Human Rights
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The Program on Human Rights Collaboratory Series is an interdisciplinary investigation of human rights in the humanities. It is funded under the Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies as the third in a sequence of pursuing peace and security, improving governance and advancing well-being.

Pheng Cheah is professor of rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Harvard University Press, 2006) and Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (Columbia University Press, 2003), and the co-editor of several book collections, including Derrida and the Time of the Political (Duke University Press, 2009), Grounds of Comparison: Around the Work of Benedict Anderson (Routledge, 2003) and Cosmopolitics - Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (University of Minnesota Press, 1998).  He is currently completing a  book on theories of the world and world literature from the postcolonial South in an era of global financialization.  Also in progress is a book on globalization and world cinema from the three Chinas, focusing on the films of Jia Zhangke, Tsai Ming-liang and Fruit Chan.

Building 500, Seminar Room
Stanford Archaeology Center

Pheng Cheah Professor of Rhetoric Speaker Berkeley
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The Liberation Technology Seminar Series is set for an exciting fall quarter. Held on Thursdays from 4.30 to 6 pm at Wallenberg Theater, this 1-unit seminar course is co-taught by CDDRL director Larry Diamond and Professor of Computer Science Terry Winograd. Hosted by the Program on Liberation Technology (LibTech) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, this seminar series features guest speakers who introduce students to cutting-edge theoretical and practical applications of new technologies.

Beginning on October 6, the seminar series will kick off with Andrew McLaughlin an expert on internet regulation who served in the Obama administration and worked with Google’s policy division. The quarter will continue featuring new research, innovative Lib Tech products and stimulating debate on the impact technology has on ‘liberation’.

Technology and revolutions debate

When protestors waged a revolution across the Arab world in January, they did not set out to make life interesting at Stanford. Whether they intended to or not they have achieved just that. We are now mired in the debate on the impact of technology in revolutions that has become more interesting since the Arab Spring. Ramesh Srinivasan Assistant Professor in Design and Media/Information Studies at UCLA, will speak to this debate based on his recent field work in Egypt on October 20. Evgeny Morozov a visiting scholar for the Program on Liberation Technology will revisit the debate at the end of the quarter based on his new work. For those who have heard him caution against the use of technology before the Arab Spring, it may be an interesting time to revisit Morozov's arguments on December 1.

Lib Tech products

At the core of this debate is the idea that technology is ever-evolving. Some are creating systems to give governments greater control, while others seek to protect the activists. New ideas and products are changing this landscape every day. To take an example, at a recent hack-a-thon in San Francisco there was a suggestion to encrypt sensitive messages in a Beyonce song. If that works out, you may be able to swing a leg and send a message at least until a technology comes up to trace your steps. We could not have a LibTech seminar series without taking a look at such innovations. 

Sam Gregory and Bryan Nunez from Witness will give a taste of this evolving drama through their work on the use of videos for human rights. They will offer ideas to harness its power without exposing the activists to its dangers on October 27. 

The Fall series will also feature Joshua Stern, executive director of Envaya, speaking to their ultra fast blogs that are making inroads among African NGOs on October 13. Paul Kim of Stanford University will discuss his experiments with delivering education through mobile phones. For those who enjoy the 'hands on experience,' word is that Paul Kim will bring his mobile phones for us to play with on November 3! On December 8, Jeff Klingner of Benetech will give a presentation on databases that help track human rights abuses.

D-School presentation

One of the season’s highlights is a panel of students who participated in the innovative class taught by Joshua Cohen and Terry Winograd at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school). On November 17, four teams will present their new ICT designs to mitigate water problems and other issues in the slums of Kibera, Kenya. For those who wish to get a taste of this much sought after course, this talk will prove invaluable.

For those interested in registering for the course it is available on Explore Courses as CS 546: Seminar on Liberation Technologies and POLISCI 337S. We encourage others to attend who are interested in the topics, speakers, or liberation technology in general.

To view the complete Liberation Technology Seminar Schedule, please click here.

 

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About the Program

Launched in 2005, the Draper Hills Summer Fellowship on Democracy and Development Program  is a three-week executive education program that is hosted annually at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The program brings together a diverse group of 25-30 mid-career practitioners in law, politics, government, private enterprise, civil society, and international development from transitioning countries. This training program provides a unique forum for emerging leaders to connect, exchange experiences, and receive academic training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work.

