Why are far-right movements on the rise virtually everywhere in Europe? Which implications could this have for US interests overseas?

Capitalizing on various forms of societal distress, far-right groups have been on the rise in virtually every European country. But why is Europe witnessing such a resurgence? How are these Neo-Fascist, Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups organized? What are their main narratives and how may these impact US interests in the region? Which courses of action should Washington and its continental allies undertake to counter the phenomenon in question?

Michele Groppi is lecturer in Defense Studies at the Defense Academy of the UK, where he coordinates the Policy and Strategy Module. Member of the Institute of Directors, Michele is the founder and president of ITSS Verona, an international association dedicated to the study of security. A former varsity athlete, Michele has a BA in IR from Stanford (Honors), an MA in Counter-terrorism and Homeland Security from the IDC, and a PhD in Defence Studies from King's College London. Specializing in terrorism, extremism, and radicalization, Michele has authored various peer-reviewed pieces and regularly appears on international media outlets.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by April 18, 2024.

Chewing gum is neither food nor medicine, but it was administered to American troops as a drug substitute during the two world wars of the 20th century. Journalists and marketing strategists at the time referred to chewing gum as "fuel for fighters,” and the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps classified it as "ammunition" on the supply list. Moreover, Army officials found that providing drinking water, especially on the front lines, was costly and time-consuming, and so chewing gum became a cheap and an effective thirst quencher -- and an indispensable item in the American soldier’s kit.

Without the Caste War (1847-1915) in southeastern Mexico, chewing gum would not have become a wartime supply or a mass-market product: The Maya of the Yucatan rainforest (or Cruzobs, as they were called) resisted the feudal laws of indentured servitude and retreated into the Yucatan rainforest to defy Hispanic landowners. There they extracted chicel from wild trees and smuggled this raw material for chewing gum across the border into Belize in exchange for ammunition. This allowed them to defend themselves for nearly 50 years.

Chicle was eventually mass-produced in the United States via Central America. Then, as American troops fanned out from Europe to Asia after World War I and World War II, they distributed chewing gum to civilian populations as a gesture of friendship, paving the way for Wrigley, today's global leader in chewing gum.

This research offers an innovative window into the complex global connections between chewing gum and war, linking fragmented local and national histories to a global picture.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) and partially funded by Stanford Global Studies’ Oceanic Imaginaries

Martina Kaller is a professor of global history with a background in Latin American studies and is currently a Visiting Scholar at FSI. She has researched in Mexico, Guatemala, the United States, and several European countries. As a guest professor, Kaller has taught at Stanford University (Austrian chair), Sorbonne, and Science Po, Paris. She served for two decades on the board of and later as head of an EU-funded international Master’s program in Global Studies and five years as the president of the permanent committee of the International Congress of Americanists (ICA). Her primary research focuses are on global food history and the History of Latin America 19/20th century. She has worked extensively on the history of international development with particular attention to Mexico and Central America (two books and 27 journal and book contributions). 

Kaller (Dr. Habil) is an Associate Professor of Modern History at the Department of of History at the University of Vienna. She has various ongoing research projects on global food history and the long-term impact of political and economic autonomy of indigenous people, comparing cases in Latin America, Europe, and Canada. Her books and book chapters have been published or are forthcoming at Palgrave McMillan, Routledge, Global South Press, Bloomsbury, et al.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by February 15, 2024.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on Tuesday, March 5th from 12 Noon–1 PM Pacific, for Regulating Under Uncertainty: the Case of Generative AI with Florence G'sell Visiting Scholar at the Cyber Policy Center. The session will be moderated by Nate Persily, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, and is part of the Winter Seminar Series, a series spanning January through March hosted at the Cyber Policy Center. Sessions are in-person and virtual, via Zoom and streamed via YouTube, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance and registration is required. This session will take place in Encina Hall, on the 3rd floor in the Oksenberg Conference Room.

On 2 February 2024, the Council of EU Ministers reached a unanimous decision to approve the European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act. This Regulation, expected to be ratified by the European Parliament without any changes, represents the first initiative to create a comprehensive regulatory environment for Artificial Intelligence that will have worldwide implications, due to the Act's broad extraterritorial application. The AI Act includes specific provisions designed to regulate foundation models, and in particular generative AI models, which were adopted after intense debate.

This presentation will aim to explore the complexities and challenges associated with governing and regulating emerging technologies such as generative AI, using the drafting of the AI Act as a case study. It will seek to address the question of how to devise an effective regulatory framework and mitigate risks in the face of innovations whose potentials and associated risks are not fully understood. This analysis will include a comparative assessment of the regulatory approaches adopted by the European Union and the United States, with the goal of evaluating the suitability and efficacy of these strategies.

