Stanford University

International grants totaling $1 million awarded to interdisciplinary Stanford research teams

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
Projects to enhance health security and child survival in Africa with improvements in water and sanitation, examine why poor business-management practices persist in India, study the relationship of legal courts to politics and human rights, and understand why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress were recent recipients of grants totaling just under $1 million from Stanford's Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies.

"These projects have great potential to advance academic knowledge, social capital and human development around the world, and to create a healthier, more promising future for hundreds of millions of people," President John Hennessy said. "When we launched The Stanford Challenge, we committed to marshal university resources to address the great challenges of the 21st century in human health, the environment and international affairs, and it is gratifying to see the response from our remarkable faculty."

The 2008 projects and their principal investigators follow:

Enhancing Health Security Through Infrastructure and Behavioral Intervention: Water, Sanitation and Child Survival in Africa. Alexandria Boehm and Jenna Davis, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Abby King, Health Research and Policy and Medicine; Gary Schoolnik, Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology. The project seeks to improve the health and well-being of the 1.2 billion people in low-income countries who lack access to clean water and the 2.6 billion who lack access to sanitation services, with a focus on mortality reduction in children. It will be carried out in sub-Saharan Africa, where the toll of water- and sanitation-related illness on health is severe, and will investigate the extent to which information and education about water and sanitation at the household level motivates behavior changes that result in reduced morbidity. Results will inform international efforts to design and implement effective water supply and sanitation interventions for more than 400 million Africans currently lacking access.

Why Are Indian Firms Poorly Managed? A Survey and Randomized Field Intervention. Nicholas Bloom and Aprajit Mahajan, Economics; Thomas C. Heller and Erik Jensen, Law School; John Roberts, Graduate School of Business. The biggest single reduction in poverty in the history of mankind was achieved by the industrialization of China since 1978, which lifted almost 500 million people out of poverty. India has not experienced this level of poverty reduction because its manufacturing firms have not achieved the productivity gains seen in China. Recent evidence suggests one key factor is the poor management practices adopted by Indian firms. This project examines why poor management practices persist in India and are much more common there. It focuses in particular on evaluating the relative importance of informational, legal and development barriers. The project will undertake a field survey of Indian firms to evaluate their knowledge of modern management techniques and a field intervention aimed at upgrading management practices in a randomized sample of Indian firms, comparing their progress to a control group of untouched firms.

Courts, Politics and Human Rights. Joshua Cohen, Philosophy, Political Science, and Law School; Terry L. Karl, Political Science; Jenny S. Martinez, Law School; Helen Stacy, Law School. This project examines the role of courts as the centerpiece of strategies for promoting human rights by asking if courts should be a preferred human rights venue or if there are other more accessible and effective ways to secure human rights. It addresses three broad themes: the interplay between national, regional and international courts in the protection of human rights; the role of governments and nongovernmental organizations in influencing legal proceedings; and how courts construct historical truth and shape public opinion, memory, attitudes and discourse about human-rights abuses. The multidisciplinary project will span countries, regions, issue areas and historical timeframes to ask what reasonably can be expected from international, regional and domestic courts in safeguarding human rights.

The Middle East and the World Economy. Matthew Harding, Economics; Lisa Blaydes, Political Science. This project examines why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress compared to much of the developing world and the implications of this underdevelopment for two overarching trends in Middle Eastern politics today: authoritarian government and Islamic fundamentalism. The researchers also will examine how political instability originating in the Middle East has affected world oil prices and world markets by constructing economic models of the world economy. The project seeks broadly to understand the macro- and microeconomic determinants of Islamic fundamentalism and authoritarian rule, and the extent to which these two outcomes have affected the stability and prosperity of the world economy. It measures global factors resulting from increased globalization and quantifies their impact on the development of economies in the Middle East.

The $3 million Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies was first established in 2005 by the Office of the President and the Stanford International Initiative to support new cross-campus, interdisciplinary research and teaching among Stanford's seven schools on three overarching global challenges: pursuing peace and security, reforming and improving governance at all levels of society, and advancing human well-being.

