Join the Cyber Policy Center on Tuesday, January 16th from 12 Noon–1 PM Pacific, for Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose its Harmful Secrets, a conversation with Wall Street Journal reporter, and author Jeff Horwitz. The session will be moderated by Nate Persily, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, and is part of the 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.

Horwitz will discuss his research and reporting that led to his book Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose its Harmful Secrets. Broken Code expands on “The Facebook Files,” his blockbuster, award-winning series for The Wall Street Journal, and lays out not just the architecture of Facebook’s failures, but what the company knew—and disregarded.

About the Speaker

Jeff Horwitz is a technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal based in San Francisco, where he covers Meta and social-media platforms. He is the author of “Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets.”

His work on the Journal’s Facebook Files won a George Polk Award, a Gerald Loeb Award and the Chris Welles Memorial Prize. 

Previously he was a financial and enterprise reporter for the Associated Press in Washington, D.C. Jeff has also worked for American Banker, Legal Times, the San Bernardino Sun and the Washington City Paper.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on Tuesday, January 9th from 12 Noon–1 PM Pacific, for Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology, a conversation with Anu Bradford, Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School. The session will be moderated by Nate Persily, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, and is part of the 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.

In her book Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology, Anu Bradford examines three competing regulatory approaches governing the digital economy—the American market-driven model, the Chinese state-driven model, and the European rights-driven regulatory model—and discusses how governments and tech companies navigate the inevitable conflicts that arise when these regulatory approaches collide in the international domain. Each digital empire is advancing a competing vision for the digital economy while attempting to expand its sphere of influence in the digital world. Which digital empire will prevail in the contest for global influence remains an open question, yet their contrasting strategies are increasingly clear. In the midst of these unfolding regulatory battles, governments, tech companies, and digital citizens are making important choices that will shape the future ethos of the digital society. Digital Empires lays bare the choices we face as societies and individuals, explains the forces that shape those choices, and illuminates the immense stakes involved for everyone who uses digital technologies.

About the Speaker

A leading scholar on the EU’s regulatory power and a sought-after commentator on the European Union, global economy, and digital regulation, Anu Bradford coined the term the Brussels Effect to describe the European Union’s outsize influence on global markets. She is the author of The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World (2020), named one of the best books of 2020 by Foreign Affairs. Her newest book, Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology, was published by Oxford University Press in September 2023, and was recognized as one of the best books of 2023 by Financial Times.

Bradford is also an expert in international antitrust law. She spearheads the Comparative Competition Law Project, which has built a comprehensive global data set of antitrust laws and enforcement across time and jurisdictions. The project, a joint effort between the Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, covers more than a century of regulation in over 100 countries and has been the basis for Bradford’s recent empirical research on the antitrust regimes used to regulate markets. 

Before joining the Law School faculty in 2012, Bradford was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School. She also practiced EU and antitrust law in Brussels and has served as an adviser on economic policy in the Parliament of Finland and as an expert assistant at the European Parliament. The World Economic Forum named her Young Global Leader ’10. 

At the Law School, Bradford is the director of the European Legal Studies Center, which trains students for leadership roles in European law, public affairs, and the global economy. She is also a senior scholar at Columbia Business School’s Jerome A. Chazen Institute for Global Business, and a nonresident scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Bartels dismantles the pervasive myth of a "populist wave" in contemporary European public opinion. He shows that attitudes regarding immigration, European integration, trust in politicians, and satisfaction with democracy have remained largely unchanged over the past two decades. Electoral gains by right-wing populist parties have mostly reflected idiosyncratic failures of mainstream parties; both their magnitude and their implications have been exaggerated by the press. Europe's most sobering examples of democratic backsliding--in Hungary and Poland--occurred not because voters wanted authoritarianism but because conventional conservative parties, once elected, seized opportunities to entrench themselves in power.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Larry Bartels's research and teaching focus on public opinion, electoral politics, public policy, and democracy. His books include Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (2nd edition) and (with Christopher Achen) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. He has also published dozens of scholarly articles and brief pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Salon, and other popular media outlets. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Philosophical Society.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Philippines Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person.

How do nations grapple with a history of past atrocities? Does recognition of historical crimes in public discourse lead citizens to embrace a past that may devalue their national identity, or does it foster backlash and illiberal nationalism? Perhaps no better example of a paradigm of confronting the past exists than the case of post-war Germany, a country marked by the legacy of the Nazi atrocities in World War II.

