Human Rights
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José Zalaquett is a Chilean lawyer and legal scholar known for his work defending human rights in Chile during the regime of General Pinochet. During Chile's transition to democracy, he served on the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission where he investigated and prosecuted human rights violations committed by the military regime. He has served as President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and as the head of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International. He currently co-directs the Human Rights Centre at the University of Chile, serves on the board of the International Centre for Transitional Justice, and is a member of the International Commission of Jurists. He has been awarded UNESCO's Prize for Human Rights Education and Chile's National Prize for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Video recording of the event is available here.

Event co-sponsored by the Stanford International Law Society, Departments of English, History, and Comparative Literature; the Program in Modern Thought and Literature; the Center for African Studies; the Stanford Humanities Center; and the Center for South Asia

History, Memory, and Reconciliation futureofmemory.stanford.edu is sponsored by the Research Unit in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University.

Stanford Law School
Rm 280A

Jose Zalaquett Professor Speaker Universidad de Chile

Department of Political Science
Encina Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

(650) 724-4166 (650) 724-2996
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Professor of Political Science
Gildred Professor of Latin American Studies
William and Gretchen Kimball University Fellow
Senior Research Scholar (by courtesty) of FSI/CDDRL
terrykarl.png MA, PhD

Professor Karl has published widely on comparative politics and international relations, with special emphasis on the politics of oil-exporting countries, transitions to democracy, problems of inequality, the global politics of human rights, and the resolution of civil wars. Her works on oil, human rights and democracy include The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (University of California Press, 1998), honored as one of the two best books on Latin America by the Latin American Studies Association, the Bottom of the Barrel: Africa's Oil Boom and the Poor (2004 with Ian Gary), the forthcoming New and Old Oil Wars (with Mary Kaldor and Yahia Said), and the forthcoming Overcoming the Resource Curse (with Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs et al). She has also co-authored Limits of Competition (MIT Press, 1996), winner of the Twelve Stars Environmental Prize from the European Community. Karl has published extensively on comparative democratization, ending civil wars in Central America, and political economy. She has conducted field research throughout Latin America, West Africa and Eastern Europe. Her work has been translated into 15 languages.

Karl has a strong interest in U.S. foreign policy and has prepared expert testimony for the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, and the United Nations. She served as an advisor to chief U.N. peace negotiators in El Salvador and Guatemala and monitored elections for the United Nations. She accompanied numerous congressional delegations to Central America, lectured frequently before officials of the Department of State, Defense, and the Agency for International Development, and served as an adviser to the Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the United States Congress. Karl appears frequently in national and local media. Her most recent opinion piece was published in 25 countries.

Karl has been an expert witness in major human rights and war crimes trials in the United States that have set important legal precedents, most notably the first jury verdict in U.S. history against military commanders for murder and torture under the doctrine of command responsibility and the first jury verdict in U.S. history finding commanders responsible for "crimes against humanity" under the doctrine of command responsibility. In January 2006, her testimony formed the basis for a landmark victory for human rights on the statute of limitations issue. Her testimonies regarding political asylum have been presented to the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Circuit courts. She has written over 250 affidavits for political asylum, and she has prepared testimony for the U.S. Attorney General on the extension of temporary protected status for Salvadorans in the United States and the conditions of unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody. As a result of her human rights work, she received the Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa from the University of San Francisco in 2005.

Professor Karl has been recognized for "exceptional teaching throughout her career," resulting in her appointment as the William R. and Gretchen Kimball University Fellowship. She has also won the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching (1989), the Allan V. Cox Medal for Faculty Excellence Fostering Undergraduate Research (1994), and the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Graduate and Undergraduate Teaching (1997), the University's highest academic prize. Karl served as director of Stanford's Center for Latin American Studies from 1990-2001, was praised by the president of Stanford for elevating the Center for Latin American Studies to "unprecedented levels of intelligent, dynamic, cross-disciplinary activity and public service in literature, arts, social sciences, and professions." In 1997 she was awarded the Rio Branco Prize by the President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in recognition for her service in fostering academic relations between the United States and Latin America.

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Terry L. Karl Professor, Political Science, Stanford Commentator
James Campbell Professor, History, Stanford Commentator
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Peter M. Beck
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North Korea is usually described as the “most isolated country on earth,” its people effectively cut off from the outside world. My research tells a different story—that perhaps one million North Koreans are secretly listening to foreign radio broadcasts. The number of listeners is believed to be growing, which is all the more amazing when one considers that North Korean authorities only distribute radios with fixed dials, assiduously jam foreign broadcasts, and send citizens caught listening to foreign radio to the country’s notorious gulags for as long as ten years.