The first $1 million in interdisciplinary grants was awarded in February 2006; the second round of grants was awarded in February 2007.

"In all three rounds of funding, it has been heartening to see the imaginative and innovative ways that Stanford faculty are combining intellectual forces across disciplines to tackle some of the most pressing and persistent problems of our day," said Coit D. Blacker, chair of the International Initiative Executive Committee and director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "It is especially gratifying to see the younger faculty competing for these grants, eager to generate new knowledge and new solutions and help train a new generation of leaders."

Priority in funding has been given to teams of faculty who do not typically work together, who represent multiple disciplines and who address issues falling broadly within the three central research areas of the Stanford International Initiative. Projects are to be based on collaborative research and teaching involving faculty from two or more disciplines and, where possible, from two or more of the university's seven schools.

All News button
1

South Africa's Electricity Crisis

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
South Africa's power grid is in crisis. Leading South African gold and platinum mines stopped production in late January, and blackouts are endemic. No end is in sight, and the shortages have spilled over to the neighboring countries Botswana and Namibia. Check out a thorough preview of the crisis in an early essay by PESD collaborator, Anton Eberhard, former electricity regulator and an expert on power at the University of Cape Town, Political Economy of Power Sector Reform in South Africa. Professor Eberhard was also recently quoted in a detailed commentary at the New York Times.
All News button
1

Waka Takahashi Brown

616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, E005
Stanford, CA 94305-6060

(650) 723-6784
0
wakabrownhs_2.jpeg

Waka Brown is a Curriculum Specialist for the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). She has also served as the Coordinator and Instructor of the Reischauer Scholars Program from 2003 to 2005. Prior to joining SPICE in 2000, she was a Japanese language teacher at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, CA, and a Coordinator for International Relations for the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program.

Waka’s academic interests lie in curriculum and instruction. She received a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University as well as teaching credentials and M.Ed. through the Stanford Teacher Education Program. 

In addition to curricular publications for SPICE, Waka has also produced teacher guides for films such as A Whisper to a Roar, a film about democracy activists in Egypt, Malaysia, Ukraine, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, and Can’t Go Native?, a film that chronicles Professor Emeritus Keith Brown’s relationship with the community in Mizusawa, an area in Japan largely bypassed by world media. 

She has presented teacher seminars nationally for the National Council for the Social Studies in Seattle; the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia in both Denver and Los Angeles; the National Council for the Social Studies, Phoenix; Symposium on Asia in the Curriculum, Lexington; Japan Information Center, Embassy of Japan, Washington. D.C., and the Hawaii International Conference on the Humanities. She has also presented teacher seminars internationally for the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools in Tokyo, Japan, and for the European Council of International Schools in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

In 2004 and 2008, Waka received the Franklin Buchanan Prize, which is awarded annually to honor an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia at any educational level, elementary through university. In 2019, Waka received the U.S.-Japan Foundation and EngageAsia’s national Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award, Humanities category.

Instructor and Manager, Stanford e-Japan
Curriculum Specialist

Integrating 21st Century Development and Security Assistance

-

In early 2007, CSIS launched an expert task force to examine the growing involvement of the Department of Defense as a direct provider of “non-traditional” security assistance, concentrated in counterterrorism, capacity building, stabilization and reconstruction, and humanitarian relief. The task force set out to shed light on what drives this trend, including the new global threat environment; assess what was happening at the same time in the diplomatic and developmental realms; evaluate DOD performance in conducting its expanded missions; and consider the impact of the Pentagon’s enlarged role on broader U.S. national security, foreign policy and development interests. From the outset, the task force sought to generate concrete, practical recommendations to Congress and the White House on reforms and legislation that will create a better and more sustainable balance between military and civilian tools.

