Stanford University

International Development

FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.

They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.

FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.

FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.

Cyberwar - Overhyped or Over Here?

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Stewart Baker, a former policymaker at both the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security will talk about the latest concern in official Washington.  Putting cyberweapons in historical context, he'll describe how the United States and other countries are responding to the strategic challenge of cyberwar - and what it might mean for the future of the Internet.

Speaker Biography:

Stewart Baker is a partner in the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson.  He is the author of Skating on Stilts – Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism, a book on the security challenges posed by technology and the use of data in preventing terrorism.

From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Stemming from his role at DHS, Mr. Baker has a deep background in the international implications of US security policy- such as disputes over US collection of data from international businesses.

Mr. Baker’s practice covers national security, electronic surveillance, law enforcement, export control, encryption, and related technology issues.

From 1992 to 1994, Mr. Baker was General Counsel of the National Security Agency, where he led NSA and interagency efforts to reform commercial encryption and computer security law and policy. 


Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Stewart Baker Partner, Steptoe & Johnson, LLP; Former Assistant Secretary for Policy, Department of Homeland Security Speaker
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Jorge Olarte

Encina Hall

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Undergraduate Intern
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Jorge Olarte is a senior at Stanford University majoring in Political
Science and pursuing the Research Honors Track Program. At Stanford he
has been involved with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International
Studies through the Rural Education Action Program (REAP) and CDDRL’s
Program on Poverty and Governance. His areas of interest include
criminal violence, authoritarian regimes, democratization, governance,
and state building. He is currently studying the patterns of violence
in Mexico throughout the democratization period and the effects of
government interventions on drug trafficking networks. Other research
projects have involved fieldwork in China and Guatemala. During 2010
he studied at Peking University through Stanford’s Bing Overseas
Studies Program.

In 2012, he co-founded the Forum for Cooperation Understanding and
Solidarity (FoCUS), a student-run organization headquartered at
Stanford University and at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de
México (ITAM). Through this partnership, students from both
universities are attempting to develop and strengthen a network of
young leaders committed to improving the academic, cultural and
diplomatic exchange between the United States and Mexico.

Gregory and Nunez discuss the use of video cameras in human rights work

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Sam Gregory, program director at WITNESS
 and Bryan Nunez, technology manager at Witness, delivered the Oct. 27 Liberation Technology seminar entitled, “Cameras Everywhere: Meeting the Challenges at the intersection of Human Rights, Video and Technology.” The speakers discussed WITNESS’ agenda to harness the power of video cameras in bringing out human rights issues into public attention. The speakers shared their story of working with human rights activists on using videos to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change.

Gregory and Nunez discussed the strategic use of video in human rights work and their engagement with activists around the world on this subject. They suggested that there are various protagonists that play an important role as witnesses: from those who are unexpected to those who are more purposeful. In order to understand the impact of videos, it is important to go beyond those who make the videos and also consider the role of aggregators and curators, as they provide a valuable role in the process of ‘witnessing’.

They discussed different ways of capturing information through videos while taking into account security and ethical issues, and the challenges in making videos more usable especially when their production is decentralized. Other challenges they identified include: too much that is competing for our attention; the problem of privacy and of verification. Notwithstanding the challenges, they have had success over the years, and they argued, “We’ve witnessed brave people of all ages coming together to effect a profound change in their country.”

Some specific recommendations were made, including: supporting curation of human rights videos, facilitating user education and understanding of human rights issues. They suggested that it is important to have autonomous sites and options for people for hosting content. In particular, it is essential to look at resources that are not controlled by governments.

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Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program recruitment opens

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The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program is recruiting rising leaders from around the world to join the 2012 program scheduled for July 22-August 10 at Stanford University. Entering its eighth year, the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program is run by the faculty and staff at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The deadline to apply is December 12, 2011.

The program is funded by generous support from Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills.

