Stanford University

Launch of New Modeling Framework to Investigate COVID-19

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A team of SHP faculty and researchers, together with Stanford Medicine graduate and medical students and in collaboration with colleagues at CIDE in Mexico, have launched a modeling framework to investigate the epidemiology of COVID-19 and to support pro-active resource planning and policy evaluations for diverse populations and geographies — including California, Mexico and India.

The Stanford-CIDE Coronavirus Simulation Model — or SC-COSMO — incorporates realistic demography and patterns of contacts sufficient for transmission of the virus that has infected more than 2 million people worldwide and claimed more than 125,600 lives, according to the widely used Johns Hopkins COVID-19 map which is updated several times a day.

The SC-COSMO model also incorporates non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as social distancing, timing and effects on reductions in contacts which may differ by demography.

Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford Health Policy, is the principal investigator of the project, along with Fernando Alarid-Escudero, an assistant professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico and Jason Andrews, an assistant professor of medicine (infectious diseases) at Stanford Medicine. Other SHP faculty among the 20 investigators and staff members who are working on the project are Joshua Salomon and David Studdert, both professors of medicine.

The model also allows for the comparison of many future what-if scenarios and how they might impact outcomes over time and cumulatively.

The SC-COSMO team is a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional team including expertise and experience in infectious disease, epidemiology, mathematical modeling and simulation, statistics, decision science, health policy, health law and health economics.

“As COVID-19 transmission occurs throughout the world’s diverse populations, it is critical to efficiently model and forecast its future spread between and within these populations and to appropriately reflect uncertainty in modeled outcomes,” Goldhaber-Fiebert said. “Doing so supports timely resource planning and decision making between potentially appropriate and effective interventions that balance the trade-offs they embody.”

The team is currently working on three projects:

  1. The researchers are providing California with county-level COVID-19 estimates for such things as the number of infections, detected cases and projections of future needs for hospital and ICU beds, personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators.
  2. The project is working on potential strategies to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico by focusing on three specific objectives: collecting, synthesizing and openly sharing the most relevant and useful data; accelerating the development of the SC-COSMO model and its adaptation to the Mexican situation; and identifying a set of mitigation strategies, comparing the health and economic consequences in the population in the medium and long term.
  3. They are developing forecast models of the COVID-19 epidemic in India with the Wadhwani Institute of Artificial Intelligence and its Indian government partners, providing a rapid response to urgent needs for planning and resource allocation.

 

jeremy

Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert

Associate Professor of Medicine
His research focuses on complex policy decisions surrounding the prevention and management of increasingly common, chronic diseases and the life course impact of exposure to their risk factors.

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Federalism Meets the COVID-19 Pandemic: Thinking Globally, Acting Locally

Federalism Meets the COVID-19 Pandemic: Thinking Globally, Acting Locally
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The Stanford-CIDE Coronavirus Simulation Model — or SC-COSMO — incorporates realistic demography and patterns to investigate resource planning and policy evaluations for diverse populations and geographies in California, Mexico and India.

U.S.-China Relations in the Era of COVID-19

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This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.

 

China’s role in the COVID-19 outbreak has elicited a growing global backlash, including dueling Republican and Democratic campaign ads, alongside praise for China’s success in curbing the coronavirus and sending medical assistance overseas. How will the pandemic reshape China’s domestic and international standing, and what lies ahead for U.S.-China relations? Weiss will discuss the Chinese government’s pandemic response and what it reveals about the CCP’s domestic and international intentions.

Jessica Chen Weiss
Jessica Chen Weiss is an associate professor of Government at Cornell University, China/Asia political science editor at the Washington Post Monkey Cage blog and a nonresident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  She is the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford University Press, 2014).  Her research appears in International Organization, China Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, and Review of International Political Economy, as well as in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Washington Quarterly.  She was previously an assistant professor at Yale University and founded FACES, the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford, while an undergraduate at Stanford University.  Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2008, where her dissertation won the 2009 American Political Science Association Award for best dissertation in international relations, law and politics.  Weiss is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Image of red flag over the Shanghai BundThis event is part of the 2020 Winter/Spring Colloquia series, The PRC at 70: The Past, Present – and Future?, sponsored by APARC's China Program.

 

Via Zoom Webinar.
Register at: https://bit.ly/3erPfSn 

Jessica Chen Weiss Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University
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The PRC at 70: Past, Present -- and Future?

