This event is available through livestream only. Please register in advance for the webinar by using the link below.

REGISTRATION LINK: https://bit.ly/34pAVrb

Inside the Billion Dollar Whale Scandal: 2020 Shorenstein Journalism Award Recipient Tom Wright to Headline Award Panel Discussion

Tom Wright, winner of the 2020 Shorenstein Journalism Award, addresses these questions and more in his keynote address.

Wright is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Billion Dollar Whale, which unravels the story of one of the world's greatest financial scandals involving the multibillion-dollar looting of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. Wright’s work sparked investigations by law enforcement and regulators in multiple countries and outrage in Malaysia, where the ruling coalition, after 61 years in power, suffered a landslide defeat in a shocking 2018 election.

The keynote will be followed by a guided interview with the award winner led by Meredith Weiss, Professor and Chair of Political Science at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, SUNY.

The event will conclude with an audience Q&A session moderated by Donald K. Emmerson, Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Follow us on Twitter and use the hashtag #SJA20 to join the conversation.

Speakers:

Meredith Weiss is Professor and Chair of Political Science in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her research addresses social mobilization and civil society, the politics of identity and development, parties and elections, institutional reform and (anti)corruption, and subnational governance in Southeast Asia, with particular focus on Malaysia and Singapore. She has conducted fieldwork in those two countries as well as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste, and has held visiting fellowships or professorships in Australia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and the US.

Her books include Protest and Possibilities: Civil Society and Coalitions for Political Change in Malaysia (2006), Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow (2011), The Roots of Resilience: Political Machines and Grassroots Politics in Southeast Asia (2020), and eleven edited or co-edited volumes, most recently, The Political Logics of Anticorruption Efforts in Asia (2019) and Toward a New Malaysia? The 2018 Election and Its Aftermath (2020).  Her articles appear in Asian Studies Review, Asian Survey, Critical Asian Studies, Democratization, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of Democracy, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, and elsewhere.

Professor Weiss co-edits the Cambridge University Press Elements book series on Politics and Society in Southeast Asia and is an associate editor for Southeast Asia of the Association for Asian Studies’ (AAS) Journal of Asian Studies. She co-founded the Southeast Asian Politics related group of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and chairs the APSA’s Asia Workshops steering committee, is past chair of the AAS’s Southeast Asia Council, and is on the Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG) Council. She received her MA and PhD in Political Science from Yale University and a BA in Political Science, Policy Studies, and English from Rice University.

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The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of US $10,000, recognizes outstanding journalists who have spent their careers helping audiences around the world understand the complexities of the Asia-Pacific region, defined broadly to include Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Australasia. Award recipients are veteran journalists with a distinguished body of work. News organizations are also eligible for the award.

The award is sponsored and presented by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at Stanford University. It honors the legacy of the Center’s benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. It also symbolizes the Center’s commitment to journalism that persistently and courageously seeks accuracy, deep reporting, and nuanced coverage in an age when attacks are regularly launched on the independent news media, on fact-based truth, and on those who tell it.

An annual tradition, the Shorenstein Journalism Award alternates between recipients whose work has mostly been conveyed through American news media and recipients whose work has mostly been conveyed through news media in one or more parts of the Asia-Pacific region. Included among the latter candidates are journalists who are from the region and work there, and who, in addition to their recognized excellence, may have helped defend and encourage free media in one or more countries in the region.

Learn more at https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/events/shorenstein-journalism-award.

This event is being live-streamed on Zoom. Registration is required: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PTnI4nwGRLCERCHdP-cogw

On August 9, 2020, Belarus held a presidential election, which Alexander Lukashenko — Belarus' president of 26 years — claimed to have won with 80 percent of the vote. Exit polling, however, demonstrated that the opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, actually garnered wide popular support. Since the election, Belarusians have taken to the streets to demand a new election and/or that Lukashenko step down. But the regime appears intent on remaining in power and has used force against peaceful protesters. Workers in key factories have since gone on strike, and widespread protests continue. 