A life changing experience I will never forget. I leave a much more informed and networked civil society leader. -Titus Gwemende, Zimbabwe (Class of 2011)

Each year, the program brings together a group of 25 to 30 mid-career practitioners in law, politics, government, private enterprise, civil society, and development from emerging and aspiring democracies. The three-week program provides a unique forum for emerging leaders to connect, exchange experiences, and receive academic training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work. Academic sessions are taught by an interdisciplinary team of leading Stanford faculty who are joined by an all-star roster of outside guest speakers.

Fellows emerge from the training program better equipped with new techniques and approaches to build democracy and economic development in their home countries. The 2012 class of Draper Hills Summer Fellows will join a network of 186 alumni from 57 developing democracies worldwide.

Previous Summer Fellows have served as presidential advisors, senators, lawyers, journalists, civic activists, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, and development practitioners, among others. Strong candidates should have substantial practical experience and play important emerging roles in their country's economic and social development. The program seeks applicants from countries where democracy and development are not firmly established, in the regions of Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Arab world. Successful applicants will have academic credentials necessary to participate and contribute to advanced academic sessions and a working knowledge of English.

The program is highly selective, receiving several hundred applications each year. To learn more about the program and to apply, please visit: http://draperhills.stanford.edu/. Applicants are encouraged to apply as early as possible, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

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David Relman

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E209
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor
Professor of Medicine
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
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David A. Relman, M.D., is the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine, and of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University, and Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California. He is also Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford, and served as science co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford from 2013-2017. He is currently director of a new Biosecurity Initiative at FSI.

Relman was an early pioneer in the modern study of the human indigenous microbiota. Most recently, his work has focused on human microbial community assembly, and community stability and resilience in the face of disturbance. Ecological theory and predictions are tested in clinical studies with multiple approaches for characterizing the human microbiome. Previous work included the development of molecular methods for identifying novel microbial pathogens, and the subsequent identification of several historically important microbial disease agents. One of his papers was selected as “one of the 50 most important publications of the past century” by the American Society for Microbiology.

Dr. Relman received an S.B. (Biology) from MIT, M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and joined the faculty at Stanford in 1994. He served as vice-chair of the NAS Committee that reviewed the science performed as part of the FBI investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters, as a member of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity, and as President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He is currently a member of the Intelligence Community Studies Board and the Committee on Science, Technology and the Law, both at the National Academies of Science. He has received an NIH Pioneer Award, an NIH Transformative Research Award, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2011.

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DoD Efforts to Counter WMD

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After the Cold War, much of the U.S. countering-WMD efforts focused on dismantling the weapons and WMD production systems of the Soviet Union. While those efforts, along with passive defense and other programs, are still under way, more attention is being paid to preventing future threats from arising. Ensuring that terrorists are not able to acquire nuclear or biological materials for use in a weapon has become one of the highest U.S. national security priorities. Assistant Secretary Andrew Weber will discuss U.S. countering-WMD efforts, how they have changed, and what the Department of Defense is doing to address the threats that face us today. 

Speaker biography:

Andrew Weber is the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics for matters concerning nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs. He is the Staff Director of the Nuclear Weapons Council, which manages the nuclear weapons stockpile, and he oversees the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.

Prior to his appointment by President Obama, he served for 13 years as an Adviser for Threat Reduction Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He played a key role in Nunn-Lugar operations to remove weapons grade uranium from Kazakhstan and Georgia, and nuclear capable MiG-29 aircraft from Moldova. Weber also developed and oversaw the Department of Defense Biological Threat Reduction Program. He has a Master of Science in Foreign Service degree from Georgetown and is a graduate of Cornell University.


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CISAC Conference Room

Andrew Weber Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs Speaker
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Energy Working Group: Supply Function Equilibrium and its Policy Implications for Wholesale Electricity Markets

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PESD visiting scholar Pär Holmberg from the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm led this Energy Working Group talk.

Holmberg discussed (1) the multi-unit auction used in wholesale electricity markets where producers sell their electricity to retailers and large consumers, (2) a theoretical model of producers' strategic bidding behavior and (3) how bids are influenced by contracts and the market design.