Aftershocks: The Coronavirus Pandemic and the New World Disorder

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Colin H. Kahl
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The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a global public health disaster of almost biblical proportions. It is a once-in-a-century occurrence that threatens to destroy countless lives, ruin economies, and stress national and international institutions to their breaking point. And, even after the virus recedes, the geopolitical wreckage it leaves in its wake could be profound.

Many have understandably drawn comparisons to the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919. That pandemic, which began in the final months of World War I, may have infected 500 million people and killed 50 million people around the globe. As the grim toll of COVID-19 mounts, it remains to be seen if that comparison will prove apt in terms of the human cost.

But, if we want to understand the even darker direction in which the world may be headed, leaders and policymakers ought to pay more attention to the two decades after the influenza pandemic swept the globe. This period, often referred to as the interwar years, was characterized by rising nationalism and xenophobia, the grinding halt of globalization in favor of beggar-thy-neighbor policies, and the collapse of the world economy in the Great Depression. Revolution, civil war, and political instability rocked important nations. The world’s reigning liberal hegemon — Great Britain — struggled and other democracies buckled while rising authoritarian states sought to aggressively reshape the international order in accordance with their interests and values. Arms races, imperial competition, and territorial aggression ensued, culminating in World War II — the greatest calamity in modern times.

In the United States, the interwar years also saw the emergence of the “America First” movement. Hundreds of thousands rallied to the cause of the America First Committee, pressing U.S. leaders to seek the false security of isolationism as the world burned around them. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt pushed back, arguing that rising global interdependence meant no nation — not even one as powerful and geographically distant as the United States — could wall itself off from growing dangers overseas. His warning proved prescient. The war eventually came to America’s shores in the form of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Even before COVID-19, shadows of the interwar years were beginning to re-emerge. The virus, however, has brought these dynamics into sharper relief. And the pandemic seems likely to greatly amplify them as economic and political upheaval follows, great-power rivalry deepens, institutions meant to encourage international cooperation fail, and American leadership falters. In this respect, as Richard Haas notes, the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftershocks it will produce seem poised to “accelerate history,” returning the world to a much more dangerous time.

However, history is not destiny. While COVID-19 worsens or sets in motion events that may increasingly resemble this harrowing past, we are not fated to repeat it. Humans have agency. Our leaders have real choices. The United States remains the world’s most powerful democracy. It has a proud legacy of transformational leaps in human progress, including advances that have eradicated infectious diseases. It is still capable of taking urgent steps to ensure the health, prosperity, and security of millions of Americans while also leading the world to navigate this crisis and build something better in its aftermath. America can fight for a better future. Doing so effectively, however, requires understanding the full scope of the challenges it is likely to face.

Read the rest at War on the Rocks

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The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a global public health disaster of almost biblical proportions. It is a once-in-a-century occurrence that threatens to destroy countless lives, ruin economies, and stress national and international institutions to their breaking point. And, even after the virus recedes, the geopolitical wreckage it leaves in its wake could be profound.

Bridging “Social Distancing” Across the Pacific: 6 Tips for Facilitating Cross-Cultural Online Learning

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Naomi Funahashi
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The following is Part 1 of a two-article series on facilitating cross-cultural online learning.

COVID-19 has now extended into most communities around the world, and we are only just beginning to understand the depth and breadth of its impact. Here at SPICE, our hearts and minds are especially focused on the effects that this global pandemic is having upon students. School closures and remote learning are becoming the norm as people are being asked—and in many cases, required—to maintain “social distancing” in order to prevent an even more rapid spread of the disease.

Every day there are more resources becoming available for teaching and learning online in the COVID-19 era. Many educators are struggling with how to adapt their teaching to the digital environment, while also striving to take full advantage of their new online context. We would like to share a few tips that we have learned from our own experiences with leveraging online teaching to forge international student connections, in hopes of encouraging others to develop similar cross-cultural online experiences for students on a global scale.

First, let me describe our own context for teaching online at SPICE. SPICE has been engaging high school students in the United States in online learning since 2004, when our first cohort of the Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) began its intensive study of Japan and U.S.–Japan relations. When we launched a counterpart to the RSP in 2015—the Stanford e-Japan Program, an online course on U.S. society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations taught to high school students in Japan—we began to explore ways in which these two cohorts of students could come together and learn directly from and with one another. Just as the RSP students are spread across the United States, the Stanford e-Japan students are distributed across the islands of Japan. The diversity of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences that these students bring to their cohorts is one of the richest and most valued aspects of SPICE’s online teaching initiatives.

