The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law is pleased to announce that Nadejda Marques has joined the Program on Human Rights (PHR) to serve as the new program manager. In this capacity, Marques will coordinate a range of interdisciplinary initiatives and events, support new research projects, and spearhead PHR's outreach and fundraising efforts. Marques will work together with PHR Program Director and FSI Senior Fellow, Helen Stacy to support the conceptualization, design, and conduct of PHR's research initiatives, advancing the mission and visibility of PHR activities at Stanford University and beyond.
Marques joins the PHR from Boston where she worked as research coordinator for the Cost of Inaction Project at the François-Bagnoud Xavier Center for Health and Human Rights based at the Harvard School of Public Health. Working for the Cost of Inaction Project, Marques was responsible for researching and analyzing the cost of inaction of public programs and actions that help reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS on children in Angola.
"Nadejda Marques' training as an economist, her 15 years of work in human rights, including her work in the field in Angola and in founding the Brazilian human rights NGO Justiça Global bring valuable experience and expertise to the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law," said PHR director Helen Stacy. "Even more importantly, Nadejda's commitment to bottom-up human rights reform means that she is acutely aware of human rights practice as a multi-faceted and inter-disciplinary activity. I am thrilled to welcome Nadejda to the Program on Human Rights as a thought partner to expand the reach and scope of our programming."
Marques holds degrees in economics (UNA, Brazil) and international finance (FGV, Brazil). She has worked as a special correspondent for the Washington Post in Latin America, and has taught languages and Latin American culture at Harvard, Bentley College, and the University of Massachusetts in Boston. For the past decade, Marques has worked in the field of human rights, most notably with Human Rights Watch in Brazil and Angola. Marques is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. She serves as a consultant and board member for leading human rights NGOs in Brazil and Angola.
Robin Niblett, Director of Chatham House, delivered the following talk in The Europe Center series “The European and Global Economic Crisis”.
With measured optimism about the prospect for a way out of the current Eurozone crisis, Dr. Niblett argues that the introduction of the common Euro, seen by many in past years as a vanguard tool for European integration, is now potentially a functional wedge between ‘debtor’ and strongly capitalized nations.
Dr. Niblett, arriving directly from participating in the World Economic Forum in Dubai, and based on Chatham House research, described the “perfect storm” of the past two decades of credit-driven growth, divergence within the EU, rising debt-to GDP ratios of member nations especially in the cases of Italy and Greece. His analysis combines these economic details with the following:
Demographics – high levels of unassimilated immigrants
European welfare economies still distributing resources at twentieth-century levels now in the twenty-first century
The rise of anti-immigrant and anti-free-trade populist parties
The weakening of Europe’s center parties
The “Russification” of Europe’s East – especially in recent events in Ukraine
The stalled integration of Turkey into the EU
The totality of the above paints a grim portrait of Europe under the weight of nearly impossible conditions. And yet, Dr. Niblett underlines evidence for measured optimism:
Ireland is making strides to reform its economy
Ireland’s educated and yet unemployed workforce does have the possibility to immigrate to Europe
The UK is finally rebalancing its state budget and market liberalization
France is facing, albeit with massive labor protest, its state budget levels
Spain will likely turn over its government in the face of its massive youth protest
Italy is evaluating in its political process a series of budget reforms
These are the structural side of what Dr. Niblett sees as Europe’s tools for recovery.
On the side of European practice, the Franco-German proposals for European Central Bank “bailout funds” include new rules for transparency of internal government operations. This promises innovation to make the EU into an area of political and financial transparency, and to enable the EU to engage in direct investment, as evidence is beginning to show, in the world’s emerging economies. In this sense, Dr. Niblett sees for Europe a competitive edge over the US in engaging in world markets.
Perhaps most sanguine of Dr. Niblett’s analysis is his reading of the Eurozone crisis as a force to push the member nations of Europe further towards supra-national economic strategies. In order to participate in the investment in emerging markets, the Benelux countries, not to mention France, Germany, and neighboring European states, are responding to the crisis by considering policy that promotes investment and outsourcing for service-sector employment, instead of export commodities which have been undercut in recent years.
There is a risk, in Dr. Niblett’s view, that Europe will respond to the Eurozone crisis by fracturing into rival “clubs” of small and large or debt-restructuring and creditor nation-states. But the European nations, especially those currently participating in the Eurozone, have untapped capacities for growth:
Educated youth
Underemployed female laborers
Outstanding higher educational institutions
Pent-up small- and medium-enterprise markets
Potential for growth in the service sector labor market
Room for more tightly integrating and rationalizing the region’s energy market.