Join us for a special zoom seminar on Wednesday, August 19 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. PDT with Michael A. McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and former US Ambassador to Russia; Anna Grzymala-Busse, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center; and Francis Fukuyama, Senior Fellow and Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program at FSI in a session on the events in Belarus that will be moderated by Kathryn Stoner, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on August 26th, at 10 a.m. pacific time, for a look how governments around the world are pushing to ban strong encryption. The talk will feature speakers Sam Woolley, Riana Pfefferkorn and Mathew Baum as they explore the different policy issues being used by governments to justify their agendas. This event is open to the public, but registration is required.

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Matthew A. Baum (Ph.D., UC San Diego, 2000) is the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Department of Government. His research focuses on delineating the effects of domestic politics on international conflict and cooperation in general and American foreign policy in particular, as well as on the role of the mass media and public opinion in contemporary American politics. His research has appeared in over a dozen leading scholarly journals, such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. His books include Soft News Goes to War: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age (2003, Princeton University Press), War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War (2009, Princeton University Press, co-authored with Tim Groeling), and War and Democratic Constraint: How the Public Influences Foreign Policy (2015, Princeton University Press, co-authored with Phil Potter). He has also contributed op-ed articles to a variety of newspapers, magazines, and blog sites in the United States and abroad. Before coming to Harvard, Baum was an associate professor of political science and communication studies at UCLA. 

Riana Pfefferkorn is the Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Her work focuses on investigating and analyzing the U.S. government's policy and practices for forcing decryption and/or influencing crypto-related design of online platforms and services, devices, and products, both via technical means and through the courts and legislatures. Riana also researches the benefits and detriments of strong encryption on free expression, political engagement, economic development, and other public interests.

Dr. Samuel Woolley is a writer and researcher. He is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and in the School of Information (by courtesy) at the University of Texas at Austin.  He is the program director of propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement at UT. Woolley's work focuses on the ways in which emerging technology are leveraged for both democracy and control. He is the author of the book "The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth" (PublicAffairs), an exploration of how tools from artificial intelligence to virtual reality are being used in efforts to manipulate public opinion and discusses what society can do to respond. He is the co-editor (with Dr. Philip N. Howard), of the book "Computational Propaganda" (Oxford University Press), a series of country-based case studies on social media and digital information operations. 

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

 

About the Event: How does the widespread frustration that often accompanies democratic transitions shape the political cleavages underlying the party systems that emerge from them? Nine years after the 2010–11 uprising, Tunisia’s 2019 elections took place against a backdrop of widespread frustration with the party system that emerged during the ensuing transition. The elections presented opportunities to a diverse set of outsiders, many of whom brandished antiparty system messages, including unapologetic boosters of the former ruling party, a would-be plutocrat jailed on charges of corruption, and a broad set of antiparty independents. Drawing upon campaign materials and a nationally representative postelection survey, this presentation will describe the differences in the antiparty system messages and the ways that nostalgia underlies them. Through this analysis, I will consider a set of theoretical propositions arising from the literature on the dynamics of political cleavages in party systems in new democracies. 

About the Speaker: 

Nate Grubman is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. In the fall, he will receive his PhD in political science from Yale University. His dissertation uses the case of postuprising Tunisia to explore the question of why party systems in many new democracies furnish few economic policy choices, as well as the consequences of this absence of choice. More broadly, his research focuses on political nostalgia, ideology, corruption, and authoritarian legacies in new democracies. 

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event:

Can intergroup contact build social cohesion after war? I randomly assigned Iraqi Christians displaced by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to an all-Christian soccer team or to a team mixed with Muslims. The intervention improved behaviors toward Muslim peers: Christians with Muslim teammates were more likely to vote for a Muslim (not on their team) to receive a sportsmanship award, register for a mixed team next season, and train with Muslims 6 months after the intervention. The intervention did not substantially affect behaviors in other social contexts, such as patronizing a restaurant in Muslim-dominated Mosul or attending a mixed social event, nor did it yield consistent effects on intergroup attitudes. Although contact can build tolerant behaviors toward peers within an intervention, building broader social cohesion outside of it is more challenging.

