Stanford University

Conference in Jerusalem engages European, US, and Middle East scholars on democracy

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The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies is proud to announce its major international conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” (May 18-19, 2011, Jerusalem).  This conference – co-sponsored and hosted by the Center’s project partner, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute – is designed to engage global, profound, and heretofore considered intractible problems of divided societies, as well as today’s crises events of the Arab world in the greater Middle East and North Africa.  With US, European, and NATO command forces engaged in the region, The Europe Center recognizes shared concern across the transatlantic community, and brings its Stanford senior research affiliates as well as international partner scholars to illuminate the immediate as well as long-term points of contention, and prospects for meaningful peace and reconciliation.

The Europe Center’s conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” includes
sessions on the following critical subjects:

  • In Search of What Democracy Is and Should Be: Contemporary Challenges to democratic ideas/formations
  • Institutional Forms of Contemporary Democracies: Translating Democratic Theory into Practice
  • The Challenge of Managing Diversity in Contemporary Democracies
  • Civil Societies and Democratic Quality and Efficacy
  • Democracy and Development
  • Democratic Transitions and Recessions: The International Dimension 

The participants include leading scholars and policy analysts:

  • Dan Banik, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo
  • Bashir Bashir, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
  • Nancy Bermeo, Nuffield College, Oxford University
  • Naomi Chazan, Hebrew University, Academic College of Tel Aviv Yafo
  • Amir Eshel, Stanford University, The Europe Center, FSI
  • Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University FSI
  • Ruth Gavison, Hebrew University Jerusalem, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
  • Amal Jamal, Tel Aviv University
  • Michael Karayanni, The Sacher Institute, Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University
  • Jeffrey Kopstein, University of Toronto
  • Stephen Krasner, Stanford University FSI
  • Leonardo Morlino, University of Florence
  • Gabriel Motzkin, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, University of Jerusalem
  • Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Stanford University FSI
  • Ramzi Suleiman, University of Haifa
  • Laurence Whitehead, Nuffield College, Oxford University

The Europe Center’s conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” is co-developed by Michael Karayanni and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, and co-sponsored by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.  The conference is one of The Europe Center’s international partner projects run within the Center’s larger and multi-year program on “Reconciliation".

This project is conceived to address subjects of contention, and potentially reconciliation, in divided societies.  The multi-year collaborative project is designed to develop, in successive stages, a full range of programming including international workshops, publications, and scholar exchange.  Sponsored work will benefit scholarly, policy-oriented, and cultural relations.  We especially seek to support the work of colleagues from a wide range of fields including the humanities, social sciences, law, business, and education.  

Further information on The Europe Center’s multi-year program on “Reconciliation” may be found here.

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The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

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Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their citizens. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today's developing countries-with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

In The Origins of Political Order, Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last Man, provides a sweeping account of how today's basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of a rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution.

Drawing on a vast body of knowledge-history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics-Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics.

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Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux
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Francis Fukuyama
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978-0-374-22734-0

Steven Zipperstein

Department of History
Building 200, Room 11
Stanford, CA 94305-2024

(650) 725-5560 (650) 725-0597
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Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History
Professor of History
Zipperstein_Web.jpg PhD

Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He has also taught at universities in Russia, Poland, France, and Israel; for six years he taught Jewish history at Oxford University. From 1991-2007, he was Director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford. Zipperstein is the author and editor of nine books including The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History (1986, winner of the Smilen Prize for the Outstanding book in Jewish history); Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (1993, winner of the National Jewish Book Award); Imagining Russian Jewry (1999); and Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing (2008, shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award in Biography, Autobiography and Memoir).  His work has been translated into Russian, Hebrew, and French. Zipperstein’s latest book, Pogrom:  Kishinev and the Tilt of History, published by Liveright/W. W. Norton in 2018, has been widely reviewed in newspapers and magazines in the United States and England including The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New Statesman, Literary Review, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The Economist, Ha-Aretz, San Francisco Chronicle and Mosaic Magazine have named it one of the best books of the year.  It was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award (History) and Mark Lynton award for the best non-fiction book of 2018. 

He has been awarded the Leviant Prize of the Modern Language Association, the Judah Magnes Gold Medal of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, and the Koret Prize for Outstanding Contributions to the American Jewish community.  He has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Yitzhak Rabin Institute in Tel Aviv, and has twice been a Visiting Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sciences Sociales.  In spring 2014, he was the first Jacob Kronhill Scholar at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, in New York. At Stanford, and earlier at Oxford and UCLA, he has supervised the dissertation work of more than thirty students now teaching at universities and colleges in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere.  He has delivered keynote addresses and endowed lectures at several dozen universities in the United States and abroad including the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Central European University, Budapest; Emory; UCLA; University of Wisconsin, Madison; Vanderbilt, and the National Yiddish Book Center. 

Zipperstein’s articles have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, the Washington Post, The New Republic, the Jewish Review of Books, Chronicle of Higher Education and in many scholarly journals.  He was an editor of Jewish Social Studies for twenty years, and the book series Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture for a quarter of a century.  He is immediate past Chair of the Academic Council of the Center for Jewish History, in New York. Together with Anita Shapira, he is series editor of the Yale University Press/Leon Black Foundation Jewish Lives volumes that were named in 2015 the best books of the year by the National Jewish Book Council -- the first time a book series has won this prize. Some forty-five Jewish Lives books have already appeared, and Zipperstein is currently at work on a biography of Philip Roth for the series.  He and his wife Susan Berrin live in Berkeley.  

