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ABSTRACT
My presentation will focus on how community-focused nonprofit newsrooms and data providers are reinventing the business model of journalism while focusing on the communities we serve.

SPEAKER BIO
Kevin Davis is CEO and Executive Director of the Investigative News Network (INN), a growing consortium of more than 80 nonprofit newsrooms producing nonpartisan investigative and public interest journalism. Davis oversees INN’s efforts to promote the sustainability of its member organizations, and increase the impact of their reporting through collaboration.

As a former digital publisher, Davis has more than 16 years of experience in strategic development and growth at news and media organizations. He was responsible for operations at Los Angeles-based news organizations Variety.com and TheWrap.com.

Since his appointment to INN, Davis has spoken and lectured about the nonprofit, investigative journalism sector at conferences and institutions across the United States, including the Online News Association, Investigative Reporters & Editors, the National Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, USC Annenberg, Syracuse University, Ohio State University and the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was the 2011 Hearst Professional-in-Residence.

Kevin Davis Investigative News Network
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ABSTRACT
The result of not preparing people and places to manipulate the productive function of network technology is ‘digital destitution’. As the ability to access the Internet becomes more crucial in daily life, those Americans who are not prepared to function with this technology are excluded and do find themselves in a state of disconnection from the vital economic, social, political, cultural and institutional processes that depend on broadband technology. In this presentation, Dr. Blanca Gordo will outline and ground her theoretical conceptual framework for understanding the impact of being offline.

SPEAKER BIO
Blanca Gordo, Ph.D., is a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at the University of California at Berkeley where she is writing her book, Digital Destitution in the Digital Age. Most recently, she was the Academic Coordinator for the Center for Latino Policy Research at the University of California at Berkeley, where she directed public policy initiatives, program development, and the Technology and Development Research Group. Dr. Gordo holds a doctorate in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in regional-local economic development, urban poverty, local technology development processes, organizational analysis and development, public policy, ethnic populations (African Americans and Latinos), demographics, and social inequality structures

Blanca Gordo International Computer Science Institute, UC Berkeley
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Abstract: To what extent are the American public’s views on the use of force consistent with just war doctrine’s principles of proportionality and distinction? Drawing on an original survey experiment conducted on a representative sample of American citizens, we find that Americans broadly accept the ethical principle of proportionality. They are less willing to inflict collateral civilian deaths when the military importance of destroying the target is lower and more willing to accept them when doing so would avert the deaths of larger numbers of American soldiers. Nevertheless, we find that the public’s commitment to proportionality is heavily biased in favor of American interests in ways that suggest only limited support for traditional understandings of just war theory. We find little evidence that the public supports the principle of distinction (non-combatant immunity). Indeed, under certain conditions, more than two-thirds of the American public was willing to approve of intentional attacks on foreign civilians. In addition, contrary to prevailing interpretations of just war doctrine, Americans were significantly more likely to accept the collateral deaths of foreign civilians when those civilians were described as politically sympathetic with the adversary than when they were described as political opponents. The paper that will be presented, "Just a War Theory?  Understanding American Public Opinion on Proportionality and Distinction in War" is co-authored by Scott Sagan (Stanford University) and Ben Valentino (Dartmouth University).
 
About the Speaker: Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Global Nuclear Future Initiative. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University. From 1984 to 1985, he served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Sagan has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000) with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz; the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009); and co-editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010), with Steven E. Miller. Sagan’s recent publications include “A Call for Global Nuclear Disarmament” in Nature (July 2012); “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons” with Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino in the American Political Science Review (February 2013); and, with Matthew Bunn, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences occasional paper, “A Worst Practices Guide to Insider Threats: Lessons from Past Mistakes” (2014).

Sagan was the recipient of the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award in 2013. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009. 

Encina Hall (2nd floor)

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of DaedalusEthics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Date Label
Scott Sagan The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science Speaker Stanford University
Seminars
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ABSTRACT

Collective intelligence is channeled to journalism by crowdsourcing and co-creation. While the crowd contributes to the journalistic process with its knowledge, the crowd also challenges journalistic norms and ideals. In her talk, Dr. Aitamurto shows how collective intelligence impacts knowledge search in journalism, alters power structures in society, and functions as a basis for value creation.

SPEAKER BIO

Dr. Tanja Aitamurto is a Brown Fellow and the Deputy Director at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at the School of Engineering at Stanford, as well as a Liberation Technology alumna. Her research focuses on the applications of collective intelligence in journalism, governance, and new product design in media innovations. She is the author of the book "Crowdsourcing for Democracy: New Era in Policy-Making", and she has published in New Media & Society, Digital Journalism and Design Issues.

