Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room C309
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Tim Forsyth joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2012–13 academic year from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he is a reader in environment and development at the Department of International Development.
His research interests encompass environmental governance, with particular reference to Southeast Asia. The main focus is in implementing global environmental policy with greater awareness of local development needs, and in investigating the institutional design of local policy that can enhance livelihoods as well as mitigate climate change. Fluent in Thai, Forsyth has worked in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. He will use his time at Shorenstein APARC to study how global expertise on climate change mitigation is adopted and reshaped according to development agendas in Southeast Asia.
Forsyth is on the editorial advisory boards of Global Environmental Politics, Progress in Development Studies, Critical Policy Studies, Social Movement Studies, and Conservation and Society. He has published widely, including recent papers in World Development and Geoforum.He is also the author of Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science (2003); Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: the Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand (2008, with Andrew Walker); and editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of International Development(2005, 2011).
Forsyth holds a PhD in development from the University of London, and a BA in geography from the University of Oxford.
This event is presented by CDDRL and the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy
Esraa Abdel Fattah is Vice-Chairman at the Egyptian Democratic Academy.
* Founder of Free Egyptian Woman, a group for women’s political empowerment.
* Columnist at El- Masrey-Al-Youm newspaper, the most widely distributed, privately owned newspaper in Egypt, and has her own talk show on channel “On TV Life " every weekend.
* Co-founded April 6 General Strike Egypt in 2008, a Facebook group, to promote a day of civil disobedience calling for workers to stay home in protest against low wages and soaring food prices. After being dubbed the social-networking phenomenon “Facebook Girl”, she was detained by Egyptian security and spent two weeks in prison.
* Political Activist, played a leading role in the mass protests in Tahrir Square during the 25th January Revolution. She was not only active on the Internet, but also on the ground, updating Al Jazeera TV with the latest news related to the opposition.
* Named Woman of the Year 2011 by Glamour Magazine for her leadership in organizing the historic Tahrir Square movement in Egypt.
* Named as one of Arabian Business Magazine's 100 most powerful Arab women in 2011 & 2012.
* Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, 2011.
* Co-Founder and member of the Steering Committee in ElDostor Party , 2012.
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Philippines Conference Room
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday urged Stanford students to become global citizens, working together beyond borders for peace, security and a common prosperity.
"You may come from the United States or Korea, Japan or elsewhere, Arab countries, but you're now part of a global family," Ban said to a crowded auditorium during his campus visit. "Therefore, it's very important to raise your capacity as global citizens. Only then, I think we can say, we're living in a very harmoniously prosperous world."
Despite a troubling tally of crises around the world, Ban was hopeful about the future, and said he gains inspiration from the younger generation.
"Everything my life has taught me points to the power of international solidarity to overcome any obstacle," he said.
Ban's speech, sponsored by Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, kicked off a series of events celebrating the 30th anniversary of the center.
Ban was introduced by former Secretary of Defense William Perry, an FSI senior fellow, who lauded Ban for his work on women's rights, climate change, nuclear disarmament and gay rights.
Ban told the audience that the world was undergoing massive changes and outlined three ways to navigate the transition: sustainable development, empowering young people and women, and pursuing dignity and democracy.
"The level and degree of global change that we face today is far more profound than at any other period in my adult lifetime," he said.
"We have no time to lose," he added later.
California, he said, has led on clean air legislation, creating a cap-and-trade law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"I am convinced national and state action can spur progress in global negotiations, creating a virtuous cycle," he said.
Sustainable development, Ban said, goes hand in hand with creating peace. Noting the problems in North Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria, he said a country cannot be developed if there is no peace and security.
"Syria is in a death spiral," he said. He cited the toll the conflict has taken on Syria's citizens and surrounding countries since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. More than 60,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed. Hundreds of thousands more have been displaced.
Ban spoke at Stanford as a hostage crisis also unfolded in the region.
In retaliation for military action by France in the West African nation of Mali, Islamist extremists in Algeria took several hostages at an international gas field Thursday. News organizations reported that the kidnappers and some hostages were killed in a raid by the Algerian government.