We wanted to give our RSP and Stanford e-Japan students an opportunity to come together and discuss their shared experiences, concerns, and anxieties within the contexts of their new realities. How is the COVID-19 pandemic impacting daily life in their respective societies and communities? What are the local and national government responses to this crisis? How are their schools managing the closures, and how is it impacting their future education plans and prospects? These were among the many topics discussed by students across the Pacific at a recent virtual event.

On Friday, March 20 at 7:00pm PDT (which was 11:00am on Saturday, March 21 in Japan), 45 students from across Japan and the United States came together in a Zoom virtual classroom (VC) session to meet, chat, share, learn, and listen. Below are a few best practices that we implemented in this recent session, and that we hope will be helpful for others when considering pedagogical strategies for engaging students in international and cross-cultural online discussions.

 

1. Prepare students in advance

To make for a rich and productive session, it is crucial that students come to the session well prepared and ready to engage actively. Prior to the session, all students were sent an agenda and asked to prepare at least two questions for small-group discussion. We also asked for student volunteers from each course to serve as small-group discussion leaders; half from RSP, half from Stanford e-Japan. Simple guidelines for moderating the discussion were sent to the discussion leaders in advance, including the following:

  • Begin by identifying yourself as the small-group discussion leader.
  • Facilitate self-introductions.
  • Be mindful of encouraging all students to participate and voice their opinions and perspectives.
  • Remind everyone of the agenda and the time allotted for small-group discussion.

 

2. Set basic ground rules for discussion

For online discussions in general—and especially for discussions in a cross-cultural setting—it is important for students to know what to expect and understand what is expected of them. In our case, because communication styles and norms—particularly in group settings—tend to be quite different in Japan and the United States, we have found it helpful to address these differences up-front to alleviate potential cross-cultural misunderstandings. Following brief introductions by the RSP and Stanford e-Japan course instructors, we began the session by taking a few minutes to highlight key differences in cross-cultural communication styles. For example, students in the United States tend to be less comfortable and/or familiar with silence or pauses in conversation, while students in Japan are often used to allowing for more time and space to think before speaking up.

 

3. Divide students into small groups

While student discussions can certainly be facilitated in one large group, we highly recommend dividing students into smaller groups if your software allows. (In Zoom, use the “Breakout Rooms” feature to do this.) In our experience, small groups create an environment that fosters dialogue that is more student-centered, dynamic, and inclusive—and therefore more meaningful to students. We have found that group sizes of five to eight work well. With 45 students in attendance at our recent session, we decided to divide students into six small breakout rooms in Zoom, each with a mix of students from the United States and Japan. All groups held their discussions in English, with the exception of one bilingual group comprised of American students fluent in Japanese and Japanese students fluent in English. With about seven or eight students in each group, each student had ample opportunity to actively engage in discussion and share his or her perspectives and experiences with one another. Each group was preassigned a topic/theme for discussion: COVID-19 (two groups), U.S.–Japan politics and economy, Japanese pop culture, Japanese language, and education.

 

4. Assign roles

In addition to the discussion leader role, students were also asked to assign a notetaker/reporter in each small group. For groups with an RSP student leader, a Stanford e-Japan student was asked to report back to the main group at the end of the session, and vice versa for groups with a Stanford e-Japan leader.

 

5. Support student discussion

Once students’ discussions are underway, periodically check in on each group and provide support as needed. We use Zoom for our virtual class platform, which allows for the host to hop between the breakout rooms throughout the duration of the session. While we prefer to allow for the small-group discussions to remain student-centered and student-led, there are times when a teacher might jump into a small group and either notice that a particular student is dominating the discussion, or that there are extended silences. It would be appropriate here for a teacher to send a private message to the discussion leader with some guidance and support as needed.

 

6. Debrief as a class

Save time at the end of class to reconvene students as a large group and share out to each other. In our case, the notetaker/reporter for each small group presented a short summary of his or her group’s discussion and some time was allowed for comments from the whole group following each presentation. While there were five different topics assigned to the six groups, it was interesting to see that all of the groups ended up discussing the impact of the COVID-19 situation at some point during their time together. Dedicating time to this whole-group debrief enabled students to learn about different perspectives and varied comparative responses to COVID-19, and it created a valuable opportunity for students to forge a cohesive virtual community of their own.

 

Concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, hovered above all of us during the session and one of the big “take-aways” for the students was how interdependent and interconnected the world is. The anxieties of suddenly transitioning to online learning, being separated from friends and classmates, and not knowing how this pandemic might impact their prospects for higher education are shared by high school students everywhere. With many students transitioning to some form of remote learning, this could be an ideal time for young people to reach out across cultural and societal boundaries and deepen their international and cross-cultural awareness and understanding, and for schools to consider offering opportunities for these virtual connections to be made.