J. Stephen Morrison joined CSIS in early 2000. He directs the CSIS Africa Program, the CSIS Task Force on HIV/AIDS (begun in 2001) and most recently co-directed a CSIS Task Force on non-traditional U.S. security assistance. In his role as director of the Africa Program, he has conducted studies on the United States’ rising energy stakes in Africa, counter-terrorism, the stand-up of the U.S. Africa Command, and implications for U.S. foreign policy. In 2005–2006, he was co-director of the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on Africa, ‘Beyond Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa.’ Immediately prior to that, he was executive secretary of the Africa Policy Advisory Panel, commissioned by the U.S. Congress and overseen by then–Secretary of State Colin Powell. From 2005 up to the present, he has directed multi-phase work on China’s expansive engagement in Africa. His work on HIV/AIDS and related global health issues has involved multiple missions to China, Russia, India, Vietnam and Africa, and most recently, a series of focused studies on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. He publishes widely, testifies often before Congress, and is a frequent commentator in major media on U.S. foreign policy, Africa, foreign assistance, and global public health. From 1996 through early 2000, Morrison served on the secretary of state’s policy planning staff, where he was responsible for African affairs and global foreign assistance issues. From 1993 to 1995, he conceptualized and launched USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, which operates in countries emerging from protracted internal conflict and misrule. From 1992 until mid-1993, he was the U.S. democracy and governance adviser in Ethiopia and Eritrea. In the period 1987 to 1991, he was senior staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa. Morrison holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin, has been an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies since 1994, and is a graduate magna cum laude of Yale College. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

CISAC Conference Room

J. Stephen Morrison Executive Director Speaker HIV/AIDS Task Force and Director, Africa Program, Center for Strategic & International Studies
Seminars

Karen Wang

Program on Food Security and the Environment
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 721-2220
0
Research Associate
Karen.jpg

Karen joined FSE as a research associate in January 2008.  She holds a B.A. in Economics and a M.Sc. in Earth Systems from Stanford. Previously, she worked for the Millennium Villages Project at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. There she designed and managed the implementation of household surveys in Sub-Saharan Africa and analyzed baseline data.

Caring About Systemic Military Atrocity in Iraq and Afghanistan

-
Neta C. Crawford is Professor of Political Science and African American Studies where her teaching focuses on international ethics and normative change. Crawford is currently on the board of the Academic Council of the United Nations System (ACUNS). She has also served as a member of the governing Council of the American Political Science Association; on the editorial board of the American Political Science Review; and on the Slavery and Justice Committee at Brown University, which examined Brown University's relationship to slavery and the slave trade.

Her research interests include international relations theory, normative theory, foreign policy decisionmaking, abolition of slavery, African foreign and military policy, sanctions, peace movements, discourse ethics, post-conflict peacebuilding, research design, utopian science fiction, and emotion. She is the author of Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge University Press, 2002) which was a co-winner of the 2003 American Political Science Association Jervis and Schroeder Award for best book in International History and Politics. She is co-editor of How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa (St. Martin's, 1999). Her articles have been published in books and scholarly journals such as the Journal of Political Philosophy; International Organization; Security Studies; Perspectives on Politics; International Security; Ethics & International Affairs; Press/Politics; Africa Today; Naval War College Review; Orbis; and, Qualitative Methods. Crawford has appeared on radio and TV and written op-eds on U.S. foreign policy and international relations for newspapers including the Boston Globe; Newsday (Long Island), The Christian Science Monitor, and the Los Angeles Times. Crawford has a Ph.D. in political science from MIT and a bachelor of arts from Brown.