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Visiting Researcher
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Tanja Aitamurto was a visiting researcher at the Program on Liberation Technology at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. In her PhD project she examined how collective intelligence, whether harvested by crowdsourcing, co-creation or open innovation, impacts incumbent processes in journalism, public policy making and design process. Her work has been published in several academic publications, such as the New Media and Society. Related to her studies, she advises the Government and the Parliament of Finland about Open Government principles, for example about how open data and crowdsourcing can serve democratic processes. Aitamurto now works as a postdoctoral fellow at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Stanford.

Aitamurto has previously studied at the Center for Design Research and at the Innovation Journalism Program at Stanford University. She is a PhD Student at the Center for Journalism, Media and Communication Research at Tampere University in Finland, and she holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy, and a Master of Arts in Humanities. Prior to returning to academia, she made a career in journalism in Finland specializing in foreign affairs, reporting in countries such as Afghanistan, Angola and Uganda. She has also taught journalism at the University of Zambia, in Lusaka, and worked at the Namibia Press Agency, Windhoek.

She also actively participates in the developments she is studying; she crowdfunded a reporting and research trip to Egypt in 2011 to investigate crowdsourcing in public deliberation. She also practices social entrepreneurship in the Virtual SafeBox (http://designinglibtech.tumblr.com/), a project, which sprang from Designing Liberation Technologies class at Stanford. Tanja blogs on the Huffington Post and writes about her research at PBS MediaShift. More about Tanja’s work at www.tanjaaitamurto.com and on Twitter @tanjaaita.

 

 

Publications:

Seminars
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Abstract: While non-democratic states often restrict traditional civil liberties such as speech, media, and association, the degree of Internet freedom permitted varies dramatically across states.  This paper uses a mixed-method approach to analyze global patterns of Internet policy across hybrid and authoritarian regimes, and to offer a model of key causal factors and processes influencing policy choice – particularly the choice whether to adopt restrictive policies that limit Internet use and content or to permit the development of and access to a vibrant uncensored Internet.  Large-N analysis identifies global patterns of Internet restrictions and examines how these patterns appear to be changing as Internet penetration increases.  The paper also draws on research from the Russian Federation, tracing changes in domestic Internet policy choices and their relation to political instability and control, examining a critical period of policy change in a regime that had previously stood out for its relatively unrestricted Internet. 

About the Speaker: Jaclyn Kerr is a doctoral candidate in government at Georgetown University. Her research examines the Internet policies adopted by authoritarian and hybrid regimes in their attempts to adapt to the potentially destabilizing influence of growing Internet penetration.  She holds a BAS in Mathematics and Slavic Studies, and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from Stanford University.  In 2013-2014, Ms. Kerr was a research fellow at the Center for the Study of New Media and Society at the New Economic School in Moscow, while conducting field research for her dissertation.  She has worked as a research assistant at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, has been an IREX EPS Fellow at the U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan, a Research Fellow at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, an IREX YLF Fellow in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and has previous professional experience as a software engineer. She joins CISAC as a Cybersecurity Predoctoral Fellow for 2014-2015.

 


The Digital Dictator's Dilemma
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Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Jackie Kerr Cybersecurity Predoctoral Fellow Speaker CISAC
Seminars
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SPEAKER BIO
Andy Carvin was National Public Radio's senior product manager for online communities. He accepted a position at First Look Media in February, 2014. Carvin was the founding editor and former coordinator of the Digital Divide Network, an online community of more than 10,000 Internet activists in over 140 countries working to bridge the digital divide . He is also an active blogger as well as a field correspondent to the vlog Rocketboom.

Andy Carvin First Look
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Abstract:

Development organizations need tools capable of providing reliable and timely feedback on the efficacy of humanitarian interventions. Traditional surveys and surveying methodology lack interactivity as participants only provide data and may never see the survey results. In her talk, Brandie will describe an interactive assessment platform called CAFE, the Collaborative Assessment and Feedback Engine. CAFÉ was utilized to assess the performance of three Nutrition Education Centers in Uganda. The platform collected the opinions of 137 women who visited these centers for family planning training. We applied principal component analysis on the quantitative assessment questions. We learned that the top two factors that differentiated participants’ assessment of the effectiveness of the family planning trainings were: degree of female’s autonomy at home and degree of fear about contraception techniques. We applied a significance testing methodology to these factors and discovered the promising result that attending family planning trainings was correlated to reduced fears. 


