Stanford University

Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

New Media, Open Source Analysis & Policy Entrepreneurship

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New technologies are creating unprecedented opportunities for "open source" analysis on issues relating to arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. The widespread availability of commercial satellite images and modeling software allows individuals to perform analyses that previously only intelligence agencies might. Moreover, the wealth of information available online can offer unprecedented insight into foreign nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs. All of this information can be analyzed by virtual communities that exist only online, with results disseminated through new media platforms like blogs and social networking sites. These communities are increasingly influencing debates within and between governments. This presentation takes an irreverent look at this strange and new circumstance.

Speaker bio:

Jeffrey Lewis is the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Dr. Lewis is the author of Minimum Means of Reprisal: China's Search for Security in the Nuclear Age (MIT Press, 2007) and publishes ArmsControlWonk.com, the leading blog on disarmament, arms control and nonproliferation. Before coming to CNS, he was the Director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation.

Prior to that, Dr. Lewis was Executive Director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Executive Director of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a desk officer in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. He is also a Research Scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy (CISSM).


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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Jeffrey Lewis Director, East Asia Nonproliferation Program, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and publisher of armscontrolwonk.com Speaker
Seminars

The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program on Democracy and Development is now accepting applications for the Class of 2014

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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

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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Brenna Powell

Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Visiting Scholar, 2011-12
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Brenna Marea Powell received her PhD in Government and Social Policy from Harvard in 2011. She is interested in comparative racial and ethnic politics, conflict and inequality. Her research includes security and policing in divided societies, as well as racial politics in Brazil and the United States. She has been a graduate fellow at Harvard's Wiener Center for Inequality and Social Policy, and Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Prior to her graduate study, she spent five years working with the Stanford
Center on International Conflict and Negotiation on grassroots dialogue and community-based mediation programs in Northern Ireland. Brenna speaks Portuguese and received her BA from Stanford in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

At CDDRL, Brenna is working with the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security supported by the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA. She is also working on a book project about post-conflict policing in Northern Ireland.

Andrea Abel

Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Visiting Scholar, 2011-12
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Andrea received her PhD from the Department of Political Science at Stanford in 2011, writing a dissertation in civil society and interest groups in regime transitions, with a focus on the communist transition in East and Central Europe.

Prior to this, she completed a research Master’s degree in Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Sydney, as well as Bachelor’s degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Commerce.

Andrea is proficient in several languages including Hungarian, German, Japanese and Russian, and holds a private pilot’s license with the Federal Aviation Authority in Australia.

Whilst at CDDRL, Andrea will be working for the Commission on Global Election Integrity.

Henrik Larsen

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Visiting Researcher
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Henrik Boesen Lindbo Larsen is a CDDRL visiting researcher 2011-12, while researching on his PhD project titled NATO Democracy Promotion: the Geopolitical Effects of Declining Hegemonic Power. He expects to obtain his PhD from the University of Southern Denmark and the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in 2013.

Henrik Larsen’s PhD project views democracy promotion as a policy resulting from power transitions as mediated through the predominant narratives of great powers. It distinguishes between two main types of democracy promotion, the ability to attract (enlargement, partnerships) and the ability to impose (out-of-area missions, state-building). NATO’s external policies are increasingly pursued with a lower intensity and/or with a stronger geographical demarcation.

Prior to his PhD studies, Henrik Larsen held temporary positions for the UNHCR in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congoand with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Denmark working with Russia & the Eastern neighborhood. He holds an MSc in political science from the University of Aarhus complemented with studies at the University of Montreal, Sciences Po Paris and the University of Geneva. He has been a research intern at École Militaire in Paris and he is member of the Danish roster for election observation missions for the OSCE and the EU.

 

Publications

  • "Libya: Beyond Regime Change”, DIIS Policy Brief, October 2011.
  • "Cooperative Security: Waning Influence in the Eastern Neighbourhood" in Rynning, S. & Ringsmose, J. (eds.), NATO’s New Strategic Concept: A Comprehensive Assessment, DIIS Report 2011: 02.
  • "The Russo-Georgian War and Beyond: towards a European Great Power Concert", DIIS Working Paper 2009: 32 (a revised version currently under peer review). 
  • "Le Danemark dans la politique européenne de sécurité et de défense: dérogation, autonomie et influence" (Denmarkin the European Security and Defense Policy: Exemption, Autonomy and Influence) (2008), Revue Stratégique vol. 91-92.

The Future of a Demographic Overachiever: Long-Term Implications of the Demographic Transition in China

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China's pace of demographic transition -- both mortality and fertility decline -- have been unparalleled in human populations of significant size. With China's fertility now well below replacement level, what lies ahead for this demographic overachiever? Dr. Wang will discuss the role of the Chinese state in the demographic transition, pointing out how focusing on the role of government overlooks the socioeconomic engines of China's transition and contributes to under-appreciation of the long-term implications of China's demographic transition.

Wang Feng is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy. Prior to his current position, Wang Feng taught at the University of California, Irvine (from where he is on leave currently). Professor Wang is an expert on China’s social and demographic change. His recent work on social inequality in China includes Boundaries and Categories, Rising Inequality in Post-Socialist Urban China (Stanford University Press, 2008), Creating Wealth and Poverty in Post-Socialist China (co-edited with Deborah Davis, Stanford University Press, 2009), and his work on demographic change in China includes “The Demographic Factor in China’s Transitions” (with Andrew Mason, included in Loren Brant and Thomas Rawski, eds., China’s Great Economic Transformations. Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Philippines Conference Room

Wang Feng Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy Speaker
Seminars

Barbara Honigmann International Conference

International Conference co-sponsored by Rosenzweig-Minerva Research Center at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, the Goethe-Institut in Jerusalem, and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Jerusalem.

