Stanford University

How to better harness big data for international education research

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International Education Initiative (IEI) Instructional Workshop 

IEI is a new cross-campus initiative to increase dialogue and collaboration around international education at Stanford. 

About the Topic: There is a wide variety of readily available secondary data sources that can be harnessed to provide rich descriptions and often meaningful causal explanations of interesting educational phenomenon in developing countries. Some of the larger data sources such as TIMSS, PIRLS or PISA are widely known, but in addition to these, many other under-utilized national and cross-national datasets are also available.

In this brief workshop I hope to a) introduce alternative secondary data resources that are useful and relevant for educational research b) discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of working with such large-scale data.

About the Speaker: Amita Chudgar is an Associate Professor of Educational Administration and Education Policy. As an economist of education, her long-term interest focus is on ensuring that children and adults in resource-constrained environments have equal access to high-quality learning opportunities irrespective of their backgrounds. 

 

Lunch will be served.

Sponsored by: Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford Graduate School of Education, Rural Education Action Program, Center for Education Policy Analysis 

Encina Hall East Wing, 5th Floor, Falcon Lounge

Amita Chudgar Visiting Scholar, Graduate School of Education
Workshops

Diamond: Facing up to the democratic recession

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In the 25th anniversary edition of The Journal of Democracy, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond reflects on the current democratic recession and why this trend is so troubling.

Diamond, who serves as the founding co-editor of The Journal of Democracy, argues that the world is in a mild but protracted democratic recession, which raises alarm due to the rate of democratic failures and where they are occurring. In surveying global empirical trends, Diamond cites 25 breakdowns of democracy since 2000 that were not the cause of military coups but rather the slow erosion of democratic rights and procedures.

Another worrisome trend for Diamond is the declining freedom in a number of countries and regions since 2005. This is most notable in Africa where corruption and the abuse of power are leading to the decline of the rule of law and political rights across the region. It is also affecting countries of global strategic importance with large populations and economic influence– from Taiwan to Mexico – and leading to the resurgence of authoritarianism in Russia and China. Diamond also looks to the U.S. where the dysfunction and breakdown of American democracy sets a bad precedent for the rest of the world. 

Diamond concludes on an optimistic note, stressing that strong public support for democracy may reverse many of these troubling trends and help sustain longer-term democratic progress.

img 9597 From left to right: Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Hertie School of Governance (Berlin); Marc Plattner, National Endowment for Democracy; Larry Diamond, Stanford University; Steven Levitsky, Harvard University; and Lucan Way, University of Toronto.

 

 

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Larry Diamond speaks to a large audience in Washington, D.C., for the 25th anniversary of the Journal of Democracy. Other speakers at the event included: Thomas Carothers (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (Hertie School of Governance-Berlin), Marc Plattner (National Endowment for Democracy), Steven Levitsky (Harvard University), and Lucan Way (University of Toronto). | Scott Henrichsen
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The Tropical Oil Crop Revolution: Food, Feed, Fuel, and Forests

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Over the last two decades global production of soybean and palm oil seeds have increased enormously. Because these tropically rainfed crops are used for food, cooking, animal feed, and biofuels, they have entered the agriculture, food, and energy chains of most nations despite their actual growth being increasingly concentrated in Southeast Asia and South America. The planting of these crops is controversial because they are sown on formerly forested lands, rely on large farmers and agribusiness rather than smallholders for their development, and supply export markets. The contrasts with the famed Green Revolution in rice and wheat of the 1960s through the 1980s are stark, as those irrigated crops were primarily grown by smallholders, depended upon public subsidies for cultivation, and served largely domestic sectors.  

The overall aim of the book is to provide a broad synthesis of the major supply and demand drivers of the rapid expansion of oil crops in the tropics; its economic, social, and environmental impacts; and the future outlook to 2050. After introducing the dramatic surge in oil crops, chapters provide a comparative perspective from different producing regions for two of the world's most important crops, oil palm and soybeans in the tropics. The following chapters examine the drivers of demand of vegetable oils for food, animal feed, and biodiesel and introduce the reader to price formation in vegetable oil markets and the role of trade in linking consumers across the world to distant producers in a handful of exporting countries. The remaining chapters review evidence on the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the oil crop revolution in the tropics. While both economic benefits and social and environmental costs have been huge, the outlook is for reduced trade-offs and more sustainable outcomes as the oil crop revolution slows and the global, national, and local communities converge on ways to better managed land use changes and land rights. 