Speaker Bio:

brandie nonnecke Brandie Nonnecke

Dr. Brandie Nonnecke is the Research & Development Manager of the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on how information and communication technologies can be used as tools to support civic participation, to improve governance and accountability, and to foster economic and social development. She has published articles in Telecommunications Policy, Telematics & Informatics, Communications & Strategies, and Information Technologies & International Development.

Brandie has an M.S. in Journalism and Mass Communication from Iowa State University and a Ph.D. in Mass Communications from The Pennsylvania State University.

 

Wallenberg Hall

Brandie M. Nonnecke, PhD Research and Development Manager, Data and Democracy Initiative, CITRIS, UC Berkeley UC Berkeley
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Abstract: Advances in biotechnology offer huge potential benefits to humankind, but at the same time present serious challenges to security. Professor Stearns will discuss his work as a member of JASON, an advising body that carries out studies for the US government on a wide range of topics.  Much of that work has been directed at assessing how the dissemination of sophisticated, yet inexpensive, biotechnology equipment and methods has changed how we have to think  about some of the key issues in biosecurity. 

 

About the Speaker: Tim Stearns is the Frank Lee and Carol Hall Professor of Biology at Stanford University and Professor of Genetics at Stanford Medical School.  He is the chair of the Department of Biology.  Dr. Stearns’ lab studies the structure and function of the centrosome and cilium in animal cells and the relationship of defects in these important signaling centers to human disease.  He has been recognized for his teaching of undergraduates and graduate students at Stanford, and internationally in Chile, Ghana, South Africa and Tanzania.  Dr. Stearns is a member of JASON, an independent group of scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology.  

 


Encia Hall (2nd floor)

Tim Stearns Frank Lee and Carol Hall Professor and Professor of Genetics Speaker Stanford University
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Is it good governance that leads to growth or vice versa? Applying a "complexity" framework to China’s great economic and bureaucratic transformation, Professor Ang argues that governance and growth necessarily interact and coevolve. So-called good governance is not a universal set of institutions—its particular forms vary dramatically at early and late stages of development. Moreover, the adaptive processes of coevolution do not universally happen or work. Understanding how reformers tackled problems of adaptation illuminates the sources of China’s extraordinary dynamism and the new challenges in the 21st century. 

Yuen Yuen Ang is Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Michigan. Ang studies development and governance in developing countries, especially China, focusing on the coevolution of state and economy, bureaucracy, and corruption. Her research has appeared in The Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics, The China Quarterly, and other journals. Ang’s book project was supported by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)/Andrew Mellon Foundation, Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation, Overseas Young Chinese Foundation/1990 Institute, APSA Paul Volcker Junior Scholar Grant, and grants from Stanford, Columbia, and Michigan. A summary essay of Ang's forthcoming book is available at this linkShe was awarded the Eldersveld Prize for outstanding research by the UM Political Science Department in 2014. Before joining Michigan, she was an Assistant Professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She obtained her PhD from Stanford University.

This event is part of the New Approaches to China series.

Philippines Conference RoomEncina Hall616 Serra St., 3rd floorStanford UniversityStanford, CA 94305
Yuen Yuen Ang Assistant Professor in Political Science, University of Michigan
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Please note that this Seminar is held on a Wednesday.

About the topic: This talk explores two primary questions: (1) the origins of the modern US national security state, and what might be called a constellation of democratic exceptions, during the late 1930s and 1940s; and (2) the patterning of congressional delegation, and the particular role played by southern Democrats in producing that period’s constellation of institutions and policies.  More speculatively, it considers subsequent patterns of continuity and discontinuity in instruments, norms, political coalitions, and the balance of congressional and presidential capacity. 

About the Speaker: Ira Katznelson has been Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University since 1994, and, since 2012, President of the Social Science Research Council. He served as President of the American Political Science Association in 2005-06, as Chair of the Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees from 1999-2002, and as President of the Social Science History Association in 1997-98. His most recent book, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (Liveright, 2013) has been awarded the Bancroft, Woodrow Wilson, Sidney Hillman, and J.David Greenstone Prizes. Other recent books include Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns (Cambridge University Press, 2008; written with Andreas Kalyvas); When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (W.W. Norton, 2006), and Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge After Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2003). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Ira Katznelson Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History Speaker Columbia University
Seminars
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