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.
Eric Brewer on the role for technology in developing regions
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
Eric Brewer is Professor of Computer Science at the University of California Berkeley where he leads the Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER) research group.
Eric spoke about the role for technology in effective development strategies at the base of the pyramid.
The history of development to date has been characterized by large agencies funding big projects with strings attached, usually in the form of debt or demands for political allegiance. These kinds of projects are hampered by their scale and the requirement to work with corrupt governments. They typically include little role for new technology as projects move slowly and lack the expertise to facilitate this.
Outside the sphere of traditional development, technology is having a major impact on economic prosperity. The mobile phone revolution, driven by bottom up demand, provides enormous advantages to any worker operating in a large radius. A taxi driver given a mobile phone, for example, will increase his revenue by 60% on average. Other bottom-up businesses have seen major success. The Village Phone scheme, which runs as a franchise model with capital coming from microfinance, now covers the majority of Bangladeshi villages. A village phone lady will make on average two times the income she would have done from farming.
However, the mobile phone remains a largely urban phenomenon since cellular networks require a certain density of users before they can economically justify the installation of a base station. The availability of an internet connection is crucial for the viability of businesses and services in rural areas. WiFi-based Long Distance networks (WiLDNet) are emerging as a potential low-cost alternative to traditional connectivity solutions for rural regions. Unlike mesh networks, which use omni-directional antennas to cater to short ranges, WiLD networks are comprised of point-to-point wireless links that use directional antennas with line of sight over long distances.
Eric's Berkeley research team has partnered with Aravind Eye Hospital in Theni in the southern India state of Tamil Nadu to use this technology to address the problem of blindness in the region, 70% of which is treatable. The long-distance wireless network they have installed is allowing eye specialists to interview and examine patients in five remote clinics via high-quality video conferencing. 25,000 patients have recovered sight using this system and it is set to expand to 50 centers covering 2.5 million people.
Eric's team has also worked on software that addresses local educational needs in developing regions. In poorly resourced schools, students will often be sharing a mouse and computer screen with a group of others. Metamouse gives each student their own mouse to use; when answering questions all users must agree on a location before progressing. This encourages collaboration between students and has had impressive results in boys in particular, with a 50% improvement in scoring compared to each user having their own PC.
All News button
1
Cultural Attraction and Regional Identity: "Arab" Film, Malay Pop, and Muslim Politics in Southeast Asia
-
Southeast Asian identity is thought to be far more elite-political than mass-cultural in nature. Is this conventional wisdom true? Audiovisual flows of popular culture across national borders have proliferated. Malaysia, for example, is flooded with Indonesian music and films, while there are a number of Malaysian actors in the Indonesian TV industry. Specifically Muslim culture has a growing presence in both countries’ soap operas, novels, songs, and cinema. In their films, Malaysian directors Yasmin Ahmad and Hatta Azad Khan reflect on notions of Islamic primacy and Malay supremacy in their country, while Arabo-Muslim-centered cinema draws audiences in Indonesia. These themes are associated in both countries with the spread of Islamic ethics, the implementation of Islamic laws, and the associated jockeying of Islamist groups for greater political leverage. Dr. Clark will use this evidence to highlight and explore the intersection of culture and politics in Southeast Asian regionalism—a dynamic, participatory, on-the-ground process that does not depend on what ASEAN diplomats say or do.
Marshall Clark is a lecturer in Indonesian studies in the School of International and Political Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. Future and recent publications include Maskulinitas: Culture, Gender and Politics in Indonesia (forthcoming in 2010); a monograph on Indonesian literature, Wayang Mbeling (in Indonesian, 2008); and a chapter on Indonesian cinema in Popular Culture in Indonesia (2008). Before moving to Deakin, he taught at the University of Tasmania. His doctorate in Southeast Asian studies is from the Australian National University. At Stanford in Spring 2010 he will work on a joint research project with Dr. Juliet Pietsch on “Indonesia-Malaysia Relations: Culture, Politics and Regionalism in Southeast Asia.”