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center

Egyptian activists and scholars connect in digital townhall

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On April 4, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law in collaboration with the Cloud to Street project held a digital townhall meeting connecting three Egyptian  pro-democracy activists with scholars at Stanford, Harvard, and the University of British Columbia. The web-based platform allowed virtual participants to see and hear from activists broadcast live from Tahrir Lounge in the epicenter of the January 25 movement, which shook Mubarak from three decades of rule. The Egyptian activists, Sabah Hamomou, Mona Shahien, and Adbel Rahman Faris, provided personal testimony to how political action and technology combined to produce such explosive results.

The Cloud to Street project includes CDDRL visiting scholar Ben Rowswell and a team of experienced diplomats and academics from the University of British Columbia and Harvard. The Cloud to Street team deployed to Egypt two weeks ago on a fact-finding mission to connect with activists, listen to their stories, and assess their needs as they begin to construct the foundations of a democratic state. Rowswell moderated the 90-minute virtual session that included 35 virtual participants who posed questions and provided comments through a live chat tool, sparking a conversation amongst the online community.

The session began with Rowswell asking the activists about how they became involved in the events leading up to the revolution. Shahien, a founder of the Revolutionary Youth Union and a shadow minister for the Reform and Development party, confided that she had never intended to join the movement originally but was "downloaded" as an activist after responding to an advertisement on Facebook.

Hamamou an acclaimed media journalist and blogger, joined the protests when she witnessed wave after wave of activists pass by her office. She set up a camera in Tahrir Square posting a live stream of footage on her blog, documenting the protests as they unfolded. Faris, a blogger and member of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition, used Facebook to coordinate and mobilize protests initiated by this citizen-based movement.

Hamamou responded to questions about the future of state-run media, discussing how she lobbied for the transition of al-Ahram's (Egypt's largest newspaper) overnight transition from pro-regime to pro-revolution and its attempt to make media more representative of the new Egypt. While, traditional media has played a role in the revolution, particularly when the Internet was blocked, Shahien claimed that papers have lost credibility as more people turn to online sources for accurate and uncensored reporting.

What was clear from all three leaders was the transformation of Egypt's youth from a state of political apathy to activism. "Many youth didn't want to be part of political life, it's a dirty job they don't want to be part of.  Now this is changing since January 25," said Shahien. Similarly, she added that the Revolutionary Youth Union is reaching out to women and empowering them through civic education.

The virtual chat was ablaze with questions about what is next and how academics and outsiders can be helpful (if at all) to their efforts. Faris explained, "Mubarak may have left but the regime still remains with all its corruption." He emphasized the importance of this period of transition for street-based initiatives, which should not be compromised by the rush to form political parties.

Shahien added "getting rid of Mubarak's regime will take years, we can't just exclude them, they will come back. Our role is to change the rules-journalists and political activists."

All three activists emphasized the importance of letting Egyptians shape a future democratic state for themselves, free from foreign government interference, but they welcomed exchanges with NGOs and international civil society to lend their expertise.

Hamamou described the revolution as a collective enterprise driven by secularists and Islamists alike, who worked together towards the common goal of overthrowing the regime. Looking forward, she envisioned Egypt in the same light as a "civil" (secular) country ruled by the people and separating religion from the political space. 

While, social media was successful in catalyzing this youth-led movement, it is clear that there is significant work that still needs to be done on the ground to reach the general public. In response to this challenge, Shahien launched the Tahrir Lounge project to train activists and equip them with the offline tools necessary to conduct civic education events across Egypt, particularly in rural communities. She even proposed creating a mobile application that will educate the public on their rights, civil liberties, and build awareness during the democratic transition.

Going forward, the Cloud to Street initiative and its academic partners will be working with Egyptian partners on the ground to identify ways to harness their expertise in service of Egyptian democracy activists.

For detailed information on the Cloud to Street Initiative and to read blogs, watch videos, and learn more about the activists featured in the townhall, please visit www.cloudtostreet.org or follow us on Twitter@cloudtostreet.

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"Betrayed": Performance of George Packer's 2009 play

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George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. That book, which traced America's entry into the Iraq war and the subsequent troubled occupation, won the Overseas Press Club's 2005 Cornelius Ryan Award and the Helen Bernstein Book Award of the New York Public Library, was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and was named by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of the 2005.

Betrayed
"In early 2007, George Packer published an article in The New Yorker about Iraqi interpreters who jeopardized their lives on behalf of the Americans in Iraq, with little or no U.S. protection or security. The article drew national attention to the humanitarian crisis and moral scandal. Betrayed, based on Mr. Packer's interviews in Baghdad, tells the story of three young Iraqis - two men and one woman - motivated to risk everything by America's promise of freedom. Betrayed explores the complex relationships among the Iraqis themselves, and with their American supervisor, struggling to find purpose while a country collapses around them." (coultureproject.org, where Betrayed had it's world premiere in January 2008.)

The play is directed by Rush Rehm, an actor, director, and professor of drama and of classics who publishes in the areas of Greek tragedy and contemporary politics. Along with courses on ancient theater and culture, he teaches courses on contemporary politics, the media, and U.S. imperialism. Rehm also directs and acts professionally, serving as Artistic Director of Stanford Summer Theater (SST). An activist in the peace and justice movements, Rehm is involved in anti-war and anti-imperialist actions, and in solidarity campaigns with Palestine, Cuba, East Timor, and Central America.

On Thursday, May 19, Packer will be in conversation with Tobias Wolff (English, Stanford) and Debra Satz (Philosophy, Stanford).

For more information, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War Series website

Annenberg Auditorium
435 Lasuen Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA, 94305

Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)
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