Kathleen Reen is the Vice-President for Asia and New Media Programs with Internews. Reen leads media and information development programs across Asia, and a global Open Internet programs with a team of 12 international and local partner organizations. She has worked for Internews on a variety of assignments from Bosnia and Serbia, founding Internews’ program in Indonesia in as well as projects in Thailand, Cambodia, Timor, Pakistan and China. As Country Director in Indonesia she managed a project developing and implementing media legal reforms, training and productions, Internet access, and local media NGO-building efforts. In late 2004 she led Internews first humanitarian media efforts in Aceh after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

A journalist and documentary producer by background, Reen worked in Eastern and Southern Europe and Southeast Asia before joining Internews. In 2005 she was a co-founder and first Director of the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD). In 2006 she was selected as a fellow of the Asia Society’s “Asia 21″ program. In 2008 she became a fellow of the Flowfund, which supports the development of US domestic and global philanthropy with a focus on social entrepreneurs. She has helped establish several national and regional organizations in Asia that are devoted to media development and information. She represents Internews to the GNI – the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to improve freedom of expression and best practices for companies with NGOs and human rights organizations around the world.

Abstract
Will mobile phones transform the lives of the world’s poor?  In this talk, I describe how innovative sources of data can provide new insight into the social and economic impacts of Mobile Money and other phone-based services in sub-Saharan Africa.  I will focus on a series of related projects in Rwanda, which exploit a terabyte-scale database of phone calls, text messages, and mobile money transfers to explore patterns of social interaction and, ultimately, provide insight into the role of mobile phones in the Rwandan economy.  Taken together, the results indicate that phones have had a positive impact on the lives of some people but, absent intervention, the benefits may not reach those with the greatest need.

Joshua Blumenstock is a Ph.D. candidate at U.C. Berkeley’s School of Information.  His research focuses on the economic and social impacts of information and communication technologies in developing countries.  In recent work, Blumenstock has shown how terabyte-scale data collected by mobile operators can be used to provide insight into the structure of informal insurance networks (Rwanda/Uganda); the socioeconomic impacts of mobile banking (Pakistan/Mongolia); and the effectiveness of anti-corruption campaigns (Afghanistan). He has received fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, and the Harvard Institutes of Medicine.  Blumenstock holds a Master's degree in Economics from U.C. Berkeley, and Bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Computer Science from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

Abstract
Weinstein recently returned from two years on the National Security Council staff at the White House where we played a key role in thinking through a 21st century approach to fighting corruption and strengthening governance. One important initiative was President Obama’s Open Government Partnership (OGP), a multilateral effort involving more than 50 countries, hundreds of civil society groups, and leading technology companies, with the goal of making governments more transparent, more accountable, and more effective. Weinstein will offer a behind-the-scenes perspective on the creation of OGP, and discuss its promise and potential pitfalls.

Jeremy Weinstein recently returned to Stanford after serving as Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House between 2009 and 2011. In this capacity, he played a key role in the National Security Council’s work on global development, democracy and human rights, and anti-corruption, with a global portfolio. Among other issues, Weinstein was centrally involved in the development of President Obama’s Policy Directive on Global Development and associated efforts to reform and strengthen USAID, promote economic growth, and increase the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance across the board; led efforts at the White House to develop a robust international anti-corruption agenda, which included the creation of the G-20 Action Plan on Anti-Corruption, the design and launch of the Open Government Partnership, and the successful legislative passage and subsequent internationalization of a ground-breaking extractive industries disclosure requirement; and played a significant role in developing the Administration’s policy in response to the Arab Spring, including focused work on Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and others. Before joining the White House staff, Weinstein served as an advisor to the Obama campaign and, during the transition, served as a member of the National Security Policy Working Group and the Foreign Assistance Agency Review Team.

Abstract
Two and half years before there was anything called the “Arab Spring,” Wired contributing editor David Wolman traveled to Egypt to research and write about tech-savvy dissidents protesting against the Mubarak regime. Those same activists went on to play a central role in organizing the revolution that began on January 25, 2011. Wolman will share stories about his reporting, both from 2008 and during two trips in 2011, and discuss the role of social media in recent uprisings from Cairo to California.

