Rising leaders from a diverse group of nations in transition, including China, Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Nigeria arrived on campus on July 25 for a three-week seminar as Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development. Initiated by FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) six years ago, the program has created a network of some 139 leaders from 62 transitioning countries.  This year's exceptional class of  23 fellows includes a deputy minister of Ukraine, current and former members of parliament (including a deputy speaker), leading attorneys and rule of law experts, civic activists, journalists, international development practitioners, and founders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). (One fellow needed to withdraw because he was named to the Cabinet of the new Philippine president, Noynoy Aquino).

Draper Hills Summer Fellows are innovative, courageous, and committed leaders, who strive to improve governance, enhance civic participation, and invigorate development under very challenging circumstances"
- Larry Diamond"Draper Hills Summer Fellows are innovative, courageous, and committed leaders, who strive to improve governance, enhance civic participation, and invigorate development under very challenging circumstances," says CDDRL Director Larry Diamond. "This year's fellows are an inspiring group. They have come here to learn from us, but even more so from one another. And we will learn much from them, about the progress they are making and the obstacles they confront as they work to build democracy, improve government accountability, strengthen the rule of law, energize civil society, and enhance the institutional environment for broadly shared economic growth."

The three-week seminar is taught by an interdisciplinary team of leading Stanford faculty. In addition to Diamond, faculty include FSI Senior Fellow and CDDRL Deputy Director Kathryn Stoner; Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper; FSI Deputy Director and political science Professor Stephen D. Krasner; Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama; professor of political science, philosophy, and law Joshua Cohen; professor of pediatrics and Stanford Health Policy core faculty Paul H. Wise; visiting associate professor Beth van Schaack; FSI Senior Fellow Helen Stacy; Walter P. Falcon, deputy director, Program on Food Security and the Environment; Erik Jensen, co-director of the Stanford Law School's Rule of Law Program; Avner Greif, professor of economics; Rick Aubry, lecturer in management, Stanford Graduate School of Business; and Nicholas Hope, director, Stanford Center on International Development.

Other leading experts who will engage the fellows include President of the National Endowment for Democracy Carl Gershman, United States Court of Appeals Judge Pamela Rymer, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict founding chair Peter Ackerman, Omidyar Network partner Matt Halprin, Conservation International's Olivier Langrand, executives of leading Silicon Valley companies, such as Google and Facebook, and media and nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area.  Michael McFaul, a Stanford political science professor and former CDDRL director, who now serves on the National Security Council as President Obama's chief advisor on Russia, will come to campus to teach a session on U.S. foreign policy in the Obama administration.

The demanding, but compelling curriculum will devote the first week of the seminar to defining the fundamentals of democracy, good governance, economic development, and the rule of law.  In the second week, faculty will turn to democratic and economic transitions and the feedback mechanisms between democracy, development, and a predictable rule of law. This week will include offerings on liberation technology, social entrepreneurship, and issues raised by development and the environment.  The third week will turn to the critical - and often controversial - role of international assistance to foster and support democracy, judicial reform, and economic development, including the proper role of foreign aid.

Our program helps to create a broader community of global activists and practitioners, intent on sharing experiences to bring positive change to some of the world's most troubled countries and regions"
- Kathryn Stoner-Weiss The fellows themselves also lead discussions, focused on the concrete challenges they face in their ongoing work in political and economic development. "Fellows come to realize that they are often engaged in solving similar problems - such as endemic corruption in different country contexts," says Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. "Our program helps to create a broader community of global activists and practitioners, intent on sharing experiences to bring positive change to some of the world's most troubled countries and regions."

The program has received generous gifts from donors William Draper III and Ingrid Hills.  Bill Draper made his gift in honor of his father, Maj. Gen. William H. Draper, Jr., a chief advisor to Gen. George Marshall and chief diplomatic administrator of the Marshall Plan in Germany, who confronted challenges comparable to those faced by Draper Hills Summer Fellows in building democracy, a market economy, and a rule of law, often in post-conflict conditions. Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills, made her gift in honor of her husband, Reuben Hills, president and chairman of Hills Bros. Coffee and a leading philanthropist. The Hills project they ran for 12 years improved the lives of inner city children and Ingrid saw in the Summer Fellows Program a promising opportunity to improve the lives of so many people in developing countries.