About the Speaker

Florence G’sell is a professor of private law at the University of Lorraine and leads the Digital, Governance and Sovereignty Chair at Sciences Po. She is currently a visiting professor in the program on the Governance of Emerging Technologies, at the Cyber Policy Center.

G'sell began her academic career working mainly on tort law, judicial systems and comparative law. For the past several years, she has been working on digital law and in particular on issues related to the regulation of online platforms, the way law can deal with new technologies (Blockchain, Metaverse), the notion of digital sovereignty and, more generally, digital policies in the EU and the US. She has edited and published several books on digital issues, including Le Big Data et le Droit (Dalloz, 2021) and Justice Numérique (Dalloz, 2022). Recently, she published “Les réseaux sociaux, entre encadrement et auto-régulation” (Sciences Po, Digital, Governance and Sovereignty Chair, 2021), “AI Judges” (in Larry A. Dimatteo, Cristina Poncibo, Michel Cannarsa (edit. ), The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, Global Perspectives on Law and Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 2022), and “The Digital Services Act: a General Assessment” (in Antje von Ungern-Sternberg (ed.), Content Regulation in the European Union – The Digital Services Act, Institute for Digital Law (IRDT), Trier April 2023). She has also co-authored the Council of Europe report entitled “The Impact of Blockchains for Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law” (with Florian Martin-Bariteau, 2022).

G’sell graduated from Sciences Po and is admitted to the Paris Bar. She obtained her PhD in private law from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and holds the French “agrégation de droit privé et sciences criminelles”. She has been invited several times at the University of Chicago and, more recently, at Stanford University. 

Event Details: The Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is proud to present:

“How Multiracial Identity Shapes Citizenship“, part of the 1891 Lectures in the Humanities. Michelle Mercer and Bruce Golden Family Professor in Feminist and Gender Studies, Rachel Jean-Baptiste will be speaking on her book Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa, (Cambridge UP, 2023).

Please join us for what will be a lively and eventful talk at the Stanford Humanities Center on February 26th, 2024 at 4:30 PM PST at Levinthal Hall in the Stanford Humanities Center.

There will be a reception to follow! We encourage you to RSVP with this form for logistics and planning purposes by February 19th! RSVP’s are encouraged but not required!

This event is sponsored by The Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and is cosponsored by Stanford Humanities Center, Department of African & African American Studies, Center for African Studies, France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and The Europe Center Freeman Spogli Institute Stanford Global Studies.

More about the author and book: 

Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa is a groundbreaking history of EurAfricans or métis, people of African and European parentage, and how their conceptions of racial identity shaped notions of citizenship and childhood in Africa and Europe. Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships persisted – mainly between African women and European men – and resulted in the births of thousands of children in West and Equatorial Africa. Drawing on public and private archives, photos, and oral history research in Senegal, France, Gabon, Germany, and Congo Jean-Baptiste traces the little-explored history of francophone métis. Crucially, this history analyzes how multiracial people made claims to access French social and citizenship rights amidst the refusal by European fathers to recognize their children and in the context of changing racial thought and practice in varied African societies. In this innovative and transcontinental history of race-making, belonging, and family Jean-Baptiste reveals the complexities and interconnected nature of identity-making in Africa and Europe. 

Join the Cyber Policy Center on Tuesday, February 13th from 12 Noon–1 PM Pacific, for Policy for Foundation Models with Rishi Bommasani, the Society Lead at Stanford's Center for Research on Foundation Models. The session will be moderated by Nate Persily, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, and is part of the Winter Seminar Series, a series spanning January through March hosted at the Cyber Policy Center. Sessions are in-person and virtual, via Zoom and streamed via YouTube, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance and registration is required. This session will take place in Encina Hall, on the 3rd floor in the Oksenberg Conference Room.

Foundation models (GPT-4, Gemini, Stable Diffusion XL, Llama 2) are transforming society: remarkable capabilities, serious risks, rampant deployment, unprecedented adoption, overflowing funding, and unending controversy. In this talk, Bommasani will center our attention on policy, with a focus on the matters of transparency and openness, linking both to concurrent policy developments. 

About the Speaker

Rishi Bommasani is the Society Lead at Stanford's Center for Research on Foundation Models while completing his PhD in Computer Science (advisers: Percy Liang, Dan Jurafsky; funding: NSF Graduate Research Fellowship). His work broadly focuses on the societal impact of AI, often by leading large-scale collaborations and building interdisciplinary teams. More specifically, he studies foundation models in relation to concepts such as evaluation, systemic harm, governance, policy, and power. Prior to Stanford, Rishi completed his bachelor’s degree at Cornell University, advised by Claire Cardie.