This event is co-sponsored with the Program on Global Justice and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

» Password-protected paper

» Article: The Real "Surge" of 2007: Non-Combatant Death in Iraq and Afghanistan
Neta C. Crawford, Catherine Lutz, Robert Jay Lifton, Judith L. Herman, Howard Zinn
Download pdf

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Neta Crawford Political Science Speaker Boston University
Workshops
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice
Human Trafficking

Deference, Dissent, and Dispute Resolution: An Experimental Intervention Using Mass Media to Change Norms and Behavior in Rwanda

-
Elizabeth Levy Paluck (speaker) received her PhD in 2007 from Yale University in Social Psychology. Her research focuses on the political psychology of prejudice and conflict reduction, in particular the role of mass media, community dialogue, and education. She has conducted the bulk of her fieldwork using field experiments and qualitative methods in Central Africa and in the US. She is currently an Academy Scholar at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Desha Girod (discussant) is a doctoral candidate at Stanford, where she researches the effects of international organizations on local institution-building. She is devoting her fellowship at CDDRL to completing her dissertation, "Why being poor helps postwar development." For her dissertation, Desha carried out field work in Mozambique and Uganda. In addition, she is conducting a study on democracy promotion after regime change by investigating the impact of US intervention in Panama, where she also did field work. Another study investigates the effects of remittances on access to public goods in Mexico. Desha's advisors at Stanford include Jim Fearon, Steve Krasner, David Laitin, and Jeremy Weinstein.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Elizabeth Levy Paluck Academy Scholar Speaker Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University

Desha Girod

N/A

0
CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow 2008-2009
desha_web.jpg
Desha Girod is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University where she manages the program Evaluating International Influences on Democratic Development.  Her research focuses on the influence of external actors on political and economic development.  In 2009, she will join the faculty of the Department of Government at Georgetown University.
Desha Girod Speaker
Seminars

PESD Annual Review Meeting

The PESD's 2007 Annual Review Meeting, which will be held November 13-14, 2007 at Stanford University, provides the opportunity to take a look at major issues in the world's energy system, as well as PESD's current research and plans for the future.

PESD is a growing international research program that works on the political economy of energy. We study the political, legal, and institutional factors that affect outcomes in global energy markets. Much of our research has been based on field studies in developing countries including China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico.

At present, PESD is active in four major areas: climate change policy, energy and development, the emerging global natural gas market, and the role of national oil companies.

We have made available the agenda with more detail on the event. The substance of the workshop will begin at 1pm on Tuesday, November 13, with an overview of the program. Then we will focus the rest of the time on a few main research topics, discussing the current state of research for each as well as our plans for the future. We also anticipate discussion of areas where PESD can better collaborate with other institutions. The meeting ends at 1pm on Wednesday, November 14.

Download pdf

Schwab Center
680 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6090

Conferences

Center's corporate affiliates program gain valuable volunteer experience

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Volunteers from the University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) and Hands-on Bay Area came together last night for "Bring Me A Book" Volunteer Night. The event took place at the Bring Me A Book headquarters in nearby Mountain View, where the volunteers had dinner and learned about the organization.

Denise Masumoto, Shorenstein APARC's manager of corporate relations, headed the 20 volunteers from APARC, who are visiting fellows doing research at Stanford for a year and represent countries including China, India, Japan and the Philippines. Masumoto said APARC became affiliated with the Bring Me A Book Program when she found the program online and thought it represented an integral part of American lifestyle and culture. She also hoped that it could "encourage the visiting fellows to volunteer in other ways in their own countries."

"It is an honor to host the students of Stanford's Asia-Pacific Research Center," said Bring Me A Book volunteer coordinator and community outreach manager Montez Davis. "Since many of these volunteers have families, this is the perfect way for them to experience first hand the difference you can make in the future success of a child all through volunteer work."

Bring Me A Book began with Judy Koch's mission to provide easy access to the best childrens' books and to inspire reading aloud with children. The foundation aims to provide brand-new books of the best quality to children who do not have the means to obtain them otherwise.

"We believe that every child deserves books of the same quality," said Bring Me A Book office manager Erin Smith.

Bring Me A Book is affiliated with volunteer corporations such as CISCO, Google and Starbucks, as well as other non-profit organizations. Hands-on Bay Area is a non-profit organization that aims to make volunteer work easy and accessible, organizers said.