Those interested in further detail and analysis are invited to visit the work and productivity at:
The Europe Center, at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies: http://tec.fsi.stanford.edu
Robin Niblett became the Director of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) in January 2007. Before joining Chatham House, from 2001 to 2006, Dr. Niblett was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Washington based Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS). During his last two years at CSIS, he also served as Director of the CSIS Europe Program and its Initiative for a Renewed Transatlantic Partnership.
Most recently Dr. Niblett is the author of the Chatham House Report Playing to its Strengths: Rethinking the UK’s Role in a Changing World (Chatham House, 2010) and Ready to Lead? Rethinking America’s Role in a Changed World (Chatham House, 2009), and editor and contributing author to America and a Changed World: A Question of Leadership (Chatham House/Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). He is also the author or contributor to a number of CSIS reports on transatlantic relations and is contributing author and co-editor with William Wallace of the book Rethinking European Order (Palgrave, 2001). Dr Niblett is a frequent panellist at conferences on transatlantic relations. He has testified on a number of occasions to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee as well as US Senate and House Committees on European Affairs.
Dr Niblett is a Non-Executive Director of Fidelity European Values Investment Trust. He is a Council member of the Overseas Development Institute, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Global Institutional Governance and the Chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Europe.
He received his BA in Modern Languages and MPhil and DPhil from New College, Oxford.
CISAC Conference Room
Robin Niblett
Director
Speaker
Chatham House, Royal Institute for International Affairs
Program to enhance global reach and innovation research at business school
We are thrilled to welcome SPRIE, a catalyst for cutting-edge knowledge in this space, and a natural fit for us. - Garth Saloner, Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — The Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship has joined the Graduate School of Business, where it will expand and enhance the depth and reach of global content for the school's academic programs and research.
Peter Wegner, MONUMENT TO CHANGE AS IT CHANGES at Knight Management Center, Stanford Graduate School of Business
The Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) is focused on understanding the development and practice of innovation and entrepreneurship around the world. Current research focuses on the dynamics and sustainability of Silicon Valley and high-technology areas across Europe and Asia, including those in mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, India, Korea, and their collaboration and competition in the evolving global innovation network. Specific projects focus on "Silicon Valley Transforming," the rise and implications of China's internet industry ("China 2.0"), Japanese entrepreneurship ("STAJE"), and clean energy and urbanization ("Smart Green Cities").
SPRIE's core activities include global interdisciplinary research, seminars, and conferences, as well as publications and briefings for industry and government leaders. Upcoming events this month at Stanford include a panel discussion, "Re-examining the State of Japanese Entrepreneurship," on Sept. 21 and "China 2.0: Transforming Media and Commerce in China," SPRIE's third in a series of highly successful forums. Keynotes for "China 2.0" on Sept. 30 will include investors, entrepreneurs, and founders or CEOs of billion-dollar Chinese internet firms, including Jack Ma of Alibaba and Joe Chen, MBA '99, of RenRen.
"Innovation and entrepreneurship are hallmarks of the GSB experience," said Garth Saloner, dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "We are thrilled to welcome SPRIE, a catalyst for cutting-edge knowledge in this space, and a natural fit for us. SPRIE complements and augments many of our existing efforts, including the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and the Center for Global Business and the Economy."
Knight Management Center, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Previously housed at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, SPRIE is led by faculty directors William F. Miller and Henry S. Rowen, as well as Associate Director Marguerite Gong Hancock. Miller, the former provost of Stanford University and the Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management, Emeritus, at the business school, is also a professor emeritus of computer science at the engineering school. He was CEO of SRI International, where he established a spin-out and commercialization program. Rowen is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Edward P. Rust Professor of Public Policy and Management, Emeritus, at the business school, as well as former president of the RAND Corporation. He is an expert on international security, economic development, and high-tech industries in the United States and Asia.
Hancock leads research initiatives, conferences, and publications on topics ranging from "China 2.0: The Rise of a Digital Superpower" to "Smart Green Cities." She is coeditor of books published by Stanford University Press: The Silicon Valley Edge (2000), Making IT: The Rise of Asia in High Tech (2006), and Greater China's Quest for Innovation (2008). Hancock also codirects SPRIE executive and policymaker training programs on leading innovation and entrepreneurial regions in the global economy.
"We are very pleased to join the Graduate School of Business and look forward to collaborating on international and interdisciplinary research and conferences relevant to business students, executives, and government leaders from around the world who are focused on leading innovation and creating value," said Miller.