David Wolman is an author and award-winning journalist. He is a contributing editor for Wired, and he has written for a variety of publications, including Outside, Mother Jones, Newsweek, Discover, Forbes, and Salon. Wolman is a former Fulbright journalism fellow in Japan and a graduate of Stanford University's journalism program. His latest book, The End of Money, will be out in February.

At present, the tobacco industry produces some six trillion cigarettes worldwide every year. Six trillion cigarettes per annum, each ready to release smoke filled with highly addictive nicotine and powerful carcinogens. A third of all these sticks were produced in China last year. In 2011, the world’s largest cigarette maker by volume, the China National Tobacco Corporation, contributed an all-time high of U.S. $214 billion in profits and taxes to the Chinese government, up 22 percent year-on-year. Currently the greatest cause of preventable death in the world, the cigarette is likely to kill ten times as many people in the 21st century as it did in the 20th century, epidemiologists tell us, with China bearing the largest burden. Until now, much global health research and intervention has focused with limited success on the cigarette consumer—addressing how one or another variable prompts people to take up or quit smoking, whether the cue for the consumer is biological, psychological, spatial, financial or symbolic. What though of the industrial sources of tobacco-related diseases? Where are the six trillion cigarettes that are released into circulation each year manufactured? Where are they rolled, wrapped, and boxed for shipment? This presentation will introduce the Cigarette Citadels Project, an innovative application of participatory GIS. With special attention given to China’s network of cigarette factories, Matthew Kohrman will explain how the Cigarette Citadels Project not only reveals conceptual roadblocks in public health policy but also lacuna in social theory pertaining to the state and the politics of life.

Matthew Kohrman joined Stanford’s faculty in 1999. His research and writing bring multiple methods to bear on the ways health, culture, and politics are interrelated. Focusing on the People's Republic of China, he engages various intellectual terrains such as governmentality, gender theory, political economy, critical science studies, and embodiment. His first monograph, Bodies of Difference: Experiences of Disability and Institutional Advocacy in the Making of Modern China, examines links between the emergence of a state-sponsored disability-advocacy organization and the lives of Chinese men who have trouble walking. In recent years, Kohrman has been conducting research projects aimed at analyzing and intervening in the biopolitics of cigarette smoking and production. These projects expand upon analytical themes of Kohrman’s disability research and engage in novel ways techniques of public health.

This event is part of the China's Looming Challenges series. 

Abstract:

     While the reelection of Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, relieved concerns about an immediate deterioration in cross-Strait relations, the future of ties between Beijing and Taipei remain uncertain. Much will depend on the PRC’s policy. Moreover, calls in the United States either to abandon Taiwan or, conversely, to embrace it ever more closely as a hedge against the Mainland’s growing strength, have yet to play themselves out. Alan D. Romberg will address the implications of the election for these issues, as well as for Sino-American relations and for the region.

Speaker Bio:

     Alan Romberg is the director of the East Asia program at Stimson. 

     Before joining Stimson in September 2000, he enjoyed a distinguished career working on Asian issues, both in and out of government, including twenty years as a US Foreign Service Officer. Romberg was the principal deputy director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff and deputy spokesman of the department. He served in various capacities dealing with East Asia, including director of the Office of Japanese Affairs, member of the Policy Planning staff for East Asia, and staff member at the National Security Council for China. He served overseas in Hong Kong and Taiwan. 

     Additionally, Romberg spent almost ten years as the CV Starr Senior Fellow for Asian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy. 

     Romberg holds an MA from Harvard University, and a BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power loudly proclaiming an end to the old deference to bureaucrats and favored interest groups. Two and a half years later, it has backtracked on many of its bold promises. In the face of daunting financial challenges and obstreperous opposition parties, Prime Minister Noda seeks, still somewhat unsteadily, to establish a new balance between strong leadership and artful compromise with allies and enemies alike.  