For three weeks during the summer, fellows participate in academic seminars that expose them to the theory and practice of democracy, development, and the rule of law. Delivered by leading Stanford faculty from the Stanford Law School, the Graduate School of Business, and the Departments of Economics and Political Science, these seminars allow emerging leaders to explore new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote democratic change in their home countries.

Guest speakers from private foundations, think tanks, government, and the justice system, provide a practitioners viewpoint on such pressing issues in the field. Past program speakers have included; Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy; Kavita Ramdas, former president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women; Stacy Donohue, director of investments at the Omidyar Network; Maria Rendon Labadan, Deputy Director of USAID; and Judge Pamela Rymer, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Fellows also visit Silicon Valley technology firms to explore how technology tools and social media platforms are being used to catalyze democratic practices on a global scale.

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

About the Faculty

The program's all-volunteer interdisciplinary faculty includes leading political scientists, lawyers, and economists, pioneering innovative research and analysis in the fields of democracy, development, and the rule of law. Faculty engage the fellows to test their theories, exchange ideas and learn first-hand about the challenges activists face in places where democracy is at threat. CDDRL Draper Hills Summer Fellows faculty includes; Larry Diamond, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper, Erik Jensen, Francis Fukuyama, Steve Krasner, Avner Greif, Helen Stacy, and Nicholas Hope.

About our Draper Hills Summer Fellows
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Our network of 186 alumni who graduated from the Draper Hills Summer Fellows program hail  from 57 developing democracies worldwide. Their professional backgrounds are as diverse as the problems they confront in their home countries, but the one common feature is their commitment to building sound structures of democracy and development. The regions of Eurasia, which includes the former Soviet Union and Central Asia, along with Africa constitute over half of our alumni network. Women represent 40% of the network and the program is always looking to identify strong female leaders working to advance change in their local communities.

Previous Draper Hills Summer Fellows have served as presidential advisors, senators, attorneys general, lawyers, journalists, civic activists, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, think-tank managers, and members of the international development community. The program is highly selective, receiving several hundred applications each year.

Please see the alumni section of the website for a complete listing of our program alumni.

Our Summer Fellows include:

  • The former Prime Minister of Mongolia
  • Political activists at the forefront of the 2011 Egyptian revolution
  • Advocate for the high court of Zambia
  • Deputy Minister of the Interior of Ukraine
  • Peace advocate and human rights leader in Kenya
  • Journalists advocating for a greater role for independent media
  • Leading democratic intellectual in China
  • Social entrepreneur using technology for public accountability in India

 

 Funding

Stanford will pay travel, accommodation, living expenses, and visa costs for the duration of the three-week program for a certain portion of applicants. Participants will be housed on the Stanford campus in residential housing during the program. Where possible, applicants are encouraged to supply some or all of their own funding from their current employers or international nongovernmental organizations.

 

 




 
 
 
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As part of PHR's work to organize an edited volume capturing some of the main issues related to human trafficking addressed during the Winter Series, on April 20, authors will present their papers to a panel of experts.

The authors and papers that we anticipate will be presented at the workshop are as follows:

Katherine Jolluck, Trafficking of women in Eastern Europe
Richard Roberts, The history of anti-Trafficking efforts
Helga Konrad and Nadejda Marques, The European perspective on international cooperation
Cindy Liou and Annie Fukushima, Shortcomings of the current anti-trafficking model
Helen Stacy, Contemporary research needs

In addition to the sessions in which these papers will be workshopped, there will be two additional presentations open to the public.

First, at 9:00AM, David Batstone, director and co-founder of the Not for Sale Campaign will speak about his work.

At 12:00 noon, Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D., CA) will speak about anti-trafficking efforts in California and in the United States Congress.

CISAC Conference Room

David Batstone Director and Co-founder Speaker Not For Sale Campaign
Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D., CA) Speaker
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The Program on Human Rights and the Center for Latin American Studies are pleased to host the Conference "Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America".

Indigenous peoples around the world have often been dispossessed of their land, leading to ongoing conflict over control and usage of land and resources. Indigenous peoples in Latin America are no exception; they are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable peoples in the region. Indigenous peoples in Latin America rank highest on underdevelopment indicators such as incarceration, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty and disease. They face discrimination in schools and are exploited in the workplace. Their sacred lands and artifacts are plundered from them. In many Latin American countries, indigenous peoples are not even permitted to study their own language.