More than half a century later, we ask how public recognition of collective culpability in public discourse, education, and culture, has affected German national identity and attitudes towards the country's history. We conducted a nationwide representative survey of German-born adults and relied on an experimental treatment to distinguish between private preferences and their public expression. Our findings suggest that the low levels of national pride and muted emotional connection to German history that are expressed by the German public have been internalized and are not the result of social desirability concerns. Yet a stigma surrounds the public expression of a desire to move on from the historical narrative that emphasizes Germany's role as a perpetrator of atrocities. Our study highlights both the potential for success and the costs of public recognition of a nation's historical sins.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Vasiliki Fouka is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, a Faculty Research Fellow at NBER, and a Research Affiliate at CEPR. Her research interests include historical political economy, political behavior, and cultural economics, with a main focus on immigrant assimilation, the determinants of prejudice against ethnic and racial minorities, and the long-run effects of history for inter-group relations.  

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Despite the policy failures that enabled and even encouraged the buildup of risk in the banking system and ultimately led to the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, “reformed” rules remain poorly designed, the system remains much too fragile and dangerous, and bailouts persist. In resisting beneficial reforms, bank lobbies make false, misleading, and self-serving arguments. The weak rules and poor enforcement reflect the symbiosis of bankers with politicians, the media, lawyers, and economists. They encourage and enable a culture of recklessness, rule infringements, and even criminal behavior, with impunity. The power of bankers to distort rules and political discourse threatens our democracies. This talk will be based on the new and expanded edition of Anat Admati's The Bankers' New Clothes: What is Wrong with Banking and What to Do About It (Princeton University Press, 2024), coauthored with Martin Hellwig, and other writings.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Anat Admati is the George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and faculty director of the Corporations and Society Initiative. Her interests lie in the interaction of business, law, and policy, with a focus on governance and accountability issues. Since 2010, Admati has been engaged in policy discussions related to financial regulations. In 2014, she was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and by Foreign Policy magazine as among 100 global thinkers. Admati has written on information dissemination in financial markets, financial contracting, corporate governance, and banking. She is the co-author, with Martin Hellwig, of The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It (Princeton University Press 2013, expanded edition 2024).

Admati holds BSc from the Hebrew University, MA, MPhil, and PhD from Yale University, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich. She is a fellow of the Econometric Society, a past board member of the American Finance Association, and a former member of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee and the CFTC’s Market Risk Advisory Committee.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on Tuesday, November 28th from 12 Noon–1 PM Pacific, for Centering Youth Voices in Pursuit of Healthier Social Media Experiences, a conversation with Vicki Harrison, Director of Programs and Partnerships for the Center for Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing in the Stanford Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. The session will be moderated by Jeff Hancock, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and is the final session of the Fall Seminar Series, a series spanning October through December, 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 Commons, Moghadam Conference Room #119, 615 Crothers Way.

In the midst of a national youth mental health crisis, many parents, educators and policymakers are concerned about the role social media plays in contributing to these high rates of mental health needs. This has led to many new calls for legislation, lawsuits and policy reform. But to what extent are young people themselves contributing to these policy conversations? Are their ideas being considered and heard? In this talk, Harrison will explain why incorporating youth voice matters and how it can happen. By highlighting successful examples of youth co-design efforts from her work with the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing, she will describe some best practices for working with youth advisors and share several youth perspectives on social media policy, taken directly from the GoodforMEdia project that she co-developed with youth.

About the Speaker

As the Director of Programs and Partnerships for the Center for Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing in the Stanford Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Vicki develops and implements a portfolio of community-based projects promoting wellbeing, early intervention and mental health access for youth ages 12-25. This includes bringing - allcove - an innovative, integrated youth mental health model, to the U.S. She co-led development of the allcove model at all stages -from its initial feasibility assessment, to fundraising, development of the allcove brand and related digital strategy and experience design, pilot implementation and establishment of the allcove technical assistance team that is currently supporting the establishment of one dozen allcove centers across California. 
 

Vicki also co-leads a national Media and Mental Health Initiative, partnering with the media, mental health and technology sectors to enhance the positive impacts of media on mental health. Along with a committee of passionate youth advocates, Vicki developed and launched the #goodforMEdia program, a peer mentoring project where teens offer peer support and educational advocacy by sharing strategies for supporting each other’s mental health when engaging with social media. She regularly speaks to national and international audiences on a range of topics related to youth mental health and media and has provided expertise to the United States Office of the President, Department of Homeland Security and the California State Legislature on social media’s impacts on youth mental health. Vicki was part of a multidisciplinary team that developed and published “The Tool for Evaluating Media Portrayals of Suicide (TEMPOS): Development and Application of a Novel Rating Scale to Reduce Suicide Contagion” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and has been training national audiences on its relevance and utility. Vicki also serves as a founding member of the TikTok US Content Advisory Council and has collaborated with a range of technology/media companies and non-profits on their efforts to improve youth mental health. 

Why could politicians of religious minority background assume the highest political offices in some countries soon after modern representative institutions were adopted, whereas, in other countries, almost all the national chief executives have been politicians from the religious majority background for decades, if not centuries?