THE TROPICAL OIL CROP REVOLUTION
Food, Feed, Fuel, and Forests
by Derek Byerlee, Walter P. Falcon, and Rosamond L. Naylor
will be published by Oxford University Press on November 10, 2016
$74.00 | 304 Pages | 9780190222987
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Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) speaker series seeks to promote critical discussions around questions of political change, social and economic rights, power and resistance in the countries of the Arab world. Scholars from across disciplines are invited to present new, innovative research that sheds light on the nuances of ongoing, salient developments and trends in the Arab world, while situating them in a rich historical context.

Digital Humanitarians

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Abstract

The overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the lack of information. Making sense of this flash flood of information, "Big Data", is proving an impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian organizations; so they’re turning to Digital Humanitarians: tech-savvy volunteers who craft and leverage ingenious crowdsourcing solutions with trail-blazing insights from artificial intelligence. Digital Humanitarians take online collective action to the next level—particularly when spearheading relief efforts in countries ruled by dictatorships. This talk charts the rise of Digital Humanitarians and concludes with their collective action in repressive contexts.

 

Speaker Bio

Patrick Meier is the author of the book " Digital Humnitarians: How Big Data is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response." He directs QCRI's Social Innovation Program where he & his team use human and machine computing to develop "Next Generation Humanitarian Technologies" in partnership with international humanitarian organizations. Patrick was previously with Ushahidi and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. He has a PhD from The Fletcher School, Pre-Doc from Stanford and an MA from Columbia. His influential blog iRevolutions has received over 1.5 million hits. Patrick tweets at @patrickmeier.

**** NOTE LOCATION****

School of Education

Room 128

Patrick Meier Director of Social Innovation at QCRI

The Middle East, North Africa and the World, 1907-2008

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Abstract

Convened by Professor Joel Beinin and Professor Robert Crews, this one-day conference will explore the global history of the Middle East and North Africa. The conference is chronologically delimited by two New York-centered financial panics that had substantial consequences for the Middle East and North Africa. While the region has long been engaged in global circuits of commerce, culture, and migration, this choice of chronological frame highlights the renewed salience of political economy in several academic disciplines.

 

Conference Program

8:45 -9:00 Welcoming Remarks

9:00 -10:30 Political Economy

Chair: Robert Crews (Stanford University)

Toby Jones (Rutgers University) “Energy and War in the Persian Gulf” (Abstract)

Brandon Wolfe-Honnicutt (California State University, Stanislaus) “Oil, Guns, and Dollars: U.S. Arms Transfers and the Breakdown of Bretton Woods” (Abstract)

10:45-12:15 Ideas and Institutions

Chair: Aishwary Kumar (Stanford University)

Yoav Di-Capua (University of Texas at Austin) “An Iconic Betrayal: Jean Paul Sartre and the Arab World” (Abstract)

Omnia El Shakry (University of California, Davis) “The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and the Psyche in postwar Egypt” (Abstract)

1:30-3:30 Global Palestine

Chair: Hesham Sallam (Stanford University)

Laleh Khalili (University of London, SOAS) “Palestine and Circuits of Coercion” (Abstract)

Ilana Feldman (George Washington University) “Humanitarianism and Revolution: Samed, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, and the work of liberation” (Abstract)

3:15-4:45 Circulation of Popular Culture

Chair: Alexander Key (Stanford University)

Hisham Aidi (Columbia University)  “Frantz Fanon and Judeo-Arab Music” (Abstract)

Paul A. Silverstein (Reed College) “A Global Maghreb: Crossroads, Borderlands, and Frontiers in the Rethinking of Area Studies” (Abstract)

5:00 pm Concluding Remarks

Chair: Joel Beinin (Stanford University)

For more information, please contact The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies abbasiprogram@stanford.edu

*Organized by the The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and co-sponsored by the History Department, CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, The Mediterranean Studies Forum, Stanford Global Studies, and the Stanford Humanities Center*

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Conferences

Humanitarian Assistance and the Duration of Peace after Civil War

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The principles of humanitarian assistance dictate that aid be distributed in accordance with need while remaining neutral with respect to the political stakes. However, these principles have unique implications in the postconflict context, where need is often correlated with opponents’ performance in the previous contest. In these cases, humanitarian assistance is likely to be biased towards the conflict loser. Using a crisis-bargaining framework, this article describes a simple logic for how humanitarian aid can inadvertently undermine peace by creating a revisionist party with the incentive to renegotiate the postwar settlement. The empirical expectations of the theory are tested using a panel dataset of cross-national humanitarian aid expenditures in civil conflicts since the end of the Cold War. As the theory predicts, postconflict states treated with higher levels of humanitarian assistance exhibit shorter spells of peace; however, this effect only occurs after conflicts that ended with a decisive victory. 