For more information about the Reischauer Scholars Program or the Stanford e-Japan Program, please visit our programs’ webpages at reischauerscholars.org and stanfordejapan.org. SPICE also offers other online courses to U.S. high school students on China (China Scholars Program) and Korea (Sejong Korea Scholars Program), and an online course to Chinese high school students on the United States (Stanford e-China Program).

To stay informed of SPICE news, join our email list and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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Depiction of a virtual classroom session with students of the Reischauer Scholars Program and Stanford e-Japan. Illustration by Rich Lee Draws!!!
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Standing Up against Gender Bias and Harassment Among Medical Professionals

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Half of the medical students in the United States are women, as are two-thirds of the health-care workers taking care of patients in hospitals, clinics and residential communities.

And the majority of the nurses on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic? Women.

Yet gender bias and workplace harassment continue to plague women who have dedicated their careers to taking care of others.

A classic example given by Michelle Mello in a Perspective published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine goes like this: A female attending physician and a male resident respond to a call to the emergency department. The ED staff direct questions about medical decisions to the man, addressing the logistics to the woman.

“The resident looks awkwardly at the attending but says nothing,” Mello writes. “Gesturing at the attending, the patient says he hopes `the hot new nurse is going to be mine.’ Everyone ignores the comment.”

Sexual harassment and gender bias remain highly prevalent in medicine, ranging from the banal comments by the patient in the scenario above to aggressive misconduct that can damage female health professionals’ well-being, careers and quality of care.

Healthcare organizations have formal processes in place to respond to complaints of workplace discrimination, but these processes “are insufficient to transform cultures,” writes Mello, a professor of medicine with Stanford Health Policy and a professor of law with Stanford Law, and her co-author Reshma Jagsi, director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences at the University of Michigan.

Health-care professionals of both genders must speak up.

“We believe health professionals have a moral duty to practice `upstanding’ — intervening as bystanders — in response to sexual harassment and general bias and that this obligation should be described in codes of medical professional ethics and supported within institutional training,” the authors write.

Interview with Professor Mello Audio
For example, the male resident in the above scenario should have stopped and said something like, “I’m the resident, she is the attending, so please ask her your medical questions and I’ll handle the logistics.” And any of the staff involved in the incident could have told the patient, “She is your physician. And you can’t speak to members of your care team like that. We can take better care of you without the distraction of offensive comments.”

tipsheet

While many medical professional societies now mention sexual harassment in their ethical codes, these guidelines fall short in that they do not encourage professionals to respond to the behaviors and intervene when they become aware of discrimination or harassment. The only large specialty society whose guidelines contain “aspirational advice” to stop sexual harassment in its tracks is the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

The American Medical Association (AMA) Code of Ethics Opinion 9.1.3 requires only that physicians “promote and adhere to strict sexual harassment policies in medical workplaces.” Mello and Jagsi note a striking contrast to the AMA’s approach to physicians who appear to be impaired (for example, due to substance use or mental health problems): Opinion 9.3.2. requires that physicians “intervene in a timely manner” to ensure that impaired colleagues stop practicing and get help.

“Absent stronger exhortation from within the profession, the norm will continue to be that clinicians are lauded when they stand up to harassment or bias but do not feel obligated — and they are not trained and equipped — to do so,” the authors write.

They recommend formal training in bystander intervention and peer-to-peer coaching, using tip sheets describing various courses of action, like this one adapted from Mary Rowe, an adjunct professor of negotiation and management at MIT Sloan.

 

 

 

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Perspectives on Science Communication, Misinformation, and the COVID-19 Infodemic 

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On May 20th please join us for Perspectives on Science Communication, Misinformation, and the COVID-19 Infodemic, featuring University of Washington scholars Kate Starbird, Jevin West and Ryan Calo, in conversation with Cyber Policy Center Director Kelly Born, as they discuss a new project exploring how scientific findings and science credentials are mobilized in the spread of misinformation.

Kate Starbird and Jevin West will present emerging research into how scientific findings and science credentials are mobilized within the spread of false and misleading information about COVID-19. Ryan Calo will explore proposals to address COVID-19 through information technology—the subject of a recent Senate Commerce hearing at which he testified—with particular attention to the ways contact tracing apps could prove a vector for misinformation and disinformation. 