Over a dozen radio stations from the United States, South Korea, and Japan currently broadcast to North Korea. Voice of America (VOA), one of the most popular stations, has been broadcasting to the North since 1942, while the equally popular Radio Free Asia (RFA) began its Korean broadcasts soon after being created by Congress in 1997. VOA focuses on news of the United States and the world, while RFA concentrates on the two Koreas. RFA also carries commentaries by two Korean speakers who grew up in the former Soviet Union and Romania. RFA serves as a substitute for the lack of a “free” station in North Korea, but unlike a typical “surrogate station”—which would be staffed largely by émigrés—RFA only employs one North Korean defector.

South Korea’s “Global Korean Network” has been declining in popularity since it ceased to focus on North Korea and adopted a decidedly soft approach after the election of Kim Dae-jung as president in 1997. However, three stations run by North Korean defectors have sprouted up over the past few years, led by Free North Korea Radio (FRNK). These stations employ stringers in North Korea who can communicate by cell phone or smuggle out interviews through China. As a result, information is flowing in and out of the North more rapidly than ever. For example, when major economic reforms were undertaken in 2002, it was months before the rest of the world knew. In contrast, when the regime launched a disastrous currency reform on November 30, 2009, FNKR filed a report within hours.

How do we know that North Koreans are actually listening to foreign broadcasts? First, on dozens of occasions, authorities in Pyongyang have used their own media to attack foreign broadcasters. The North reserves the insult “reptile” exclusively to describe foreign broadcasters. In late March 2010, the regime likened defector broadcasters to “human trash.” Ironically, this diatribe also contained the first official mention of the currency revaluation, so broadcasters have clearly struck a nerve. If they were in fact irrelevant, the regime would ignore them instead of lavishing them with free publicity.

Broadcasters to North Korea frequently receive heartbreaking messages from North Koreans in China, thanking them for their efforts. One listener described RFA as “our one ray of hope.” More importantly, over the past several years, thousands of North Korean defectors, refugees, and visitors to China have been interviewed about their listening habits. An unpublished 2009 survey of North Koreans in China found that over 20 percent had listened to the banned broadcasts, and almost all of them had shared the information with family members and friends. Several other surveys confirm these findings. While we cannot generalize the listening habits of a self-selected group to the general population, it is not unreasonable to conclude that there are more than a million surreptitious listeners. The North Korean regime is not only losing its monopoly on the control of information; defectors also cite foreign radio listening as one of the leading motivations to defect.

Despite valiant efforts and growing impact, much more could be done to improve broadcasting to North Korea. VOA and RFA only broadcast five hours a day, and the defector stations limp along with shoestring budgets, due to a pervasive indifference within South Korea.

President Obama’s human rights envoy for North Korea, Robert King, has pledged to expand funding for Korean broadcasting. For its part, Pyongyang claims that foreign broadcasts are part of the Obama administration’s “hostile policy” toward the North. Only time will tell if these efforts will lead to change we can believe in—both in Washington and Pyongyang.

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Shorenstein APARC Dispatches are regular bulletins designed exclusively for our friends and supporters. Written by center faculty and scholars, Shorenstein APARC Dispatches deliver timely, succinct analysis on current events and trends in Asia, often discussing their potential implications for business.

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Access to life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical treatments is a nagging problem for millions of Latin Americans. In several countries of the region, judicial actions for the protection of basic rights have proved to be instrumental for gaining access to such goods. Brazil and Colombia are, allegedly, the two Latin American countries with the largest number of right to health cases. Everaldo Lamprea suggests that dismantling right to health litigation in order to reduce public costs--as was recently proposed by the Colombian government-- would be a catastrophic event for many Colombians, trapped in a heavily privatized and deregulated health system where many life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical treatments are out of the reach of most pockets. Lamprea will suggest that a more reasonable governmental reaction should include an analysis of the role played in the current health-sector crisis by global actors such as International Financial Institutions and BigPharma companies 

Sponsored by the Program on Human Rights and the Program on Global Justice.

