

 

Friday, November 9, 9:00 a.m. - 6:45 p.m.
Contemporary Casuistry: Cases of Conscience in Action

Friday Morning Panels: Narrating Conscience: Modes of Witnessing

  • 9:00 – 11:00: Conscience and Reportage

1) Dr. Sheri Fink, M.D., Ph.D., 2010 Pulitzer Prize- and National Magazine Award-winner in investigative journalism for “The Deadly Choices at Memorial” about difficult choices made at a New Orleans hospital during the aftermath of Katrina; contributor to ProPublica who has reported globally on health, medicine, and science; senior fellow with the New America Foundation and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative; author of War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival (2003) during the Balkan crisis, winner of the American Medical Writer’s Association special book award and finalist for PEN Martha Albrand awards.

2) Colin Dayan, Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities, Vanderbilt, and expert in literary, legal, and religious studies of the Americas; books include Haiti, History, and the Gods (1998); The Story of Cruel and Unusual (2007); and, most recently, The Law is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons, selected as a Choice top-25 "outstanding academic book of 2011."

Stanford Respondent: David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, Professor of Comparative Literature, Professor by courtesy of English 

  • 11:15 – 1:15:  Roundtable: Embodied Conscience 

1) Dr. Abraham Verghese, author of the novel Cutting for Stone (2010)as well as the non-fiction works, My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story (1995)about his experience as a physician working in rural Tennessee at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss (1998).  Currently Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, Stanford.

2) Mark Johnson, Philip H. Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon.  Author most recently of The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (co-authored with George Lakoff); Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics; and a second edition of Metaphors We Live By (co-authored with George Lakoff).

3) Dr. Fady Joudah, Internal Medicine and Palestinian-American poet; former practitioner with Doctors Without Borders in Darfur, Sudan and Zambia; translator of the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Zaqtan, and 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for The Earth in the Attic (2008).

Stanford Moderator:  Blakey Vermeule, Professor of English

 

Friday Afternoon Panels:  Conscience in the World: Problems of Toleration and Intervention

  • 2:30 – 4:30:  Roundtable: Conscientious Objection 

1) Air Force Reserve Col. Steven Kleinman, Senior Intelligence Officer, U.S. Air Force; a widely recognized subject matter expert with extensive experience in human intelligence operations, special operations, strategic interrogation, and resistance to interrogation; Senior Advisor to the Intelligence Science Board’s study “Educing Information” which issued guidelines for improving the government’s interrogation techniques. Publicly opposed “enhanced interrogation” techniques for battling the war on terror in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House Judiciary Committee.  Authored numerous articles laying out his argument against torture published in several peer-reviewed professional journals, the law review of the City University of New York and Valparaiso University law schools, and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

2) Eyal Press, author of Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times and Absolute Convictions; contributor to several journals, including The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, The Atlantic Monthly, and others. 

3) Yusef Komunyakaa: Global Distinguished Professor of English, NYU, Vietnam veteran and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose collections include The Chameleon Couch, Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Pleasure Dome and many others.

Stanford Moderator:  Debra Satz, Associate Dean of Humanities, Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society; Professor of Philosophy and by courtesy Political Science; Research Affiliate, Program on Global Justice

 

4:45 – 6:45: KEYNOTE ADDRESS:  ANNE AGHION

For her work on the gacaca trials in post-genocide Rwanda, documentary filmmaker Anne Aghion won the UNESCO Fellini Prize, an Emmy Award, the Human Rights Watch 2009 Nestor Almendros Prize, and she was a nominee for the 2009 Gotham Award. Her feature-length documentary, My Neighbor, My Killer, was one of the few documentaries to be an Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival.

 
Co-sponsored by The Europe Center, Stanford Arts Institute (formerly Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts), Stanford Law School, School of Humanities and Sciences, Office of the Dean of Humanities, Creative Writing Program, Stanford Humanities Center, Department of English, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Center for Ethics in Society, Department of Art & Art History, the Department of Philosophy, and the Department of History.
 