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Rosenzweig - Minerva Research Center
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Barbara Honigmann Keynote Speaker Author and Artist
Michael Mertes Director Speaker the Israel Office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung
Reuven Amitai Dean of the Humanities Speaker The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yfaat Weiss Director of the Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center Speaker The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Anja Siegemund Speaker Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem
Bettina Bannasch Speaker University of Augsburg
Thomas Nolden Panelist Wellesley College
Carola Hilfrich Moderator The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Lilla Balint Panelist Stanford University
Susanne Zepp Panelist Free University Berlin / Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture, Leipzig

Amir Eshel

Dept of German Studies
Building 260, Room 204
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2030

(650) 723-0413 (650) 725-8421
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Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies
Professor of Comparative Literature
Professor of German Studies
Eshel.jpg MA, PhD

Amir Eshel is Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies. He is Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature and as of 2019 Director of Comparative Literature and its graduate program. His Stanford affiliations include The Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Modern Thought & Literature, and The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the faculty director of Stanford’s research group on The Contemporary and of the Poetic Media Lab at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). His research focuses on contemporary literature and the arts as they touch on philosophy, specifically on memory, history, political thought, and ethics.

Amir Eshel is the author of Poetic Thinking Today (Stanford University Press, 2019); German translation at Suhrkamp Verlag, 2020). Previous books include Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past (The University of Chicago Press in 2013). The German version of the book, Zukünftigkeit: Die zeitgenössische Literatur und die Vergangenheit, appeared in 2012 with Suhrkamp Verlag. Together with Rachel Seelig, he co-edited The German-Hebrew Dialogue: Studies of Encounter and Exchange (2018). In 2014, he co-edited with Ulrich Baer a book of essays on Hannah Arendt, Hannah Arendt: zwischen den Disziplinen; and also co-edited a book of essays on Barbara Honigmann with Yfaat Weiss, Kurz hinter der Wahrheit und dicht neben der Lüge (2013).

Earlier scholarship includes the books Zeit der Zäsur: Jüdische Lyriker im Angesicht der Shoah (1999), and Das Ungesagte Schreiben: Israelische Prosa und das Problem der Palästinensischen Flucht und Vertreibung (2006). Amir Eshel has also published essays on Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Paul Celan, Dani Karavan, Gerhard Richter, W.G. Sebald, Günter Grass, Alexander Kluge, Barbara Honigmann, Durs Grünbein, Dan Pagis, S. Yizhar, and Yoram Kaniyuk.

Amir Eshel’s poetry includes a 2018 book with the artist Gerhard Richter, Zeichnungen/רישומים, a work which brings together 25 drawings by Richter from the clycle 40 Tage and Eshel’s bi-lingual poetry in Hebrew and German. In 2020, Mossad Bialik brings his Hebrew poetry collection בין מדבר למדבר, Between Deserts.

Amir Eshel is a recipient of fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt and the Friedrich Ebert foundations and received the Award for Distinguished Teaching from the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Affiliated faculty of The Europe Center
Affiliated faculty of The Taube Center for Jewish Studies
Faculty Director of The Contemporary Research Group
Faculty Director of the Poetic Media Lab
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Amir Eshel Moderator Stanford University
Michael Hasenclever Panelist Berlin
Ruth Fine Moderator The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yaniv Feller Panelist University of Toronto
Natasha Gordinsky Panelist Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture, Leipzig
Yoav Rinon Moderator Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Karin Neuburger Panelist Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Idan Gillo Panelist Stanford University
Marcus Silber Moderator University of Haifa
Galili Shahar Panelist Tel Aviv University
Galit Hasan-Rokem Moderator The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Amir Engel Panelist Goethe University, Frankfurt
Conferences

Anna Westerstahl Stenport

Encina Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305

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Visiting Associate Professor and Anna Lindh Fellow, The Europe Center
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As a Visiting Associate Professor and Anna Lindh fellow in The Europe Center, Anna Westerstahl Stenport researches the contemporary European and Nordic film and media industries. Her interests include production studies and digital convergence culture and span investigations into aesthetics, film genre, and thematic analyses. She includes practitioner perspectives in her work and incorporates extensive interview material in her writing. Current scholarship focuses on contemporary Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish film industry culture. She is the author of a book on Swedish director Lukas Moodysson's debut feature 'Show Me Love'  (University of Washington Press Nordic Film Classics Series, 2012). Current research includes film adaptations of Scandinavian crime writers Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, and others.  

Anna also researches turn-of-the century European literature, drama, and culture with an emphasis on economic history. She has written extensively on Swedish author and playwright August Strindberg. Works include the book Locating August Strindberg's Prose: Modernism, Transnationalism, and Setting (University of Toronto Press, 2010) and numerous articles and book chapters.  

A native of Sweden's Göteborg, Anna holds degrees from Uppsala University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She is an Affiliate Associate Professor at the University of Gothenburg, as well as a tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.   

Program on Human Rights Workshop on Human Trafficking

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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.

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CISAC Conference Room

David Batstone Director and Co-founder Speaker Not For Sale Campaign
Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D., CA) Speaker
Workshops
Human Trafficking

Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America

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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.

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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
CDDRL Conferences
Indigenous Peoples Rights
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