The Stanford Spring conference “Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America,” brings scholars from all disciplines to examine the common trends, actors, challenges and changes among indigenous populations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Bechtel Conference Center

Alejandro Toledo President of Peru from 2001 to 2006 Keynote Speaker
Eliane Karp-Toledo Anthropologist, Economist and former First Lady of Peru (2001 to 2006) Keynote Speaker
Conferences
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Alison Brysk is the Mellichamp Chair in Global Governance, Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. She has authored or edited eight books on international human rights including the book From Human Trafficking to Human Rights. Professor Brysk has been a visiting scholar in Argentina, Ecuador, France, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Japan, and in 2007 held the Fulbright Distinguished Visiting Chair in Global Governance at Canada's Centre for International Governance Innovation.

 

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Dr. Mohammed Mattar is the executive director of the Protection Project. He has worked in over 50 countries to promote state compliance with international human rights standards and has advised governments on drafting and implementing anti-trafficking legislation. He participated in drafting the United Nations model law on trafficking in persons and he authored the Inter-Parliamentarian Handbook on the appropriate responses to trafficking in persons. Dr. Mattar currently teaches courses on international and comparative law at Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University (SAIS) and American University, and has authored numerous publications for law reviews and the United Nations on international human rights and Islamic law, trafficking in persons and reporting mechanisms.

Bechtel Conference Center

Alison Brysk Mellichamp Professor of Global Governance in the Global and International Studies Program Speaker UCSB
Dr. Mohammed Mattar Executive Director of the Protection Project Speaker Johns Hopkins University
Helen Stacy Director Host Program on Human Rights
Seminars
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Justin Dillon is a musician. His band, Tremolo, was featured on television shows, "The Mountain" and "North Shore," as well as a variety of MTV shows including Pimp My Ride, Newlyweds, Bands Reunited, and Dismissed. Dillon came across the issue of Human Trafficking while touring in Russia. He met scores of girls whose ambition to come to west was being preyed upon by traffickers. During his visit, his interpreter, a young girl, shared with him the many "opportunities" that were being offered to her to come to west. Dillon investigated the bogus job opportunities and became incensed at how easy it was to trick them. After sharing with them the dangers of these proposals, he vowed to do something about this issue once he returned home. Upon arriving back in the United States he looked around to find organizations that were addressing the problem and found that they were few, small, and under-funded, but passionate. He immediately started hosting benefit concerts for these organizations in order to support and spread their work. His desire to put on a benefit concert soon grew into a "rockumentary" that combined both critically acclaimed artists and social luminaries in the film, CALL+RESPONSE.


Bechtel Conference Center

Justin Dillon Director Speaker CALL+RESPONSE
Helen Stacy Director Host Program on Human Rights
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Jyoti Sanghera is the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Representative in Nepal. She has been with Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for close to a decade serving as the Adviser on trafficking in Geneva for several years and subsequently as the Senior Human Rights Adviser in Sri Lanka. 

Ms. Sanghera has also worked with UNICEF both in South Asia and New York and with UNDP’s regional office in New Delhi. She has worked on human rights protection issues in relation to women, migrants, and other discriminated groups in conflict and post conflict situations for the past three decades in various capacities, including with key NGOs in North America and Asia.

Bechtel Conference Center

Jyoti Sanghera Expert OHCHR on Trafficking Speaker
Helen Stacy Director Host Program on Human Rights
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Jean Enriquez is the Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking Women-Asia-Pacific. Ms. Enriquez is an experienced person and trainer for various international and national fora on trafficking and prostitution, sexuality, health and reproductive rights, women’s political participation, women and development. She has worked on women’s issues in many of the poor countries of South Asia and the Mekong Region, such as Bangladesh and Cambodia. She has counseled victims of incestuous rape; has rescued women from prostitution; and has had her team of social workers threatened by abusers.Ms. Enriquez is a recipient of  The Outstanding Women in the Nation's Service award in 2010, and was named as one of the 7 Modern-Day Heroes by Yahoo! Philippines in 2011.

Bechtel Conference Center

Jean Enriquez Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking of Women-Asia Pacific Speaker
Helen Stacy Director Moderator Program on Human Rights
Seminars
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