May 20, 10am-11am (PST)
Join via Zoom 

Kate StarbirdKate Starbird is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) and Director of the Emerging Capacities of Mass Participation (emCOMP) Laboratory. She is also adjunct faculty in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and the Information School and a data science fellow at the eScience Institute. 

Kate's research is situated within human-computer interaction (HCI) and the emerging field of crisis informatics — the study of how information-communication technologies (ICTs) are used during crisis events. Her research examines how people use social media to seek, share, and make sense of information after natural disasters (such as earthquakes and hurricanes) and man-made disasters (such as acts of terrorism and mass shooting events). More recently, her work has shifted to focus on the spread of disinformation in this context. 

Ryan Calo
Ryan Calo is the Lane Powell and D. Wayne Gittinger Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Law. In addition to co-founding the UW Center for an Informed Public, he is a faculty co-director (with Batya Friedman and Tadayoshi Kohno) of the UW Tech Policy Lab---a unique, interdisciplinary research unit that spans the School of Law, Information School, and Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering where Calo also holds courtesy appointments. Calo is widely published in the area of law and emerging technology. 

 


Jevin WestJevin West is an Associate Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. He is the co-founder of the DataLab and the new Center for an Informed Public at UW. He holds an Adjunct Faculty position in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute. His research and teaching focus on misinformation in and about science. He develops methods for mining the scientific literature in order to study the origins of disciplines, the social and economic biases that drive these disciplines, and the impact the current publication system has on the health of science. 

 

Kelly Born
Kelly Born is the Executive Director of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center. The center’s research and teaching focuses on the governance of digital technology at the intersection of security, geopolitics and democracy. Born collaborates with the center’s program leaders to pioneer new lines of research, policy-oriented curriculum, and outreach to key decision-makers globally. Prior to joining Stanford, Born helped to launch and lead The Madison Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic undertakings working to reduce polarization and improve U.S. democracy. There, she designed and implemented strategies focused on money in politics, electoral reform, civic engagement and digital disinformation. Kelly earned a master’s degree in international policy from Stanford University. 

Online, via Zoom 

Kate Starbird
Ryan Calo
Jevin West
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National AI Strategies and Human Rights: New Urgency in the Era of COVID-19

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A recording of this event can be found here (YouTube recording)

National AI Strategies and Human Rights: New Urgency in the Era of COVID-19, takes place Wednesday, May 6th, at 10am PST with Eileen Donahoe, the Executive Director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi) at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center and Megan Metzger, Associate Director for Research, also at GDPi. Joining them will be Mark Latonero, Senior Researcher at Data & Society, Richard Wingfield, from Global Partners Digital, and Gallit Dobner, Director of the Centre for International Digital Policy at Global Affairs Canada. The session will be moderated by Kelly Born, Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Center.   

The seminar will focus on the recently published report, National Artificial Intelligence Strategies and Human Rights: A Review, produced by the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford and Global Partners Digital - and will also provide an opportunity to look at how the COVID-19 crisis is impacting human rights and digital technology work more generally.   

We will also be jointly hosting a webinar with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies on May 8th at 1pm PST, with experts from around the center and institute discussing emerging research on Covid-19, and the implications to future cyber policies, as well as the upcoming elections. More information on the May 8th event, can be found here.   

May 6, 10am-11am (PST)  
Join via Zoom


eileen donahoe headshot  
Eileen Donahoe is the Executive Director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPI) at Stanford University, FSI/Cyber Policy Center. GDPI is a global multi-stakeholder collaboration hub for development of policies that reinforce human rights and democratic values in digitized society. Areas of current research: AI & human rights; combatting digital disinformation; governance of digital platforms. She served in the Obama administration as the first US Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, at a time of significant institutional reform and innovation. After leaving government, she joined Human Rights Watch as Director of Global Affairs where she represented the organization worldwide on human rights foreign policy, with special emphasis on digital rights, cybersecurity and internet governance. Earlier in her career, she was a technology litigator at Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley. Eileen serves on the National Endowment for Democracy Board of Directors; the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity; the World Economic Forum Future Council on the Digital Economy; University of Essex Advisory Board on Human Rights, Big Data and Technology; NDI Designing for Democracy Advisory Board; Freedom Online Coalition Advisory Network; and Dartmouth College Board of Trustees. Degrees: BA, Dartmouth; J.D., Stanford Law School; MA East Asian Studies, Stanford; M.T.S., Harvard; and Ph.D., Ethics & Social Theory, GTU Cooperative Program with UC Berkeley. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.


