Recognizing the political consequences for Europe of Muslim immigration, and relying on a novel identification strategy, this paper investigates why Muslim assimilation into French cultural norms is incomplete, and provides experimental and survey evidence that reveals the low expected payoffs that Muslim immigrants in France receive for full assimilation. While the data show that rooted French people initially distrust Muslims (compared to a matched set of Christians)  in part due to their unwillingness to fully assimilate, the real source of Muslim reluctance to fully assimilate is their perception that in anonymous transactions (i.e., through French institutions) they will always be perceived as foreign and face discrimination.

Workshop paper is available to Stanford affiliates upon request by email to khaley@stanford.edu

David Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He received his B.A. in Political Science from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include comparative politics, nation-state formation, ethnic conflict, and religion. Among his publications are Politics, Language and Thought: The Somali Experience (1977), Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba (1986), Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa (1992), Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (1998), and Nations, States and Violence (2007). Prof. Laitin has been a recipient of fellowships from the Howard Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Event Summary

Professor Laitin opens the seminar by providing background on the research project that motivated the paper. This examined: whether Muslim immigrants in France faced unique social and economic barriers; the source of the barriers; and whether French republicanism exacerbated or lessened the barriers. He provides a brief summary of studies examining the first and third points, but the focus of his talk was on the second point: if there are higher barriers for Muslims, who is building them?

Professor Laitin then describes the study his research team carried out on a Senegalese population in France for 15 years, drawing on equal-sized groups of Muslims and Christians from similar social and economic conditions. Through a series of games and surveys, the team observed that within Senegalese Muslims in France, certain groups assimilate more than others, and those that assimilate less are treated worse by French individuals and institutions. Many of the Muslims expected to be treated less generously by French individuals, and reported more experiences of discrimination from French institutions, which Professor Laitin's team found was more difficult to overcome than individual discrimination. This group also exhibited stronger financial ties (measured by investments and remittances sent to Senegal from France) and emotional ties (measured by desire to be buried in Senegal rather than France after death). The results of the study are used to provide a series of decision rules and reward matrixes for incoming Senegalese Muslims, including the likelihood of penalties and rewards for assimilation, such as giving children French names.

During a discussion period following the presentation, such questions were raised as: Do the results of the study have more to do with the respondents being Muslim, or simply not being French - or, do other ethnic or religious groups have the same problems assimilating into French Catholic society? Is the example of preferences for burial locations more about ties to Senegal than lack of ties to France? How much of the effect is due to being black rather than Muslim? Will the results of the study change as the Muslim population in France increases? What has been the reception in France to the prohibition of collecting ethnographic data? Why is "incomplete assimilation" framed as a "response" to the discrimination - is it a choice or is it just the way things are? Where does the fault lie in the discrimination reported in the survey?

Workshop papers are available to Stanford affiliates upon request by email to khaley@stanford.edu.

Abstract: This paper examines the contemporary Islamic revival in France, focusing on the emergence of a distinctive Muslim French identity and concomitant political imagination. Asserting their right to be piously and visibly Muslim in the public sphere, Muslim French revivalists reconfigure the relationship between Frenchness and Muslimness. In so doing, they imagine new ways of organizing the national polity, envisioning a novel relationship between minority ‘difference’ and citizenship that refuses to constrain Muslimness to the space of alterity.

Mayanthi Fernando is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California-Santa Cruz. She received her B.A. from Harvard University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Her research interests include anthropology of Islam, politics and secularism, modernity and difference, postcolonial Britain and France, anthropology of freedom, anthropology of Western Europe, and multiculturalism. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled On The Muslim Question: Anxieties of the Secular Republic, which analyzes the forms of subjectivity, religiosity, and political community constituted by Muslim French revivalists, the legal, political, and institutional practices that comprise laïcité, and the ways in which these practices constrain pious Muslims, who are often caught in the structural and discursive tensions endemic to laïcité. Among her publications are “Reconfiguring Freedom: Muslim Piety and the Limits of Secular Law and Public Discourse in France” (2010), “Exceptional Citizens: Secular Muslim Women and the Politics of Difference in France” (2009), and “The Republic’s ‘Second Religion’: Recognizing Islam in France” (2005).

Co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies

Joint Africa Table/CDDRL seminar

Andrew M. Mwenda is the founder,  Strategy and Editorial Director (SED) of The Independent Publications Limited, publishers of The Independent, East Africa’s leading current affairs newsmagazine. An admirer of Socrates and Frederick Von Hayek, he is an activist, a journalist, a columnist, a presenter of a prime time daily radio talk-show and a businessman.

Named by Foreign Policy among the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2010, Mwenda was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2008 and by the Africa Study Institute as an Archbishop Tutu fellow, a program for “Africa’s future leaders”. He has also won the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists “in tribute to his commitment to a free press in Uganda and the whole world” and the Outstanding Alumni Award from the British Council.

The unprecedented rapid rate of scientific progress is creating new opportunities for transnational criminal and terrorist organizations to exploit advances in technology for unintended nefarious purposes. While much research has been dedicated on the common cyber security threats of today, little if any study has been devoted to next generation forms of technological crime and terrorism.

This discussion will provide an engaging and entertaining futurist perspective on the effects technological progress on crime, policing and national security. Specific topics to be covered include the criminal and terrorist implications of emerging technologies such as robotics, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, the human genome, virtual worlds, the social data revolution and ubiquitous computing.