Davis hosted the event along with Donovan Cook '66, director of development for Bring Me A Book. The pair began by giving the volunteers a brief tour around the headquarters and updating the volunteers on their latest plans.

The organizers mentioned projects including the recent distribution of Karen Ehrhardt's This Jazz Man to Oakland Public Schools like the Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School and the recent openings of Bring Me A Book in places such as Hong Kong, Malawi, Mexico and the Philippines.

Hero Image
Dennis ArroyoWeb
All News button
1

Cross-Coupling of International and National Law. Gender Labor Market Non-Discrimination Legislation 1958 - 2005

-

Before coming to CDDRL, Miriam Abu Sharkh was employed at the United Nation's specialized agency for work, the International Labour Organization, in Geneva, Switzerland. As the People's Security Coordinator (P4), she analyzed and managed large household surveys from Argentina to Sri Lanka. She also worked on the Report on the World Social Situation for the United Nation's Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York. Previously, she had also been a consultant for the German national development agency (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ) in Germany where she focused on integrating core labor standards into German technical cooperation.

She has written on the spread and effect of human rights related labour standards as well as on welfare regimes, gender discrimination, child labour, social movements and work satisfaction.

Currently, she holds a grant by the German National Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to study the evolvement of worldwide patterns of gender discrimination in the labor market, specifically the effects of international treaties. These questions are addressed in longitudinal, cross-national studies from the 1950´s to today.

This research builds on her previous work as a Post-doctoral Fellow at CDDRL as well as her dissertation on child labor for which she received a "Summa cum Laude" ( Freie Universität Berlin, Germany-joint dissertation committee with Stanford University). After discussing various labor standard initiatives, the dissertation analyzes when and why countries ratify the International Labour Organization's Minimum Age Convention outlawing child labour via event history models. It then examines the effect of ratification on child labor rates over three decades through a panel analyses. While her dissertation employed quantitative methods, her Diplom thesis (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) builds on extensive fieldwork in South Africa examining the genesis, strategies, and structures of the South African women's movement.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Miriam Abu Sharkh

John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building
Stanford, CA 94305

0
Visiting Scholar 2007-2010
Miriam_web.jpg PhD

Before coming to CDDRL, Miriam Abu Sharkh was employed at the United Nation's specialized agency for work, the International Labour Organization, in Geneva, Switzerland. As the People's Security Coordinator (P4), she analyzed and managed large household surveys from Argentina to Sri Lanka. She also worked on the Report on the World Social Situation for the United Nation's Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York. Previously, she had also been a consultant for the German national development agency (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ) in Germany where she focused on integrating core labor standards into German technical cooperation.

She has written on the spread and effect of human rights related labour standards as well as on welfare regimes, gender discrimination, child labour, social movements and work satisfaction.

Currently, she holds a grant by the German National Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to study the evolvement of worldwide patterns of gender discrimination in the labor market, specifically the effects of international treaties. These questions are addressed in longitudinal, cross-national studies from the 1950´s to today.

This research builds on her previous work as a Post-doctoral Fellow at CDDRL as well as her dissertation on child labor for which she received a "Summa cum Laude" ( Freie Universität Berlin, Germany-joint dissertation committee with Stanford University). After discussing various labor standard initiatives, the dissertation analyzes when and why countries ratify the International Labour Organization's Minimum Age Convention outlawing child labour via event history models. It then examines the effect of ratification on child labor rates over three decades through a panel analyses. While her dissertation employed quantitative methods, her Diplom thesis (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) builds on extensive fieldwork in South Africa examining the genesis, strategies, and structures of the South African women's movement.

She has traveled extensity, both professionally and privately, loves to dive and sail and speaks German, Spanish and French as well as rudimentary Arabic.

Her current research interests include labor related international human rights, especially child labour and (non-)discrimination, social movements and work satisfaction.

Miriam Abu Sharkh Visiting Scholar Speaker CDDRL
Seminars
Subscribe to Sub-Saharan Africa