Megan Metzger headshot   
Megan Metzger is a Research Scholar and Associate Director for Research at the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi) Program. Megan’s research is focused on how changes in technology change how individuals and states use and have access to information, and how this affects protest and other forms of political behavior. Her dissertation was focused primarily on the role of social media during the EuroMaidan protests in Ukraine. She has also worked on projects about the Gezi Park protests in Turkey, and has ongoing projects exploring Russian state strategies of information online. In addition to her academic background, Megan has spent a number of years studying and working in the post-communist world. Her scholarly work has been published in The Journal of Comparative Economics and Slavic Review. Her analysis has also been published in the Monkey Cage Blog at The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and Al Jazeera English.


Mark Latonero  
Mark Latonero is a Senior Researcher at Data & Society focused on AI and human rights and a Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Previously he was a research director and research professor at USC where he led the Technology and Human Trafficking Initiative. He has also served as innovation consultant for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Dr. Latonero works on the social and policy implications of emerging technology and examines the benefits, risks, and harms of digital technologies, particularly in human rights and humanitarian contexts. He has published a number of reports on the impact of data-centric and automated technologies in forced migration, refugee identity, and crisis response.  

Richard Wingfield  
Richard Wingfield provides legal and policy expertise across Global Partners Digital's portfolio of programs. As Head of Legal, he provides legal and policy advice internally at GPD and to its partner organizations on human rights as they relate to the internet and digital policy, and develops legal analyses, policy briefings and other resources for stakeholders. Before joining GPD, Richard led on policy development and advocacy at the Equal Rights Trust, an international human rights organization working to combat discrimination and inequality. He has also undertaken research for the Bar Human Rights Committee and Commonwealth Lawyers Association, the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights and provided support during the preparatory work for the Yogyakarta Principles.  
Gallit Dobner  
Gallit Dobner is Director of the Centre for International Digital Policy at Global Affairs Canada, with responsibility for the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism to counter foreign threats to democracy as well as broader issues at the intersection of foreign policy and technology. She formerly served as Political Counsellor in The Hague, where she was responsible for bilateral relations and the international courts and tribunals (2015-19), and in Algiers (2010-12). Gallit has also served as Deputy Director at Global Affairs Canada for various international security files, including Counter Terrorism, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. Prior to this, Gallit was a Middle East analyst at Canada’s Privy Council Office. Gallit has a Masters in Political Science from McGill University and Sciences PO. 

Kelly Born  
Kelly Born is the Executive Director of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center. The center’s research and teaching focuses on the governance of digital technology at the intersection of security, geopolitics and democracy. Born collaborates with the center’s program leaders to pioneer new lines of research, policy-oriented curriculum, and outreach to key decision-makers globally. Prior to joining Stanford, Born helped to launch and lead The Madison Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic undertakings working to reduce polarization and improve U.S. democracy. There, she designed and implemented strategies focused on money in politics, electoral reform, civic engagement and digital disinformation. Kelly earned a master’s degree in international policy from Stanford University. 

Online, via Zoom

Eileen Donahoe

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Eileen Donahoe is the co-founder and an affiliated scholar at the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPI) at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. (Previously, she served as GDPI’s executive director.) GDPI is a global multi-stakeholder collaboration hub for the development of policies that reinforce human rights and democratic values in a digitized society. Current research priorities include: international trends in AI governance, technical methods for aligning AI with democratic norms and standards, evolution of digital authoritarian policies and practices, and emerging blockchain and AI-enabled tools to support democracy.

Eileen served in the Biden administration as US Special Envoy for Digital Freedom at the Department of State. She also served in the Obama administration as the first US Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva during a period of significant institutional reform and innovation. After the Obama administration, she joined Human Rights Watch as Director of Global Affairs, where she represented the organization worldwide on human rights foreign policy, with special emphasis on digital rights, cybersecurity, and internet governance. Earlier in her career, she was a technology litigator at Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley.

Eileen serves as Vice Chair of the National Endowment for Democracy Board of Directors; on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Board of Directors; and on the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees. She is a member of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), the World Economic Forum AI Governance Alliance, and the Resilient Governance and Regulation working group. Previously, she served on the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity, the University of Essex Advisory Board on Human Rights, Big Data and Technology, the NDI Designing for Democracy Advisory Board, and the Freedom Online Coalition Advisory Network. Degrees: BA, Dartmouth; J.D., Stanford Law School; MA East Asian Studies, Stanford; M.T.S., Harvard; and Ph.D., Ethics & Social Theory, GTU Cooperative Program with UC Berkeley. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Eileen Donahoe Stanford University
Megan Metzger Stanford University

Improving Journalistic Coverage in the Digital Age: From Covid-19 to the 2020 Elections

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The Stanford Cyber Policy Center continues its online Zoom series: Digital Technology and Democracy, Security & Geopolitics in an Age of Coronavirus. These webinars will take place every other Wednesday at 10am PST. 