The presentation was based on his paper "The Supply Function Equilibrium and its Policy Implications for Wholesale Electricity Markets", which was co-authored with David Newbery (University of Cambridge, UK).

 

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Pär Holmberg is an Associate Professor in Economics and has a PhD in Electric Power Engineering. He is working at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm, and is an associate of the Electricity Policy Research Group, University of Cambridge. Pär's research focuses on wholesale electricity markets, especially strategic bidding behavior in electricity auctions.

Encina Hall East

Pär Holmberg Speaker Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm
Seminars

Srinivasan speaks to using social media to create connections

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RRamesh Srinivasan, assistant professor at UCLA in design and media/information studies, delivered the Oct. 20 Liberation Technology seminar. The talk was entitled, “Layers of Networks: How the Street, Institutions, and Mediascape Converge in Egypt.” This wide ranging talk takes us through his fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan, India and other countries and culminates with his recent fieldwork in Egypt on the use of social media in the revolution. Through these journeys he argues that technology has the potential to act as a ‘bridge’ that could connect peoples across cultures.

Ramesh discusses his field experiments in India where he provided people in his fieldwork villages with video cameras to document any issue that was valuable to them, and discovered that the process of recording and watching the videos helped in developing broad social priorities. Similarly during his work in Kyrgyzstan and in Egypt he observed that a small sphere of bloggers used social media to create strong ties among themselves, and given the media ecology with the social media having connections with other media, they ended up having a broader reach among the international community. In essence, they served as bridges communicating across boundaries.

The key themes of the talk revolved around the concepts of bridges, interfaces and networks. Ramesh argued that he has sought to understand the role that technology could play in fostering meaningful dialogue among peoples who have different vocabularies and understandings with which they approach the world i.e. “What bridges will bring people together in terms of multi-cultural interaction?” Ramesh argued that technologies are culturally constructed, and culturally created and that technologies can serve as bridges if diverse cultural values or ontologies are considered in their design. Technologies can then act as bridges to connect people across networks.

The talk takes us through the complexities of social media serving as a bridge and discusses preliminary ideas for designing an online architecture that could provide a space for multiple voices and serve as a bridge across different cultures.

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Stern discusses strengthening grassroots in Africa providing the “last mile”

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In the October 13 seminar entitled, "The Last Mile: Grassroots Development and Technology in Africa” Joshua Stern, executive director of Envaya, and Jesse Young, CTO of Envaya, shared their insights into how software could be used to strengthen grassroots development in Africa. Envaya’s mission is to build and deploy a software platform that provides “the last mile” of connection between grassroots activists and the larger development sector. 

Stern suggested that one of the biggest challenges in the development space currently was the lack of coordination between the community-based organizations, the NGOs and the foundations. He further argued that a system is only as strong as its weakest links. He therefore suggests that it is important to strengthen the weakest links. In the case of Tanzania and many other developing countries, Stern argued that the weakest link was in the connection between the community-based organizations and the international NGOs that often provided critical financial support. The community-based organizations are essential to focus on because they are embedded within the communities they are working in and have institutional memory, and they stay with the communities unlike international organizations and volunteers that come and go.

In Africa, Stern argued, there is a pretty robust grassroots civil society but often people are working on very similar work and do not know one another. Furthermore, organizations have trouble navigating secure funding. There is therefore a huge potential for collaboration. In particular, there is room for greater leveraging technology. Stern argued, “Despite leaps and bounds in hardware infrastructure, software is still tailored to the developed world.” Community organizations have therefore not been able to take advantage of the IT revolution. Envaya fills this gap by providing software that is optimized to work with infrastructure in these localities, thus enabling these organizations to make use of the connectivity that is now becoming available to them.

Josh and Jesse inspired us with the vision of Envaya to provide a technology platform for civil society organizations in developing countries so that communication and collaboration can take place beyond the occasional conference.  Young discussed the technical details Envaya’s innovation that enabled the rapid spread of their platform among the grassroots organizations in Tanzania and elsewhere.

 

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