Speaker Biography: Marc Goodman is a global thinker, writer and consultant focused on the disruptive impact of advancing technologies on security, business and international affairs.  Over the past twenty years, he has built his expertise in next generation security threats such as cyber crime and cyber terrorism working with organizations such as Interpol, the United Nations, NATO, the Los Angeles Police Department and the U.S. Government.  Marc provides a front seat view into the digital underground and insights into the emerging technological, geopolitical, and security trends shaping our common future.

Mr. Goodman frequently advises industry leaders, security executives and global policy makers on transnational cyber risk and intelligence and founded the Future Crimes Institute to inspire and educate others on the security implications of newly emerging technologies.  In addition, Mr. Goodman serves as the Chair for Policy, Law and Ethics at Silicon Valley’s Singularity University, a NASA and Google sponsored educational venture dedicated to using advanced science and technology to address humanity’s grand challenges. 

Joan Casanovas will provide an analysis of the evolution of the current Spanish economic crisis and the way this crisis is presented by the media. The focus will be on Spain's financial solvency and that of its financial institutions, as seen by someone who has been immersed in the situation from the outset.

A recent article about Spain's economic crisis can be found in the Oct. 20th NY Times article, "As Spain Faces a Possible Recession, Criticism of Its Central Bank is Growing"

The RSVP deadline has been extended to Monday, April 30th.

PLEASE NOTE VENUE CHANGE

In association with the annual Shorenstein Journalism Award for Asia, conferred this year on China's pioneering Caixin Media group, this panel will look at the current state and the future of the Chinese media. The Chinese state continues to play a powerful role in controlling the media and the free flow of information to the Chinese people. But China's media is undergoing rapid change, from the growing role of social media to the proliferation of new publications, some of which, like Caixin, are challenging the boundaries of state control. Which will win in China's changing media landscape—the forces of the market, state censorship, or quality journalism?

PANELISTS

Hu Shuli, editor-­in-chief of Caixin Media, and dean of the School of Communications and Design at Sun Yat-sen University, has a distinguished career that spans both print and broadcast journalism. Hu is a former Stanford Knight Journalism Fellow (1994) and a recipient of the Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism (2007). She is frequently named on annual Who’s Who lists by publications such as Foreign Policy and Time Magazine.

Wang Shuo, managing editor of Caixin Media, was ranked among China’s top 10 young editors in 2011. He is a former international editor for People’s Daily, a Chinese government-run newspaper published nationally. Recognized as one of the brightest rising stars in his field, Wang was named as a Young Leader in 2007 and 2008 by the Boao Forum for Asia, and as a media leader by the World Economic Forum. He has led the investigative journalism teams at Caixin.

Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director at the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations, and is also a former jury member for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. He has written extensively on China, and was awarded the 1997 George Peabody Award for producing the groundbreaking documentary the Gate of Heavenly Peace. He received the Shorenstein Journalism Award in 2003.

Hu Ben, a journalist with Southern Weekend, is the current Lyle and Corrine Nelson International Knight Fellow at Stanford. He started his journalism career in 2005, when he joined a writer's network blogging about international affairs not covered by official media. At Southern Weekend, he has written about how Chinese government works, how public policies are made, and how information flows inside the government.

Daniel Sneider serves as the associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC and also as a research associate with the prestigious National Asia Research Program. He frequently contributes articles to publications such as Foreign Policy, Asia Policy, and Slate and had three decades of experience as a foreign correspondent and editor for publications including the Christian Science Monitor and the San Jose Mercury News. 

ABOUT THE AWARD

The Shorenstein Journalism Award was launched in 2002 to recognize the contributions of Western journalists in deepening our understanding of Asia. In 2011, the recipients of the award have been broadened to encompass Asian journalists who are at the forefront of the battle for press freedom in Asia and who have played a key role in constructing a new role for the media, including the growth of social media and Internet-based journalism. The award will also identify those Asian journalists who, from that side of the Pacific Ocean, have aided the growth of mutual understanding between Asia and the United States.

Carrying a cash prize of $10,000, the award was named after Walter H. Shorenstein, the philanthropist, activist, and businessman who endowed two institutions that are focused respectively on Asia and on the press: Shorenstein APARC in the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Read the 2011 Shorenstein Journalism Award press release for more details about Caixin and about the history of the award.

Stanford Law School is sponsoring a conference titled, "The Constitution and the World," on October 27-28, 2011. Scholars, many with experience in the State Department or other government posts, will address the reach of constitutional rights outside U.S. territory, the potential effect of treaties on constitutional structure and rights, and the effect of globalization and international institutions on sovereignty. (More details are provided below.)

During the conference, Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar will also be moderating a panel discussion, "Does the Constitution Apply Abroad?," (on Friday, October 28th, from 1:15-3:30pm).

If you are interested in attending this event, please plan to register at the following website:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/law/forms/conworld_participant.fb

Please join the Center on Philanthropy and Civic Society, the Program on Social Entrepreneurship, Spark, and the Clayman Institute for Gender Research for a special evening screening of:

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Friday, November 4, 2011

Doors Open 6:30 pm, Film Program 7:00 pm-9:30 pm

CEMEX Auditorium at the Knight Management Center,

Stanford Graduate School of Business

This film is set in 19th century China and centered on the lifelong friendship between two girls who develop their own secret code as a way to contend with the rigid cultural norms imposed on women.

The film will be followed by a Q&A with Director Wayne Wang and producers Wendi Murdoch and Florence Sloan, and author Lisa See.

This program will also launch a new Stanford initiative to facilitate an intergenerational conversation on the women’s movement. As such, the Q&A will focus on a historical framing of the women’s movement, the role of culture in shaping feminism and the ways in which leadership within the movement is transferred between generations.

To RSVP, visit the Stanford PACS website at:

http://pacscenter.stanford.edu/events/upcoming-events