The next event, Improving Journalistic Coverage in the Digital Age: From Covid-19 to the 2020 Elections, will take place Wednesday, April 22, at 10am PST with Andrew Grotto, from the Cyber Policy Center's Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, Janine Zacharia, from Stanford's Department of Communication and Joan Donovan, from Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, in conversation with Kelly Born, Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Center. 

Grotto and Zacharia will be discussing their recent report How to Report Responsibly on Hacks and Disinformation. Recognizing that reporters are targeted adversaries of foreign and domestic actors, especially during an election year, the report provides recommendations and actionable guidance, including a playbook and a repeatable, enterprise-wide process for implementation. Donovan will discuss health misinformation, COVID-19, and how this relates to disinformation around the 2020 elections, the US census and beyond. 

Join us on April 22nd for the next talk in this enlightening series. You can also watch our April 8th seminar, Digital Disinformation and Health: From Vaccines to the Coronavirus.  

April 22, 10am-11am (PST) 
Join via Zoom link 
Janine Zacharia 
Janine Zacharia is the Carlos Kelly McClatchy Lecturer in Stanford’s Department of Communication. In addition to teaching journalism courses at Stanford, she researches and writes on the intersection between technology and national security, media trends and foreign policy. Earlier in her career, she reported extensively on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy including stints as Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, State Department Correspondent for Bloomberg News, Washington Bureau Chief for the Jerusalem Post, and Jerusalem Correspondent for Reuters. 


Andrew Grotto 
Andrew Grotto is director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology and Governance and William J. Perry International Security Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and teaches the gateway course for graduate students specializing in cyber policy in Stanford’s Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served as Senior Director for Cyber Policy on the National Security Council in both the Obama and the Trump White House. 



Dr. Joan Donovan

Dr. Joan Donovan is Director of the Technology and Social Change (TaSC) Research Project at the Shorenstein Center. Dr. Donovan leads the field in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns. Dr. Donovan's research and teaching interests are focused on media manipulation, effects of disinformation campaigns, and adversarial media movements. This fall, she will be teaching a graduate-level course on Media Manipulation and Disinformation Campaigns (DPI-622) with a focus on how social movements, political parties, governments, corporations, and other networked groups engage in active efforts to shape media narratives and disrupt social institutions.

Kelly Born 
Kelly Born is the Executive Director of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, where she collaborates with the center’s program leaders to pioneer new lines of research, policy-oriented curriculum, policy workshops and executive education. Prior to joining Stanford, she helped to launch and lead The Madison Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic undertakings working to reduce polarization and improve U.S. democracy. There, she designed and implemented strategies focused on money in politics, electoral reform, civic engagement and digital disinformation. Kelly earned a master’s degree in international policy from Stanford University.

Online, via Zoom

 

Andrew Grotto Director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology and Governance Stanford University
Janine Zacharia Carlos Kelly McClatchy Lecturer in Stanford’s Department of Communication Stanford University
Joan Donovan Director of the Technology and Social Change (TaSC) Research Project Harvard University

Japan's Response to Covid-19: Political Leadership and Crisis Response

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In keeping with the State of California's shelter-in-place orders, this event is available through livestream only. Please register in advance for the webinar by using the link below.

REGISTRATION LINK: https://bit.ly/3e1r7FZ

The time of this event has changed to 4:30pm-5:30pm PDT.

 

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread throughout the world, Japan is experiencing its second wave of coronavirus outbreak, following a first wave early on, just as it had become clear that the virus was spreading rapidly from Wuhan. In late February, travel restrictions were followed by Prime Minister Abe’s call for school closures. But as the pandemic raged through parts of Europe and then the United States, and as a growing number of countries issued shelter-in-place orders and lockdowns, Japan seemed relatively unscathed. Concerns then escalated and calls for voluntarily restricting peoples’ movement started in earnest following the decision to postpone the 2020 Olympics. On April 6, Prime Minister Abe declared a state of emergency for seven prefectures.

This panel brings together expertise on Japan’s political leadership with experience in Japan’s crisis management. Professor Harukata Takenaka has long studied how Japan’s political leadership has evolved, while Mr. Akihisa Shiozaki, an expert on crisis management, was a core member of Japan’s first private-sector investigative report after the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

This is the first in an APARC-wide series of virtual seminars that explore Asian countries’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Held throughout the spring quarter, each event is led by one of APARC’s programs.