Gregory W. Noble is Professor in the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo, where his research focuses on comparative political economy in East Asia.  After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government, he taught at the University of California and the Australian National University before moving to Tokyo. Among his publications are Collective Action in East Asia: How Ruling Parties Shape Industrial Policy; The Asian Financial Crisis and the Structure of Global Finance(co-edited with John Ravenhill); “Fiscal crisis and party strategies”; “The decline of particularism in Japanese politics”; “Japanese and American perspectives on regionalism in East Asia”; “What can Taiwan (and the U.S.) Expect from Japan”; “The Chinese Auto Industry as Challenge, Opportunity and Partner”; “Executioner or Disciplinarian: WTO Accession and the Chinese Auto Industry” (with Richard F. Doner and John Ravenhill]; “Power Politics: Elections and Electricity Regulation in Taiwan,” (with Stephan Haggard).

Special Japan Studies Program and CEAS Series: Winter-Spring 2011-12

While Chernobyl, and now Fukushima, are household words, far fewer people have heard of Maiak in the southern Urals and Hanford in eastern Washington State where Soviet and American engineers built plutonium plants to fuel the Cold War nuclear arsenal. Within nuclear "buffer zones," plant managers, who were pushed to produce as much plutonium as quickly as possible, polluted freely, liberally and disastrously. During the plutonium disasters that ensued, each plant issued over 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment, at least twice the amount released at Chernobyl. Under cover of nuclear security and powered by generous corporate welfare, plant managers employed influential public relations campaigns, restricted medical research, deployed temporary, migrant workers as ‘"jumpers" for the dirtiest work, and generally denied the existence and hazards of radioactive contamination. This was the house plutonium built. Kate Brown argues these histories are important because they supplied models, staff, blueprints and subsequent ready-made disasters for Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Kate Brown is an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is the author of a Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Harvard 2004), which won the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize for the Best Book in International European History. Brown is a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow and is working on a book called Plutopolia, a tandem history of the world’s first plutonium cities, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2012.

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Special Japan Studies Program and CEAS Series: Winter-Spring 2011-12

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Japan's March 11 Disasters One Year Later

The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that hit Japan in March 2011 had both immediate catastrophic consequences and long term repercussions. Fundamental areas of Japan’s environment, economy, society, and collective national psyche were deeply affected, giving rise to a broad range of urgent issues. These include economic debates about how to meet the country’s energy demands with nuclear power plants offline, and what path to take for the country’s energy future; political crises, including criticism of the government’s disaster response; the psychological challenges of coping with trauma and grief; a daunting environmental clean-up; and social developments, including a new wave of civil society activism. This series brings together scholars and activists from a wide range of specialties to take stock of how the Japanese have been affected by the disasters, and to assess the efforts of residents, volunteers, and policy makers to recover and move forward.

Abstract

Mobile phone coverage and adoption has grown substantially over the past decade, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. In the absence of public goods infrastructure in many countries, mobile phone technology has the potential to reduce communication and transaction costs and improve access to information, goods and services, particularly for remote rural populations. Research suggests that mobile phone coverage has had positive impacts on agricultural and labor market efficiency in certain countries, but empirical microeconomic evidence is still limited. This paper presents the results of several mobile phone-related field experiments in sub-Saharan Africa, whereby mobile phones have been used for learning, money transfers and civic education programs. These experiments suggest that mobile phone technology can result in reductions in communication and transaction costs, as well as welfare gains, in particular contexts. Nevertheless, mobile phone technology cannot serve as the “silver bullet” for development, and careful impact evaluations of mobile phone development projects are required. In addition, mobile phone technology must work in partnership with other public good provision and investment to achieve optimal development outcomes. 

Speaker Bio:

Jenny C. Aker is an assistant professor of economics at the Fletcher School and department of economics at Tufts University. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development and a member of the Advisory Board for Frontline SMS.

After working for Catholic Relief Services as Deputy Regional Director in West and Central Africa between 1998 and 2003, Jenny returned to complete her PhD in agricultural economics at the University of California-Berkeley. Jenny works on economic development in Africa, with a primary focus on the impact of information and information technology on development outcomes, particularly in the areas of agriculture, agricultural marketing and education; the relationship between shocks and agricultural food market performance; the determinants of agricultural technology adoption; and impact evaluations of NGO and World Bank projects. Jenny has conducted field work in many countries in West and Central Africa, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, DRC, The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Sudan, as well as Haiti and Guatemala.