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Marshall Clark
Visiting Scholar, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Speaker
Seminars
The Question of Ethnic & Mass Violence
-
President Barack Obama is reading What Is the What and has recommended that all his staff read it as well.
Valentino Achak Deng's life has been described by The New York Times as a testament "to human resilience over tragedy and disaster." Born in the village of Marial Bai, in Southern Sudan, he was forced to flee in the 1980s, at the age of seven, when civil war erupted. As one of the so-called Lost Boys, he trekked hundreds of miles, pursued by animals and government militias, and lived for years in refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. He eventually resettled in America, to a new set of challenges. Deng's life is the basis of Dave Eggers' epic book What Is the What, which Francine Prose calls "an extraordinary work of witness, and of art." In 2009, as part of his Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, he opened the Marial Bai Secondary School, the region's first proper high school. Read Nicolas Kristof's glowing New York Times Op-ed about the Marial Bai School in Sudan.
Valentino Deng spent his formative years in refugee camps, where he worked as a social advocate and reproductive health educator for the UN High Commission for Refugees. He has toured the United States and Europe, telling his story and becoming an advocate for social justice and the universal right to education. In 2006, Deng collaborated with Dave Eggers on What Is the What, an international bestseller that is now required reading on college campuses across America. With Eggers, Deng is co-founder of the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, which helps rebuild Sudanese communities by providing educational opportunities and facilities.
Professor Anne Bartlett received her Ph.D. from the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago. She is a director of the Darfur Centre for Human Rights and Development based in London. Since 2002, Bartlett has worked with tribes and rebel groups from Darfur as part of a research project on insurgent politics. At the invitation of the Darfur delegation, Bartlett was the chair of the United Nations hearing on the Darfur crisis, UN commission on Human Rights, 60th Session, Geneva, Switzerland, April 2004. She was also a guest speaker at "The Human Rights and Humanitarian Crisis in Darfur (Western Sudan): Challenges to the International Community," UN Commission on Human Rights, 61st session, April 2005, Geneva, Switzerland. Bartlett has published extensively on the crisis and has given numerous talks on the Darfur crisis worldwide. She is currently working on a project that examines the effect of humanitarian intervention in the region.
Co-Sponsored by
The Billie Achilles Fund and the Bechtel International Center, Programs in International Relations, SAGE, Six Degrees & Human Rights Forum, STAND, Stanford Amnesty International, UNICEF, Program on Human Rights: CDDRL, Center for African Studies, & The Black Community Services Center
Annenberg Auditorium
Stanford, CA
Valentino Deng
co-founder, Valentino Achak Deng Foundation
Speaker
Anee Bartlett
Speaker
Darfur Centre for Human Rights and Development based in London
Conferences
Exploring The Myths Of Japanese Entrepreneurship
-
Long before the current global economic crisis, Japan adopted important reforms in commerce, corporate governance, finance, and education. These changes stemming from the 1990s "lost decade" have created new opportunities for entrepreneurial activity.
Following a presentation of new cross-sectional data on 60,000 operating Japanese corporations started in the last decade, the panel will discuss the state of Japanese entrepreneurship. What companies are forming? Who is behind them? What are their potential fates?
This discussion is part of continuing research being undertaken by SPRIE's Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship and is presented in conjunction with Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford.
About the Panelists
Richard Dasher
Image
Image
Image
Kenji E. Kushida is a Graduate Researcher at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE) and a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at University of California Berkeley.
Image
Image
Bechtel Conference Center
Richard Dasher
U.S.-Asia Technology Management Center
School of Engineering
Stanford, CA
0
Consulting Professor
At Stanford University, Dr. Dasher has directed the US-Asia Technology Management Center since 1994, and he has been Executive Director of the Center for Integrated Systems since 1998. He holds Consulting Professor appointments at Stanford in the Departments of Electrical Engineering (technology management), Asian Languages and Cultures (Japanese business), and at the Asia-Pacific Research Center for his work with the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He is also faculty adviser to student-run organizations such as the Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society and the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford.