PANELISTS

Aki Shiozaki Headshot

Akihisa Shiozaki, Partner, Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu

Akihisa Shiozaki is widely recognized for his expertise in corporate crisis management, including regulatory investigations, white collar defense, product recall, labor/employment disputes, import/export control, cyber security, media interaction and various corporate governance issues, especially those with multi-jurisdictional or parallel civil and criminal components. In recent years, he has advised both domestic and foreign clients in resolving a number of the most high profile corporate crises cases relating to Japan, including the LIBOR/TIBOR manipulation investigation, FX manipulation investigation, global product recall by a Japan auto-parts manufacturer, international trade secret theft in the semiconductor industry, government investigations against a global pharmaceutical corporation operating in Japan, and his representation of the former CEO of Olympus Corporation who brought light to the company's recent accounting scandal. He is recognized by Legal 500 as a Leading Individual in the field of Risk Management and Investigations. In 2017, Akihisa was awarded the Compliance / Investigations Lawyer of the Year at the Asian Legal Awards hosted by The American Lawyer, in association with The Asian Lawyer, China Law & Practice and Legal Week.

Akihisa worked in the Prime Minister’s office as senior policy advisor from 2006 to 2007 and is knowledgeable in Japanese regulations /rules and governmental procedures, as well as having rich experience dealing with the media. He also serves as the vice-chairman of the Anti-Yakuza Committee at the Daiichi Tokyo Bar Association and has authored many related publications. He graduated from the University of Tokyo (LL.B.), holds an M.A. in international policy from Stanford University, and completed his MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he served as class president.

Harukata Takenaka Headshot

Harukata Takenka, Professor of Political Science, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS)

Harukata Takenaka is a professor of political science at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.  He specializes in comparative politics and international political economy, with a particular focus on Japanese political economy. His research interests include democracy in Japan, and Japan's political and economic stagnation since the 1990s.  He received a B.A. from the Faculty of Law of the University of Tokyo and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.  He is the author of Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan: Breakdown of a Hybrid Regime, (Stanford University Press, 2014), and Sangiin to ha [What is House of Councillors], (Chuokoron Shinsha, 2010).

Portrait of Kenji Kushida

Kenji Kushida, Research Scholar, Shorenstein APARC Japan Program (Moderator)

Kenji E. Kushida is a Japan Program Research Scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and an affiliated researcher at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. Kushida’s research interests are in the fields of comparative politics, political economy, and information technology. He has four streams of academic research and publication: political economy issues surrounding information technology such as Cloud Computing; institutional and governance structures of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster; political strategies of foreign multinational corporations in Japan; and Japan’s political economic transformation since the 1990s. Kushida has written two general audience books in Japanese, entitled Biculturalism and the Japanese: Beyond English Linguistic Capabilities (Chuko Shinsho, 2006) and International Schools, an Introduction (Fusosha, 2008). Kushida holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He received his MA in East Asian studies and BAs in economics and East Asian studies, all from Stanford University.

Via Zoom Webinar. Register at https://bit.ly/3e1r7FZ

Akihisa Shiozaki, Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu
Harukata Takenka, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies
Kenji Kushida, Shorenstein APARC Japan Program
Panel Discussions
Japan Colloquium Series

New Research Led by Eran Bendavid Reveals If You've Been Exposed to Coronavirus

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(This is excerpted from a story from The Mercury News.)

Long motorcades of volunteers converged at three Stanford University research sites this week, donating blood for a new test that identifies the prevalence of coronavirus in our community – and could help reveal the full scope of Santa Clara County’s epidemic.

The 2,500 test slots on Friday and Saturday filled up within hours, as news of the project — the first large scale study of its type in the U.S. — spread quickly through the county, according to this Mercury News story.

The test detects protective antibodies to the virus rather than the virus itself. This gives scientists a snapshot of how many people in the county have already been infected, but weren’t seriously sick and didn’t realize it. And it tells residents whether they carry potentially protective antibodies – so may be immune to future infection.

“This is critical information,” said principal investigator Eran Bendavid, an infectious disease specialist and associate professor of medicine with Stanford Health Policy. “We will show the country what to do and how to do it,” he said.

The project, coordinated with the Santa Clara County Department of Health, was applauded by Gov. Gavin Newsom during a Saturday press conference in Sacramento, who called it “the first home-grown serum test in the state of California.”

Read The Mercury News Story

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