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Conference Room

Everaldo Lamprea JSD candidate, Stanford Law School Speaker
Adam Rosenblatt Phd candidate, Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University Commentator
Workshops
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Join Scholars at Risk at Stanford University on Wednesday, April 28 at 12:00 PM for a behind the scenes look at struggles for freedom of speech around the world and the courageous individuals who challenge attempts to control what people think. The goal of this event is to increase awareness and interest in institutionalizing a Scholars at Risk program at Stanford and to encourage faculty and administration to begin thinking about hosting at-risk scholars.This event is cosponsored by the Scholars at Risk Network, the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES), and the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies.

Robert Quinn is the founding Executive Director of the Scholars at Risk Network, a collaboration of more than 220 universities and colleges in 29 countries dedicated to protecting threatened intellectuals and promoting respect for freedom of inquiry, expression and university values. 

The Scholars at Risk Network seeks to bridge the gap between the human rights and higher education communities, building local, regional and global capacity to defend the intellectual space. The Network provides direct assistance to gravely threatened intellectuals, and conducts education and advocacy to target root causes of intellectual repression and to promote systemic change.

Mr. Quinn currently serves on the Steering Committee of the Network for Education and Academic Rights (NEAR), based in London, UK; the governing Council of the Magna Charta Observatory, based in Bologna, Italy; and is a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows Program in Washington, DC.  He previously served as a member of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; a member of the Human Rights Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; and an adjunct professor of law at Fordham Law School.  He received his A.B. cum laude from Princeton in 1988, and his J.D. cum laude from Fordham in 1994. 

Fatemeh Haghighatjoo is an expert on Iran's internal affairs and a prominent advocate of political reform, human rights and women's rights. She was a member of the Iranian Parliament from 2000-2004 and chaired the Student Movement Caucus. She was a deputy of the Mosharekat Caucus in the 6th Parliament as well as a member of the political bureau of the Mosharekat party in Iran.  Dr. Haghighatjoo was one of the most courageous in standing up publicly to the hard-line Iranian leadership. She resigned in 2004 after a crackdown on reformers, and left Iran in 2005. More recently, Dr. Haghighatjoo has held several academic posts in the United States: Assistant Professor In-Residence at the University of Connecticut, Fellow in the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Haghighatjoo earned her Ph.D. in Counseling from Tarbiat Moalem University, served as a Professor at the National University of Iran, and authored Search for Truth (2002). She has served as Vice President of the Psychology and Counseling Organization in Iran and has been honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Dr. Haghighatjoo has been extensively interviewed and quoted in the U.S. and international media on Iran's domestic politics.

Mohsen Sazegara is an Iranian dissident, writer and political activist. His PhD thesis at the University of London, Royal Holloway focused on religious intellectuals in Iran. He has been a visiting professor at several universities in Iran, and has held visiting scholar positions at Yale University and Harvard University. A founding member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, he served as political deputy in the prime minister's office and held several other political offices. He became disillusioned with the revolutionary government and left it in 1989. He later served as publisher of several reformist newspapers closed by regime hardliners and was also managing director of Iran's press cooperative company. Dr. Sazegara was recently appointed as the second Visiting Fellow in Human Freedom at the George W. Bush Institute at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the president of Research Institute on Contemporary Iran (RICI).

Natalia Koulinka joins CREEES as a Visiting Scholar from January - December 2010. She is the recipient of a Scholar Rescue Fund fellowship grant from the Institute of International Education, and supported by more than a dozen Centers, Departments, and Programs in the School of Humanities and Sciences and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford.

Koulinka was born and raised in Oshmiany in the Republic of Belarus. She graduated from the Belarusian State University in Minsk with both undergraduate and graduate degrees. From 1992-1996, she helped create and run the "Women's Newspaper," the only independent women's paper in Belarus which soon became popular in Russia too. As the paper's editor-in-chief, she focused on women in business and politics. Since 2006, she has been the news editor for the radio station Unistar in Minsk. In addition to her work as a journalist, Koulinka was an associate professor at Belarusian State University 2001-08. She is also the co-editor of the book, Krasnim po Belomy ("Red on White"), which is a collection of texts by murdered Belarus journalist, Veronika Cherkasova. In 2008-09, Koulinka was the Lyle and Corinne Nelson International Fellow, John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists at Stanford University. During her fellowship year at CREEES she will work on the research project topic "A Social History of the Soviet School of Journalism."