SPRIE research focuses on the nexus of innovation and entrepreneurship in high-technology clusters, through questions such as:
What factors enable innovative and entrepreneurial regions to advance and be sustained? What divergent models and strategies are evident in emerging regions?
Why have some regions lagged, despite strong assets such as skilled workers or capital investments? What obstacles hinder a region's development?
How do the flows of ideas, technology, people, and capital define new global linkages? How do these shape the emerging global high-technology system?
With the rise of China, India, and other high-technology powerhouses, what new patterns of interaction are emerging among major players? How can companies and governments best respond to new critical challenges and opportunities?
For More Information Contact: Barbara Buell, Director of Communications, Stanford Graduate School of Business at buell_barbara@gsb.stanford.edu or 650-723-1771.
For Comment: Marguerite Hancock, Associate Director, Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Graduate School of Business at mhancock@stanford.edu or 650-723-4588.
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"Ways to Change", by Peter Wegner, hangs near the TA Associates Cafe at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Ahmed Benchemsi is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. His focus is on the democratic grassroots movement that recently burgeoned in Morocco, as in Tunisia and Egypt. Ahmed researches how and under what circumstances a handful of young Facebook activists managed to infuse democratic spirit which eventually inspired hundreds of thousands, leading them to hit the streets in massive protests. He investigates whether this actual trend will pave the way for genuine democratic reform or for the traditional political system's reconfiguration around a new balance of powers - or both.
Before joining Stanford, Ahmed was the publisher and editor of Morocco's two best-selling newsweeklies TelQuel (French) and Nishan (Arabic), which he founded in 2001 and 2006, respectively. Covering politics, business, society and the arts, Ahmed's magazines were repeatedly cited by major media such as CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and more, as strong advocates of democracy and secularism in the Middle East and North Africa.
Ahmed received awards from the European Union and Lebanon's Samir Kassir Foundation, notably for his work on the "Cult of personality" surrounding Morocco's King. He also published op-eds in Le Monde and Newsweek where he completed fellowships.
Ahmed received his M.Phil in Political Science in 1998 from Paris' Institut d'Etudes Politiques (aka "Sciences Po"), his M.A in Development Economics in 1995 from La Sorbonne, and his B.A in Finance in 1994 from Paris VIII University.
CISAC Conference Room
Ahmed Benchemsi
Visiting Scholar Program on Arab Reform and Democracy
Speaker
CDDRL
Running across freeways with labor organizers, speaking with taxi drivers and laborers, and visiting rural areas of Egypt convinced me during my fieldwork that neither social media technologies nor the youth that use them caused or directly led a revolution where people from every walk of life took to the street. Indeed, only 15% of Egyptians and other Arab Spring countries have Internet access and a small percent of them are active on social media. These dynamics replay themselves in the many countries and cultures that I have worked within - from Kyrgyzstan, to Native America, to India. Indeed, while re-telling a story that places heroic youth and wonderfully liberating technologies at the center ignores the masses, dismissing social media’s dramatic impact on journalism and high-end organizing in turn is equally shortsighted. This talk will bring up different arguments (sometimes in conflict with one another) of how networks of the street and networks of the Internet work with one another, placing working classes and community organizers side-by-side with social media users.
Dr. Ramesh Srinivasan, Assistant Professor at UCLA in Design and Media/Information Studies, studies and participates in projects focused on how new media technologies impact political revolutions, economic development and poverty reduction, and the future of cultural heritage. He recently wrote a front page article on Internet Freedom for the Huffington Post, an Op/Ed in the Washington Post on Social Media and the London Riots, an upcoming piece in the Washington Post on Myths of Social Media, and was recently on NPR discussing his fieldwork in Egypt on networks, actors, and technologies in the political sphere. He was also recently in the New Yorker based on his response (from his blog: http://rameshsrinivasan.org) to Malcolm Gladwell’s writings critiquing the power of social media in impacting revolutionary movements. He has worked with bloggers who were involved in overthrowing the recent authoritarian Kyrgyz regime, non-literate tribal populations in India to study how literacy emerges through uses of technology, and traditional Native American communities to study how non-Western understandings of the world can introduce new ways of looking at the future of the internet. He holds an engineering degree from Stanford, a Masters degree from the MIT Media Lab, and a Doctorate from Harvard University. His full academic CV can be found at http://rameshsrinivasan.org/cv
Peter Wegner, MONUMENT TO CHANGE AS IT CHANGES at Knight Management Center, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Knight Management Center, Stanford Graduate School of Business