Ban spoke of the efforts by the United Nations to counter terrorism in Mali, where Islamist rebels last year took control in the north in the chaos following a military coup that ousted the elected government of President Amadou Toumani Touré.
"We must continue to work for peace," Ban said. "Our hard work cannot be reversed, especially for women and young people."
With half the world's population under the age of 25, Ban said the international community must support and empower that group.
Ban also said that fighting for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities was important in advancing peace and prosperity around the world.
"I have learned to speak out for one essential reason," he said. "Lives and fundamental values are at stake."
Ban told the students to harness a spirit of hope as they confront the challenges of the world.
For him, he said, that spirit was sparked by a visit to California decades ago. He reflected on an eight-day visit to the state in 1962, when he stayed with a family, the Pattersons, in Novato on a trip sponsored by the Red Cross.
"In many ways, I still carry the same energy and enthusiasm and sense of wonder that I did when I first landed on Miss Patterson's doorstep half a century ago," he said.
"I came back knowing what I wanted to do with my life and for my country," he said.
Ban said he still keeps in touch with his host, his "American mom," 95-year-old Libba Patterson, who was in the audience and stood to applause.
"It was here in California," he reflected to the students, "that I first felt I could grab the stars from the sky."
CISAC Conference Room
Whitfield Diffie is a consulting scholar at CISAC. He was a visiting scholar in 2009-2010 and an affiliate from 2010-2012. He is best known for the discovery of the concept of public key cryptography, in 1975, which he developed along with Stanford University Electrical Engineering Professor Martin Hellman. Public key cryptography, which revolutionized not only cryptography but also the cryptographic community, now underlies the security of internet commerce.
During the 1980s, Diffie served as manager of secure systems research at Northern Telecom. In 1991, he joined Sun Microsystems as distinguished engineer and remained as Sun fellow and chief security officer until the spring of 2009.
Diffie spent the 1990s working to protect the individual and business right to use encryption, for which he argues in the book Privacy on the Line, the Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption, which he wrote jointly with Susan Landau. Diffie is a Marconi fellow and the recipient of a number of awards including the National Computer Systems Security Award (given jointly by NIST and NSA) and the Franklin Institute's Levy Prize.
CISAC Conference Room
This book originated in a conference on "Liberation Technology in Authoritarian Regimes" held at Stanford University in Oct. 2010.
The revolutions sweeping the Middle East provide dramatic evidence of the role that technology plays in mobilizing citizen protest and upending seemingly invulnerable authoritarian regimes. A grainy cell phone video of a Tunisian street vendor’s self-immolation helped spark the massive protests that toppled longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Egypt’s "Facebook revolution" forced the ruling regime out of power and into exile.
While such "liberation technology" has been instrumental in freeing Egypt and Tunisia, other cases—such as China and Iran—demonstrate that it can be deployed just as effectively by authoritarian regimes seeking to control the Internet, stifle protest, and target dissenters. This two-sided dynamic has set off an intense technological race between "netizens" demanding freedom and authoritarians determined to retain their grip on power.
Liberation Technology brings together cutting-edge scholarship from scholars and practitioners at the forefront of this burgeoning field of study. An introductory section defines the debate with a foundational piece on liberation technology and is then followed by essays discussing the popular dichotomy of "liberation" versus "control" with regard to the Internet and the sociopolitical dimensions of such controls. Additional chapters delve into the cases of individual countries: China, Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia.
This book also includes in-depth analysis of specific technologies such as Ushahidi—a platform developed to document human-rights abuses in the wake of Kenya’s 2007 elections—and alkasir—a tool that has been used widely throughout the Middle East to circumvent cyber-censorship.
Liberation Technology will prove an essential resource for all students seeking to understand the intersection of information and communications technology and the global struggle for democracy.
Contributors: Walid Al-Saqaf, Daniel Calingaert, Ronald Deibert, Larry Diamond, Elham Gheytanchi, Philip N. Howard, Muzammil M. Hussain, Rebecca MacKinnon, Patrick Meier, Evgeny Morozov, Xiao Qiang, Rafal Rohozinski, Mehdi Yahyanejad
