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.
Mobile Technology: Empowering the Grassroots
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Abstract
Despite the promise, the majority of mobile technology solutions are only meeting the needs of a small percentage of organisations who could benefit from them. In his talk, Ken Banks will discuss how he empowers grassroots NGOs, provide the history and background to FrontlineSMS, and highlight some of the challenges in developing mobile tools which work in resource-constrained environments
Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 16 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text messaging-based field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Stanford University Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was named a Laureate of the Tech Awards, an international awards program which honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. Ken's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation
Summary of the Seminar
Ken Banks, the founder of kiwanja.net, spoke about the importance of technology solutions that meet the needs of those working in the developing world and his own work in this area through FrontlineSMS.
While current excitement in the technology world may be focused on increasing centralization through cloud computing, this means little to people working in the developing world where internet connectivity is unavailable or unreliable. Too little investment is going into building tools that will genuinely assist the work many non-profits are doing now.
Ken developed FrontlineSMS to tap into the potential of mobile phones, which are now widely available and used in the developing world. This is a two way communication system that can be used anywhere where there is a mobile phone signal. FrontlineSMS is available as a free download and Ken's approach has been not to dictate implementation but rather to allow people to use this very general tool in whatever ways meet their particular needs. This has resulted in diverse applications, for example:
- Monitoring election practices in Nigeria in 2007
- Sending security alerts to humanitarian workers in conflict areas of Afghanistan
- Encouraging young people to take part in elections in Azerbaijan
- Updating local people on the location of speeches during President Obama's visit to Ghana
There is also great potential to combine FrontlineSMS with traditional media, such as radio, that is already widespread throughout Africa, to make this much more interactive.
Ken offered a number of points of guidance for those thinking about designing technology with social applications:
- Work with the equipment that people already have at their disposal
- Make equipment easy to assemble and intuitive
- Price it at a level people can afford
- Think about how use can be replicated - how will other NGOs find out about it?
- Assume a situation of no internet connectivity
- Where possible, give users an ability to connect with others - for example through a forum (this has been particularly successful at FrontlineSMS, with a third of those who download the software joining the online community)
- Don't let a social science approach dominate - it is much better to think in a multi-disciplinary way
- Use technology that is appropriate to the context - don't bring in tools that require knowledge and equipment not already held in the community
- Collaborate, don't compete. Sometimes NGOs can rush to do the same things; examples of genuine cooperation are hard to find
Looking ahead, Ken will be developing functionality for FrontlineSMS that makes use of internet connectivity where this is available. He is also working on finding additional funding to help organizations pay for text messages.
Wallenberg Theater
Bldg 160
Ken Banks
Founder
Speaker
kiwanja.net
Seminars
Ballet's Magic Kingdom During the Modernist Period of Russian Art
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Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Center for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies, and The Stanford Institute for Creativity & the Arts (SiCa).
Slavic Department Library
Building 240
Stanford University
Stanley Rabinowitz
Henry Steele Commager Professor and professor of Russian, Amherst College; Director, Amherst Center for Russian Culture
Speaker
Seminars
Op-Ed: Exchange we can believe in
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs
J.P. Schnapper-Casteras, a recent CISAC fellow, argues in the Washington Post that despite the potential long-term benefits, only a few dozen Iraqis are able to study in the United States each year. By comparison, during the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union exchanged 50,000 citizens over 30 years, producing more educated students and some of the most pro-Western and pro-democracy Soviet scholars and scientists.
IRBIL, Iraq -- Speaking at Cairo University in June, President Obama pledged to "expand exchange programs and increase scholarships, like the one that brought my father to America." Nowhere is that change more urgently needed than in providing educational opportunities in Iraq.
Studying abroad has been a formative experience for the Iraqi leaders who have done it, and the experience can yield long-term benefits for economic development, public diplomacy, and the struggle for hearts and minds. Despite the enormous time and effort that have been invested in establishing long-term stability and democracy in Iraq, only a few dozen Iraqis are able to study in the United States each year. By comparison, consider that during the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union exchanged 50,000 citizens over 30 years, producing more educated students and some of the most pro-Western and pro-democracy Soviet scholars and scientists.
Young men and women in Iraq are hungry for an opportunity to study in the United States. In August I visited Salahaddin University in northern Iraq, where numerous students approached me in 121-degree heat to talk at length about their dreams of studying in America. One father even offered to sell his home to fund his son's education in the States. Four years ago, during the height of the sectarian civil war in Iraq, a group of Iraqi undergraduates twice braved the treacherous roads from Iraq to Jordan to participate in a Stanford University exchange program that I was running.