 

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Class Debate

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The final class will pose nine questions, each question digging into
each of the nine topics covered over the quarter.  Pizza at 6pm!

Bechtel Conference Center, EncinaHall

Helen Stacy

The End of Neoliberalism and the Rise of the Human-Security State

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Paul Amar will discuss his book The Security Archipelago, winner of the 2014 Charles Taylor Book Award of the American Political Science Association. The book provides an alternative historical and theoretical framing of the refashioning of free-market states and the rise of humanitarian security regimes in the Global South by examining the pivotal, trendsetting cases of Brazil and Egypt. Addressing gaps in the study of neoliberalism and biopolitics, Amar describes how coercive security operations and cultural rescue campaigns confronting waves of resistance have appropriated progressive, antimarket discourses around morality, sexuality, and labor. Homing in on Cairo and Rio de Janeiro, Amar reveals the innovative resistances and unexpected alliances that have coalesced in new polities emerging from the Arab Spring and South America's Pink Tide. These have generated a shared modern governance model that he terms the "human-security state."

 

Speaker Bio

paul amar 1

Paul Amar, Associate Professor in the Global & International Studies Program, is a political scientist with affiliate appointments in Feminist Studies, Sociology, Comparative Literature, Middle East Studies, and Latin American & Iberian Studies. At UCSB he currently serves as Chair of Middle East Studies, Coordinator of the Campus Cluster on Security Studies, and member of the Graduate Studies Council. In addition, he serves as coordinator of scholarly  projects for the Arab Council of the Social Sciences, based in Beirut. Before he began his academic career, he worked as a journalist in Egypt, a police reformer in Brazil, and as a conflict-resolution and economic development specialist at the United Nations. His books include:  Cairo Cosmopolitan (2006); New Racial Missions of Policing (2010); Global South to the Rescue (2011); Dispatches from the Arab Spring (2013); The Middle East and Brazil (2014), and The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics and the End of Neoliberalism. This most recent book was awarded the Charles Taylor Award for "Best Book of the Year" in 2014 by the Interpretive Methods Section of the American Political Science Association.

 

*This event is co-sponsored with CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy and the Mediterranean Studies Program.*

 

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Reuben Hills Conference Room
2nd Floor East Wing E207
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, California 94305

Paul Amar Associate Professor, Global and International Studies Program University of California, Santa Barbara
Seminars
Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

Arab Activism and the Paradoxes of Political Aid

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*This event is co-sponsored with CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy and The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.*

Abstract

European and US-based scholars and practitioners have debated the purposes and sometimes the (limited) macro-effects of programs designed to promote transitions from authoritarianism to democracy in Middle East countries. Yet this discussion often lacks analysis of on-the-ground experiences or ignores the cumulative wisdom of local counterparts and intermediaries. This seminar is based on Carapico’s ground-breaking study Political Aid and Arab Activism: Democracy Promotion, Justice, and Representation (Cambridge University Press, 2013) which explores two decades’ worth of projects sponsored by American, European, and other transnational agencies in four key sub-fields: the rule of law, electoral design and monitoring, female empowerment, and civil society. Specifically in the seminar Carapico will discuss controversies and contradictions surrounding projects in Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq (the three main cases) and Jordan, Morocco, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia, and Lebanon (where democracy brokers also work) to help explain why so many feminists and other advocates for justice, free elections, and civic agency concluded that foreign funding is inherently political and paradoxical.

Speaker Bio

sheila carapico color Sheila Carapico

Sheila Carapico, Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Richmond, has been exploring Arab activism since studying in Cairo and traveling around the region in 1971/72. She lived in Sana’a from 1977 through 1980, mainly researching community development initiatives and foreign aid interventions. Subsequently she worked as a consultant for the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Netherlands Embassy, Human Rights Watch, and several other agencies in Yemen, Egypt, and Lebanon. She was a Fulbright research scholar and visiting fellow at the Sana’a University Women’s Studies and Social Research Center for two years during the ‘democratic opening’ in Yemen in the early 1990s. She served as Visiting Chairperson in the Department of Political Science at the American University in Cairo for all of 2010 and the ‘Arab spring’ semester of 2011, and returned to AUC as a visiting faculty member in the spring of 2013. In addition to Political Aid she is the author of Civil Society in Yemen: A Political Economy of Activism in Modern Arabia (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and other works on the comparative and international politics of the Arabian Peninsula and the Arab world. She is a contributing editor of Middle East Report.      

 

 

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Sheila Carapico Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science, University of Richmond
Seminars
Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series
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