From 2004, Dr. Dasher became the first non-Japanese person ever asked to join the governance of a Japanese national university, serving a term as a Board Director (理事) of Tohoku University . He continued as a member of the Management Council (経営協議会) until March 2010, and he now serves as Senior Advisor to the President (総長顧問) of Tohoku University. Dr. Dasher has been a member of the high-profile Program Committee of the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI) of the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT) since 2007. He has served on the Multidisciplinary Assessment Committee of the C$500 million Canada Foundation for Innovation Leading Edge Fund in 2007 and again in 2010, and as a member of the Phase I and Phase II Review Panels of the C$200 million Canada Excellence Research Chairs Program in 2008 and again in 2010. He was a distinguished reviewer of the Hong Kong S.A.R. study on innovation in 2008–09, and since 2007 he has been a member of the Foresight Panel of the German Ministry of Education and Research. From 2001–03, Dr. Dasher was on the International Planning Committee advising the Japanese Minister of State for Science and Technology Policy in regard to the formation of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.
As allowed by Stanford policy, Dr. Dasher maintains an active management consulting practice, through which he is an advisor to start-up companies and large firms in the U.S., Japan, and China. He has been a board director of Tokyo-based ZyCube Inc. since 2006, and he is founder and chairman of Pearl Executive Shuttle in Valdosta, Georgia, U.S.A. In the non-profit sector, he is a Board Director of the Japan Society of Northern California and the Keizai Society U.S. – Japan Business Forum, and he is an advisor to organizations such as the Chinese Information and Networking Association, the Silicon Valley – China Wireless Technology Association, and the International Foundation for Entrepreneurship in Science and Technology (iFEST). In 2010 he served as a consultant to The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) in regard to their establishment of a worldwide remote mentoring program for entrepreneurs. Dr. Dasher frequently gives speeches and seminars throughout Japan and Asia, as well as in the U.S. Recent appearances include the Nikkei Shimbun Business Innovation Forum, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, speaking tours of Japan co-sponsored by METI and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, and guest lectures at Chubu University, Kochi University of Technology, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, and the University of Tokyo.
From 1990–93, Dr. Dasher was a board director of two privately-held Japanese companies in Tokyo, at which he developed new business in international licensing of media rights packages and other intellectual properties. From 1986–90, he was Director of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute advanced field schools in Japan and Korea, which provide full-time language and area training to U.S. and select Commonwealth country diplomats assigned to those countries. He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Linguistics from Stanford University and, along with Prof. Elizabeth Closs Traugott, he is co-author of the often-cited book Regularity in Semantic Change (Cambridge University Press, 2002). He received the Bachelor of Music degree in clarinet and orchestra conducting from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he served on the faculty from 1978-85.
Robert Eberhart
Panelist
Shigeo Kagami
Professor and General Manager
Panelist
Science Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development, University of Tokyo
Kenji Kushida
BRIE Fellow
Panelist
UC Berkeley
William F. Miller
Panelist
Allen Miner
Founder and General Partner
Panelist
Sunbridge Partners
Conferences
The Long Shadow of Vietnam
-
Please join Marvin Kalb to discuss the impact of the Vietnam War on presidential/strategic decisions about national security issues.
Marvin Kalb is also a contributing news analyst for National Public Radio and Fox News Channel. In addition, he is frequently called upon to comment on major issues of the day by many of the nation's other leading news organizations.
Kalb had a distinguished 30-year broadcast career, working for both CBS News and NBC News, where he served as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, Moscow Bureau Chief, and moderator of Meet the Press. Among his many honors are two Peabody Awards, the DuPont Prize from Columbia University, the 2006 Fourth Estate Award from the National Press Club and more than a half-dozen Overseas Press Club awards. He has lectured at many universities, here and abroad. Kalb was the founding director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
A graduate of the City College of New York, Kalb has an M.A. from Harvard and was zeroing in on his Ph.D. in Russian history when he left Cambridge in 1956 for a Moscow assignment with the State Department. The following year, he joined CBS News, the last correspondent hired by Edward R. Murrow. Kalb has authored or co-authored 10 nonfiction books and two best-selling novels. His latest book, The Media and the War on Terrorism (co-edited with Stephen Hess), was the recipient of the 2004 Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism. He is currently engaged in research for a book on U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and its impact on American politics and foreign policy.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Marvin Kalb
James Clark Welling Presidential Fellow at The George Washington University and Edward R. Murrow Professor Emeritus at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government
Speaker
Seminars
Barbara van Schewick on the FCC's 'open internet' proceeding and implications for political speech
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
Barbara van Schewick, Assistant Professor at the Stanford Law School, introduced the current debate about net neutrality and explored the implications for diversity and freedom of expression online.