Iraqi officials understand the importance of enabling their students to study in the United States. Parliament has pledged $1 billion to fund the education of 50,000 Iraqi students overseas, and several Kurdish officials told me this summer that they would help finance new scholarships and exchanges. But they need help from the United States to make this possible.
President Obama and Congress should take three steps to expand educational exchanges with Iraq:
- Prioritize and facilitate visas for Iraqi students. Today, Iraqis must travel to Baghdad or neighboring countries, at great personal risk and cost, to apply for a visa. And there are too many sad stories of visas inexplicably delayed or otherwise gone awry. Washington should let students complete parts of their visa application at U.S. facilities outside Baghdad, in safer parts of the country.
- Collaborate with a broader coalition of American universities to reduce tuition for Iraqi students. The State Department also should partner with Iraqi nongovernmental organizations, social entrepreneurs and private colleges to meet the soaring demand for English-language instruction and to independently screen scholarship applicants.
With those two reforms, 200 more Iraqi students would immediately be ready to study in America, says Ahmed Dezaye, director of cultural relations for the Kurdistan Regional Government Ministry of Higher Education. While it may still be easier to recruit and process students from majority-Kurdish provinces than other, more volatile, areas, this would be a good start.
- Support the American University of Iraq, which has received less than $10 million from Washington though the government has spent billions on other projects. That university, in Sulaymaniyah, has already become one of a handful of liberal arts colleges in the region and attracted widespread student interest. With more funds, it could draw more American educators and students to safe parts of northern Iraq to teach English and other subjects as well as to learn about Iraqi history and culture.
Countless Iraqi students yearn for the chance to study a broad range of subjects in the United States and apply what they have learned back home. Ultimately, investing in education here can shape America's legacy in Iraq by giving young Iraqis new opportunities, perspectives -- and perhaps even some measure of hope.
The writer, a graduate of Stanford Law School and former fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, founded the Stanford-Iraq Student Exchange.
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Fractured Militaries: Armed Forces and Transitions from Authoritarian Rule in Asia
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Under what conditions are autocratic regimes apt to break down when popular protests against them break out? Prof. Lee will showcase and explain the decisive role of armed forces in reinforcing or undermining the prolongation of authoritarian rule. He will offer a theoretical framework and illustrate it with two contrasting cases: the June 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, where the Chinese military suppressed protesters and safeguarded the regime; and the People Power revolt in Manila in February 1986, when the Philippine military swung its weight in favor of liberalization.
Terence Lee is associate editor of Armed Forces and Society. His writings have appeared in Asian Survey, Armed Forces and Society, Comparative Political Studies, and Foreign Policy. He studies civil-military relations, military organizations, and international security; other interests include Southeast Asian politics and political science theories. He was formerly an assistant professor in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), and a postdoctoral fellow in the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard. His PhD and MA are in political science from the University of Washington, Seattle. Other degrees include a master’s in strategic studies from NTU and a University of Wisconsin-Madison BA (with Distinction) in political science and Southeast Asian Studies.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Terence Lee
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Speaker
National University of Singapore
Seminars
The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe are Alike
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It is commonly believed that America and Europe are very different societies, and growing apart. A look at the data shows that the anecdotes are misleading and that the differences across the Atlantic have been overstated.
Peter Baldwin, Professor of History at UCLA, is author of several books on the comparative history of European and American state building, most recently, Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces AIDS.
Introduction by FSI Senior Fellow Josef Joffe.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Peter Baldwin
Professor of History, UCLA
Speaker
Seminars
An Equilibrium Model of the African HIV/AIDS Epidemic
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An equilibrium search model of the Malawian HIV/AIDS epidemic is presented. Individuals engage in di¤erent types of sexual activity, which vary in their riskiness. When choosing a sexual activity, such as short-term sex without a condom, a person rationally considers its risk. A simulated version of the model is parameterized to match some salient facts about the Malawian epidemic. Some topical policies (e.g., male circumcision, treatment of other STDs, and promoting marriage) are studied and found to have potential to back re: Moderate interventions may actually increase the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, due to shifts in human behavior and equilibrium e¤ects.
Assistant Professor Michele Tertilt is one of three Stanford scholars awarded a two-year Sloan Research Fellowship. The Sloan Research Fellowships support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers. Michele's research focuses on family economics, consumer credit, growth and development, and demography. The Economics department congratulates Michele on the prestigious fellowship.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Michele Tertilt
Assistant Professor
Speaker
the Department of Economics, Stanford University
Seminars