Thanking the program's benefactors, Larry Diamond says, "The benefit to CDDRL faculty and researchers is incalculable, and we are deeply grateful for the vision and generosity of Bill Draper and Ingrid Hills." As he and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss state, "The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program allows us to interact with a highly, talented group of emerging leaders in political and economic development from diverse countries and regions. They benefit from exposure to the faculty's cutting edge work, while we benefit from a cycle of feedback on whether these ideas work in the field."  Like CDDRL, which bridges academic theory and policy, the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, they note, "is an ideal marriage between democratic and development theory and practice."

For additional details on the program or to request permission to attend a session, please contact program coordinator Audrey McGowan, audrey.mcgowan@stanford.edu.

This Spring quarter, while our seminar series took a break, Terry Winograd and Joshua Cohen taught a new course at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school): Designing Liberation Technologies.

During this class, small interdisciplinary teams focus on a term-long design project, taking advantage of the design process structures and methods that have been developed in the d.school. This year's course developed as a collaboration between Stanford, the University of Nairobi and Nokia Africa Research Center.  The focus area was finding ICT solutions to the healthcare needs of people living in Kibera slum outside Nairobi.

Under the guidance of Jussi Impiö at Nokia and the Computer Science faculty, 27 students from the University of Nairobi Computer Science department conducted need finding studies at a number of health-related sites, including clinics, hospitals, community health workers, community leaders, and government offices. They read background materials, made observations, and talked with a wide variety of stakeholders. Their reports became the basis of the Stanford teams' initial understanding of users and needs. Communication with the group in Nairobi was also maintained throughout the course, using a Facebook group to facilitate discussions, as well as several teleconference sessions.

Working in small teams, 20 Stanford students from a wide range of disciplines worked over 10 weeks to develop initial design concepts to respond to some of the needs that had been identified. Click on the title of each project to view their final presentations:

• mNote: an online archive for community health worker notes. This application empowers community health workers by preserving the flexibility and control they appreciate in their current paper notebooks, but adding digital knowledge management capabilities.
• M-MAJI ("mobile water"): an electronic information system that allows people to use their mobile phones to identify clean water sources in their community. The application seeks to decrease the time and money spent searching for water, improve water quality, and foster vendor accountability by providing a mechanism for user feedback.
• Babybank: a dedicated savings plan designed specifically for pregnant women in the slums of Nairobi. By leveraging a popular cell phone payment system, M-Pesa, the application aims to make savings easier, so that expecting mothers can afford the services that will keep themselves and their babies healthy.
• Mazanick: an application to provide support and advice to pregnant women via SMS, with the aim of helping motivate them to attend prenatal appointments.
• PillCheck (Kifaa cha Tenbe): a mobile application to help people in Kibera find information on the availability and pricing of malaria drugs quickly.
• PatientMap :a system to make the waiting process in clinics more transparent, and to increase patient trust in the medical system.

This summer, two follow up trips are planned, with Nairobi students due to spend several weeks at Stanford, while a number of students from the Stanford group will visit Nairobi to explore possibilities for developing their projects further. Building on the success and lessons learnt so far, the Designing Liberation Technologies course will be open to a new set of students next academic year. 

In spring 2009, the Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) and the Division on Languages, Civilizations and Literatures (DLCL) delivered the first part of its multi-year research and public policy program on Contemporary History and the Future of Memory.  The program explored how communities that have undergone deep and violent political transformations try to confront their past.

Despite vast geographical, cultural and situational differences, the search for post-conflict justice and reconciliation has become a global phenomenon, resulting in many institutional and expressive responses. Some of these are literary and aesthetic explorations about guilt, commemoration and memorialization deployed for reconciliation and reinvention.  Others, especially in communities where victims and perpetrators live in close proximity, have led to trials, truth commissions, lustration, and institutional reform. This series illuminates these various approaches, seeking to foster new thinking and new strategies for communities seeking to move beyond atrocity.