 

About the Speaker:

Salma Mousa is an Egyptian scholar of migration, conflict, and social cohesion.  Prior to joining CDDRL, Salma held fellowships at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Stanford's Immigration Policy Lab, the Freeman Spogli Institute, the Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation, the McCoy Center for Ethics in Society, and the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.  Her research is forthcoming as a cover article in Science, and has been covered by The Economist, the BBC, and Der Spiegel, and featured on the front page of the Times of London and PBS NOVA.  Salma received a PhD in Political Science from Stanford in 2020.

**Please note all CDDRL events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

About the Event:

What are the costs of the Chinese regime's fixation on quelling dissent in the name of political order, or “stability”? Using novel datasets and a variety of methodologies, Welfare for Autocrats shows how China has reshaped its major social assistance program, Dibao, around this preoccupation, turning an effort to alleviate poverty into a tool of surveillance and repression. This distortion of Dibao damages perceptions of government competence and legitimacy and can trigger unrest among those denied benefits. Welfare for Autocrats traces how China's approach to enforcing order transformed at the turn of the 21st century and identifies the phenomenon of seepage whereby one policy—in this case, quelling dissent—alters the allocation of resources and goals of unrelated areas of government. These findings challenge the view that concessions and repression are distinct strategies in authoritarian regimes and departs from the assumption that all tools of repression were originally designed as such.

 

About the Speaker:

Jennifer Pan is an Assistant Professor of Communication, and an Assistant Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford University. Her research resides at the intersection political communication and authoritarian politics, showing how authoritarian governments try to control society, how the public responds, and when and why each is successful. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed publications such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, and Science.

Please join the Cyber Policy Center for a discussion of Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field and Prospects for Reform, a new book with chapters by scholars and faculty at the Cyber Policy Center. The book explores the emerging multi-disciplinary field of social media and democracy, by synthesizing what we know, identifying what we do not know and obstacles to future research, and charting a course for the future inquiry. Chapters by leading scholars cover major topics – from disinformation to hate speech to political advertising – and situate recent developments in the context of key policy questions. In addition, the book canvasses existing reform proposals in order to address widely perceived threats that social media poses to democracy. 

Please note that we will also have a YouTube livestream available for potential overflow or for anyone having issues connecting via Zoom: https://youtu.be/KXtMB-3DlHc

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AGENDA subject to change, with Q&A integrated throughout

• 9 a.m.: Introduction with Nathaniel Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Faculty Co-Director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and Joshua A. Tucker, Professor of Politics, affiliated Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, and affiliated Professor of Data Science at New York University
• 9:15 a.m.-10:30 a.m.
  • Misinformation, Disinformation, and Online Propaganda with Andrew M. Guess, Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University.
  • Online Hate Speech with Alexandra A. Siegel, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado Boulder
  • Bots and Computational Propaganda: Automation for Communication and Control with Samuel C. Woolley, Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin
  • Online Political Advertising in the United States with Travis N. Ridout, Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy in the School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at Washington State University and Co-Director of the Wesleyan Media Project
• 10:30 a.m.: 10 min break
• 10:40 a.m - 11:40 a.m.: 
  • Democratic Creative Destruction? The Effect of a Changing Media Landscape on Democracy with Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Professor of Political Communication at the University of Oxford

  • Misinformation and Its Correction with Adam J. Berinksy, Mitsui Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab

  • Comparative Media Regulation in the United States and Europe with Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University and Andrew Grotto, William J. Perry International Security Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center

• 11:40 a.m.: 10 min break
• 11:50 a.m - 12:30 p.m.: 
  • Facts and Where to Find Them: Empirical Research on Internet Platforms and Content Moderation with Daphne Keller, Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center
  • Democratic Transparency in the Platform Society, with Robert Gorwa, doctoral student in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford
• 12:30 p.m.: Closing and final Q&A with Nathaniel Persily and Joshua A. Tucker