Oksenberg Conference Room

Fatemeh Haghighatjoo Speaker
Mohsen Sazegara Speaker
Natalia Koulinka Speaker
Robert Quinn Moderator

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab WorldWill China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Larry Diamond Director Moderator CDDRL
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Harri Englund is the Churchill Fellow and reader in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge. He is the author most recently of Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) in which he investigates how ideas of freedom and human rights have impeded struggles against poverty and injustice in Africa's emerging democracies.

Event co-sponsored by the Departments of English, History, and Comparative Literature;
the Program in Modern Thought and Literature; the Center for African Studies;
the Stanford Humanities Center; and the Center for South Asia

History, Memory, and Reconciliation is sponsored by the Research Unit in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University.

futureofmemory.stanford.edu

Terrace Room (426),
Margaret Jacks Hall (Building 460)

Harri Englund University of Cambridge Speaker
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Although Europe has been considered a leading example for regional human rights mechanisms, these mechanisms are far from simple, due to the complexity of the European legal system and the actors involved. To understand this, a brief historical overview of the European system is necessary.

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The Liberation Technology Seminar Series will take a break during Spring Quarter 2010 in order to present a class taught by co-sponsors of the program, Joshua Cohen, Professor of Political Science, Philosophy and Law and Terry Winograd, Professor of Computer Science. This class will have small project teams work with computer scientists from the University of Nairobi to design new technologies for promoting development and democracy. Students conduct observations to identify needs, generate concepts, create prototypes, and test their appropriateness. Some projects may continue past the quarter towards full-scale implementation. It will be taught through the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.

The Liberation Technology Seminar Series will resume in Fall 2010 and hopes to present some of the projects from the class as well as a variety of other speakers on the role of information and communication technology in advancing freedom, human rights, and economic and social development.  A conference is also being planned for the early Fall so please keep an eye on our website.

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On December 10, 1991, East Palo Alto resident Rick Walker was convicted of a murder he did not commit. Linked to the crime by false testimony and questionable legal tactics, Walker would spend the next 12 years of his life in some of California's most dangerous prisons. Once exonerated, he would face yet another barrier to justice: the California State Legislature. Entitled to one hundred dollars for every day spent falsely imprisoned, Walker's attempts to receive his just due became caught in the partisan battle over the 2003
California budget.

$100 a Day examines this story of gross injustice, political partisanship, and the heroic struggle to prove Walker's innocence and help him rebuild his life. Associate Dean Larry Marshall, who co-founded and served as legal director of the world-renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions, where he represented many wrongly convicted inmates, will introduce the documentary.  After the screening, Professor Juliet Brodie, Director of the Stanford Community Law Clinic, will moderate a panel featuring:

  • Rick Walker
  • State Senator Joe Simitian
  • filmmaker Gwen Essegian

Co-sponsored by the Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law; Haas Center for Public Service; Center on Philanthropy and Civic Society; Stanford Law School Criminal Law Society; American Constitution Society; Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; Stanford in Government; and the Program on Human Rights, CDDRL.

Stanford Law School
Room 280B

Larry Marshall Associate Dean Commentator Stanford Law School
Juliet Brody Director Commentator Stanford Community Law Clinic
Rick Walker Panelist
Joe Simitian California State Senator Panelist
Gwen Esseglan Filmmaker Panelist
Conferences
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This 2009-10 interdisciplinary research workshop examines the trajectory of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa by means of regional and international comparisons. Africa is the third, and most recent, region to establish a regional human rights court, the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights (ACPHR). At this critical juncture in African human rights, there is an urgent need for deeper understandings and applications of the law of human rights.

This workshop will be of interest and benefit to faculty and graduate students conducting research in the following areas: African studies; human rights; law; anthropology; cultural studies; history; political science and international relations; philosophy; and sociology.

The workshop, coordinated by Helen Stacy (Law School, FSI), met once during Fall quarter and will meet three times during the Winter and Spring quarters of the 2009-2010 academic year.

Our first meeting of Spring quarter features Professor Harri Englund, Department of Social Anthropology at University of Cambridge and author of many articles and books including Prisoners of Freedom: Human rights and the African Poor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

Encina West
Rm. 208

Helen Stacy Senior Fellow, CDDRL, Senior Lecturer, Stanford Law School Moderator
Harri Englund Department of Social Anthropology at University of Cambridge Speaker
Workshops
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