I argue that the leading politicians of religious minority backgrounds in Europe potentially had three “secular” paths out of their marginality: liberalism, socialism, and nationalism. I examine these three paths that religious minority politicians pursued through the cases of Britain (liberalism), France (socialism), Hungary, and Italy (nationalism). I explain the variation in the rise of the first religious minority chief executives at the national level and the prominence of one of these three specific paths based on the religious configuration of the main actors in the constitutive conflict that established the nation-state. Finally, I examine a world-historical example of pattern change, the rise of Catholic-origin politicians to national leadership in previously Protestant-led Germany, which was due to a new constitutive conflict (World War II and the Holocaust) that radically altered the religious-national configuration. Religious minorities’ political (under-)representation constitutes a significant dimension of their (de-)securitization.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Şener Aktürk is Professor in the Department of International Relations at Koç University. He is a scholar of comparative politics, with a focus on comparative politics of ethnicity, religion, and nationalism. After completing his BA and MA at the University of Chicago and his PhD in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and a Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Government at Harvard University. His book, Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey (Cambridge University Press, 2012), received the 2013 Joseph Rothschild Book Prize from the Association for the Study of Nationalities.

His articles have been published in World Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Post-Soviet Affairs, Mediterranean Politics, Social Science Quarterly, European Journal of Sociology, Nationalities Papers, Problems of Post-Communism, Turkish Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Osteuropa, Theoria, Ab Imperio, Insight Turkey, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Perceptions, and various edited books. He is the recipient of the Peter Odegard Award at UC Berkeley, the Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant, the Baki Komsuoglu Social Sciences Encouragement Award, the Kadir Has Social Sciences Prize, the TUBA Young Scientist Award, the BAGEP Science Academy Award, and the TUBİTAK Incentive Prize.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

What are the longer-term implications of Russia’s renewed aggression in Ukraine for relations with its Eurasian neighbors it has often referred to as the “near abroad?”

A recent and growing literature suggests that domestic public opinion will play a decisive role in their future foreign policy choices. Based on an original mass survey with an embedded experiment, this talk examines the changes in Kazakhstani public opinion toward maintaining economic and security relations with Russia through international alliances such as the Collective Treaty Security Organization (CSTO). These changes should be viewed in light of both Russia’s war against Ukraine in February 2022 and the Russian-led CSTO’s intervention in the mass protests in Kazakhstan in January 2022. It argues that Kazakhstani public opinion has changed in significant ways — especially across ethnic lines — and that these changes are likely to impact Kazakhstan-Russian relations in general and the future of the CSTO in particular.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Pauline Jones is Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan (UM) and the Edie N. Goldenberg Endowed Director for the Michigan in Washington Program. She is also Founder and Director of the Digital Islamic Studies Curriculum (DISC). Previously, she served as the Director of UM’s Islamic Studies Program (2011-14) and International Institute (2014-20). Her past work has contributed broadly to the study of institutional origin, change, and impact in Central Asia. She is currently engaged in multiple research projects: exploring how state regulation of Islam in Muslim-majority states affects citizens’ political attitudes and behavior; identifying the factors that affect compliance with health mitigation policies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic; examining the influence that evoking historical memory has on public support for foreign assistance; and developing a toolkit to assess the impact of mass protest and state narratives on domestic and foreign policy change in authoritarian regimes. She has published articles in several leading academic and policy journals, including the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Current History, and Foreign Affairs. She is author (or co-author) of five books, most recently The Oxford Handbook on Politics in Muslim Societies (Oxford 2021).

Advocates of women's rights have long demanded greater access for women to political office, especially the national parliament, with hopes of influencing policymaking with feminist agendas. However, feminist activists’ focus on electoral politics has been mixed in autocratic and patriarchal contexts. While some research pointed to the role of critical actors in policymaking who act as feminist insiders, others warned about the futility of such intentions in undemocratic contexts. Comparing Iran and Turkey in recent decades, Dr. Tajali highlights the complexities of women’s substantive representation in autocratic contexts by mapping out various forms of feminist resistance, state backlash, and overall democratic recession. This analysis helps shed light on the conditions that led to the recent women-led protests in Iran and Turkey, such as the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprisings in Iran and the campaigns against the ruling Justice and Development Party’s unilateral decisions on women’s rights.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Mona Tajali is an Associate Professor of International Relations and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Agnes Scott College and is currently a visiting scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University. Her research and teaching fall in the fields of Gender and Politics, Human Rights, and Social Movements in Muslim contexts. She is the author of Women’s Political Representation in Iran and Turkey: Demanding a Seat at the Table (Edinburgh University Press 2022) and co-author of Electoral Politics: Making Quotas Work for Women (with Homa Hoodfar), both published as open-access to facilitate their dissemination to diverse audiences and regions. Dr. Tajali is also a long-term collaborator with the transnational solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws, and, since 2019, has served as a member of its executive board. She is published in both academic and popular outlets, among them the Middle East Journal, Politics & Gender, The Conversation, and The Washington Post.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.