Part 1: Contemporary History and the Future of Memory

In 2008-2009, this multi-year project on “History and Memory” at FCE and DLCL was launched with two high profile conference and speaker series: “Contemporary History and the Future of Memory” and “Austria and Central Europe Since 1989.”  For the first series on Contemporary History, the Forum, along with four co-sponsors (the Division of Literatures, Civilizations, and Languages, principal co-sponsor; the department of English; The Center for African Studies; Modern Thought and Literature; the Stanford Humanities Center), hosted internationally distinguished senior scholars to deliver lectures, student workshops, and the final symposium with Stanford faculty respondents.

Part 2: History, Memory and Reconciliation

In 2009-2010, we launch part 2 of this project by adding “Reconciliation” to our mission.  We are pleased to welcome the Human Rights Program at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law as co-sponsor of this series.  This series will examine scholarly and institutional efforts to create new national narratives that walk the fine line between before and after, memory and truth, compensation and reconciliation, justice and peace. Some work examines communities ravaged by colonialism and the great harm that colonial and post-colonial economic and social disparities cause.   The extent of external intervention creates discontinuities and dislocation, making it harder for people to claim an historical narrative that feels fully authentic.  Another response is to set up truth-seeking institutions such as truth commissions. Historical examples of truth commissions in South Africa, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Morocco inform more current initiatives in Canada, Cambodia, Colombia, Kenya, and the United States.  While this range of economic, social, political and legal modalities all seek to explain difficult pasts to present communities, it is not yet clear which approach yields greater truth, friendship, reconciliation and community healing.  The FCE series “History, Memory, and Reconciliation” will explore these issues.

The series will have its first event in February 2010. Multiple international scholars are invited.  Publications, speaker details, and pod and video casts will be accessible via the new FSI/FCE, DLCL, and Human Rights Program websites.

Series coordinators:

• Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi
• Helen Stacy
• Saikat Majumdar
• Roland Hsu

Firoze Manji is founding Executive Director of Fahamu - Networks for Social Justice, a pan African organization with offices in Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and the UK.

Fahamu exists to support the development and growth of a powerful social justice movement in Africa. There are three core areas of activity:

Training: Fahamu aims to strengthen human rights organizations by providing training programs that include sufficient pre workshop preparation and post workshop follow-up to ensure substantive learning. Fahamu has created CD-ROM based training packages covering subjects from advocacy to financial management to gender violence and conflict.

News & Media: Pambazuka News is a weekly electronic newsletter providing commentary and analysis on issues of social justice across Africa, published in English, French and Portuguese. There are 26,000 subscribers and half a million unique visitors to the site. Content is also published on allafrica.com and it is widely used by mainstream media. Pambazuka was one of the first African organizations to use podcasts and videocasts.

Advocacy: Fahamu was heavily involved in efforts to persuade countries to sign up to the African Union's Rights of Women in Africa Protocol. The organization attracted a great deal of attention for its strategy of getting people to sign a petition via cell phones. Within 18 months it had persuaded the necessary 15 countries to ratify the Protocol.

Firoze shared a number of his insights from his experience using ICTs in these areas:

There remain real barriers to use of ICTs in Africa: Middle class Africans often have more than one cell phone each; penetration figures can therefore be misleading. The cost associated with text and especially voice services is prohibitive for many. While email is cheap, web surfing is expensive and due to low bandwidth, painfully slow. 

Paper formats are in some instances still the most useful: Feedback from students on Fahamu courses has shown consistent demand for paper resources. Students rarely have their own home computer or laptop and they may travel often; internet cafes can be unsafe environments for women alone. For these reasons, Fahamu continues to produce print resources. It also recently launched Pambazuka Press to promote African writers.  Books will be sold at cost to distributors in Africa and at commercial rates elsewhere.

Technology tools are a complement to, not substitute for real engagement: Analysis of the Rights of Women Protocol petition showed that less than 10% of signatures had come via cell phones. It was the political legwork of going through the protocol in person with each individual that made the real difference to the outcome. This confirms Firoze's view that tools such as cell phones cannot create social change where there is no existing real-world network for them to tap into. We need to be wary of fetishizing technology tools, attributing to them powers they simply cannot have.

Technology, Froze argues, tends to reflect and amplify existing social relations. So while ICTs can enable people to voice their own experience in a way that was not available to them before, they can just as easily serve to shore up existing power structures.