Please visit the conference website at: https://conscienceconference2012.wordpress.com/
 
 

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Food security experts review mixed outcomes of the Green Revolution

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Four decades ago, farmers in Prabhu Pingali’s small eastern-Indian village began planting a new rice variety known as IR8. The high-yielding strain dramatically increased the productivity of rice cultivation in the region. Record harvests and profits allowed Pingali’s family to send their son to school and then to college, launching him on a path that led to his current position as Deputy Director of Agricultural Development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“I think of myself as being here today because of what the Green Revolution did,” said Pingali, speaking at the Center on Food Security and the Environment’s Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium series.

Pingali’s story, and many others like it, came about as a result of the rapid advances in agricultural technology that characterized the “Green Revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s. Agricultural scientists from the International Rice Research Institute and the International Maize and Wheat Center worked aggressively to bring modern farming techniques, including high-yielding crop varieties, to the developing world.

The first Green Revolution proved that, “innovation, technological change, and just plain old human ingenuity” can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to global food security.

Their efforts sparked a surge in agricultural productivity and incomes that lifted millions of small farmers out of poverty and dispelled widespread fears of famine in Asia’s developing countries. Pingali cited a 2003 study that found that today’s global per capita calorie consumption would be nearly 15 percent lower, and child malnutrition 6-8 percent higher, had the Green Revolution not occurred.

Production surpluses also exerted downward pressure on global food prices, increasing the purchasing power of poor food buyers in both urban and rural areas.

But even direct beneficiaries, including Pingali, acknowledge the Green Revolution’s unintended consequences. “As an Indian, I feel we could have done a lot better.”

Pingali noted that the Green Revolution largely bypassed Sub-Saharan Africa, home to some of the world’s most food-insecure populations. Unlike the developing nations of Eastern Asia, he said, most African countries still lack the market infrastructure to support rapid expansion of the agricultural sector. Low population densities, resulting in weak local food demand, and insufficient government support for agricultural development, have further inhibited productivity gains in these countries.

Additionally, many African farmers rely primarily on minor “orphan” crops, such as cassava, rather than on the global staple grains – rice, wheat, and maize – that received most attention from Green Revolution scientists. Although modern crop breeders have begun to develop high-yielding orphan crop varieties, research in this area remains sparse. Major breakthroughs and significant yield gains may not occur for decades.

Speaking after Pingali, University of Minnesota Professor Philip Pardey reiterated the Green Revolution’s welfare-enhancing consequences. Pardey provided a more rigorous quantitative analysis, presenting data that showed that yields of major cereal crops more than doubled, and real food prices fell by over 50 percent, between 1960 and 2005.

However, Pardey expressed concern about an apparent slowdown in progress since the end of the 20th century. He cited declining yield growth rates, and the food price spikes of 2008-2010, to emphasize the need for a renewed commitment to agricultural science and food security policy. 

Both Pingali and Pardey also drew their audience’s attention to the unevenness of the Green Revolution’s benefits. The yield gains of the 1960s and 1970s, Pardey said, were accompanied by increasing spatial concentration of food production, as some regions and countries benefited disproportionately from emerging agricultural research.

Even if scientists do develop improved crop varieties for Africa, Pingali said, increasingly stringent intellectual property laws could inhibit their distribution to poor rural farmers. Up until the 1990s, issues of intellectual property had little bearing on agricultural development, permitting the wide distribution of crop varieties. Now the networks that fostered the Green Revolution are in danger of disappearing because of restrictions on the transfer of intellectual property. What was once a public endeavor is increasingly a private concern, and Pingali expressed uncertainty about how private capital should be harnessed to help the rural poor.

Meanwhile, looming challenges such as population growth and global climate change will further complicate the future path of agricultural development.

Like Pardey, Pingali warned against complacency. Though the advances of the 1960s and 1970s were impressive, he concluded, researchers will need to “reach beyond the low-hanging fruit” to continue to increase productivity – intensifying the study of orphan crops, for example, and developing new crop strains that will grow well under extreme climate conditions.

According to Pingali, the first Green Revolution proved that, “innovation, technological change, and just plain old human ingenuity” can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to global food security. Four decades later, agricultural development faces a new round of challenges. Despite these obstacles, Pingali concluded on a note of confidence, arguing that the Green Revolution can overcome problems that currently seem intractable. “We’ve done it before,” he declared, “and I’m sure we can do it again.”

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