Network providers were at one time ‘application blind' - they were unable to see what was contained in the data packets that allow information to be transmitted online. Now that this is no longer the case, a debate has emerged about the role for regulation in controlling the ability of network providers to block or interfere with applications. What was drawn up as a voluntary policy statement is now being considered and revised by the FCC's Open Internet Proceeding.
Blocking of applications is problematic on several counts. First, there may be incentives for network providers to block applications that threaten their own profitability (for example, Skype). This leads to a situation where the success of applications is no longer decided on user criteria and the overall value created for society diminishes. Second, the great promise of the internet is that it removes traditional gatekeepers (such as mass media outlets) to speech. This is undermined if network providers have the ability to control what content users see. This is particularly problematic since users cannot easily switch to another provider as they could if a particular store did not carry a product they wanted. The cost of switching makes this impractical and in places without a choice of providers, this is not an option.
In drawing up regulation against blocking the FCC is debating a number of related issues:
Discrimination: Even if blocking is prohibited, discriminating between levels of service can still allow network providers to slow down an application to the extent that it becomes un-useable. This is actually a more effective tool than blocking since it is much harder to detect. Users may attribute slow speeds to poor design and potentially useful applications will fail to get traction.
Charges for different levels of service: Even if we agree network providers should not discriminate between the services they provide in an arbitrary way, could they offer improved service for payment? Opponents argue that this policy would be bad for competition since new developers would be unable to pay for the levels of service that established players could afford. And it would threaten the ability of poorly resourced minority voices - e.g. small NGOs and publications - to get heard.
Exceptions to discrimination: Network providers argue that there needs to be some discrimination to allow them to undertake reasonable network management. But it is difficult to determine what counts as reasonable management. One concern is that peer to peer networks - which allow those without many resources to exchange material cheaply - might be targeted in particular, since they can create a lot of congestion. This might also threaten the ability of new applications with high bandwidths to get funding, since the risk of being slowed down by the networks would be perceived to be too high by investors.
Many of the major benefits of the internet - the ease of publishing and coordinating, for example - are only possible through applications. Hence the outcome of this debate will have serious implications for the future social and political impact of the internet.
All News button
1
The Cost of the Bomb, The Cost of Slave Labor: Mutual Apology and Compensation as a Way to Address U.S. and Japanese Atrocities from World War II
Related Multimedia
Rachael Garrett
Energy and Environment Building - 4205
473 Via Ortega
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
0
rachaelg@stanford.edu
PhD student, Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment & Resources
Rachael Garrett is a 3rd year PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources. Rachael earned her Bachelor of Arts in History and Environmental Analysis and Policy at Boston University, Magna Cum Laude, where she was a University Scholar and earned the Franklin C. Erickson Prize for Excellence in Geography. She later obtained her Master in Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University. She is the current recipient of the Richard L. Kauffman and Ellen Jewett IPER Fellowship.
Rachael studies the economic and institutional determinants of soybean production in Brazil. To develop a more well-rounded understanding of these issues she incorporates multiple spatial scales in her analysis, including: local case studies, regional modeling, and macroeconomic analysis. Garrett presented some preliminary research on the macroeconomic drivers of soybean planted area in Brazil at the Association of American Geographers Annual Conference in April 2010 and is currently focusing on developing the local and regional scales of her dissertation. This summer Garrett will be returning to Brazil for three months to conduct additional interviews with soy farmers.