The CDDRL Spring seminar series will be open to the Stanford community via Zoom and will be recorded for the general public to watch later.
Online, via Zoom: REGISTER
Speaker Bio:
In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author or co-editor of five books: "Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective," written and edited with Michael A. McFaul (Johns Hopkins 2013); "Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World," co-edited with Valerie Bunce and Michael A. McFaul (Cambridge, 2010); "Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia" (Cambridge, 2006); "After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions" (Cambridge, 2004), coedited with Michael McFaul; and "Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional" Governance (Princeton, 1997). She is currently finishing a book project entitled "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order" (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
She received a BA (1988) and MA (1989) in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (1995). In 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Iliad State University, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.
Online, via Zoom: REGISTER
FSI
Stanford University
Encina Hall C140
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation at FSI. From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and she teaches in the Department of Political Science, and in the Program on International Relations, as well as in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.
Prior to coming to Stanford in 2004, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Princeton School for International and Public Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School). At Princeton she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.
In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author or co-editor of six books: "Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective," written and edited with Michael A. McFaul (Johns Hopkins 2013); "Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World," co-edited with Valerie Bunce and Michael A. McFaul (Cambridge, 2010); "Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia" (Cambridge, 2006); "After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions" (Cambridge, 2004), coedited with Michael McFaul; and "Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional" Governance (Princeton, 1997); and "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order" (Oxford University Press, 2021).
She received a BA (1988) and MA (1989) in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (1995). In 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Iliad State University, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
Speaker Bio:
Online, via Zoom: REGISTER
I am a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Starting in 2023, I will be an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School's Business, Government and the International Economy (BGIE) unit.
My research examines political extremism, destigmatization, and radicalization, focusing on the role of popularity cues in online media. My related research examines a broad range of threats to democratic governance, including authoritarian encroachment, ethnic prejudice in public goods allocation, and misinformation.
My dissertation won APSA's Ernst B. Haas Award for the best dissertation on European Politics. I am currently working on my book project, Engineering Extremism, with generous funding from the William F. Milton Fund at Harvard.
My published work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Governance, International Studies Quarterly, Public Administration Review, and the Virginia Journal of International Law, along with an edited volume in Democratization (Oxford University Press). My research has been featured in KQED/NPR, The Washington Post, and VICE News.
I received my Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley in 2020. I was a Predoctoral Research Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University and the Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet. I hold a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude; Phi Beta Kappa) from Cornell University and an M.A. (with Distinction) from the University of California, Berkeley.
Nancy Okail is a visiting scholar at CDDRL. She has 20 years of experience working on issues of democracy, rule of law, human rights, governance and security in the Middle East and North Africa region. She analyzes these issues and advocates in favor of human rights through testimony to legislative bodies, providing policy recommendations to senior government officials in the U.S. and Europe. She is currently the president of the board of advisors of The Tahrir Institue for Middle East Policy (TIMEP), previously she was the Institute’s executive director since its foundation. Dr. Okail was the director of Freedom House’s Egypt program. She has also worked with the Egyptian government as a senior evaluation officer of foreign aid and managed programs for several international organizations. Dr. Okail was one of the 43 nongovernmental organization workers convicted and sentenced to prison in a widely publicized 2012 case for allegedly using foreign funds to foment unrest in Egypt. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in the UK; her doctoral research focused on the power relations of foreign aid.
Online, via Zoom: REGISTER
Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication and FSI. Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, and New York, and as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. In addition to dozens of articles (many of which have been cited by the Supreme Court) on the legal regulation of political parties, issues surrounding the census and redistricting process, voting rights, and campaign finance reform, Professor Persily is also coauthor of the leading election law casebook, The Law of Democracy (Foundation Press, 5th ed., 2016), with Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan, and Richard Pildes. His current work, for which he has been honored as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration. He has edited several books, including Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy (Oxford Press, 2008); The Health Care Case: The Supreme Court’s Decision and Its Implications (Oxford Press 2013); and Solutions to Political Polarization in America (Cambridge Press, 2015). He received a B.A. and M.A. in political science from Yale (1992); a J.D. from Stanford (1998) where he was President of the Stanford Law Review, and a Ph.D. in political science from U.C. Berkeley in 2002.
Online, via Zoom: REGISTER
Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and FSI. Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. He also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. In addition to dozens of articles (many of which have been cited by the Supreme Court) on the legal regulation of political parties, issues surrounding the census and redistricting process, voting rights, and campaign finance reform, Professor Persily is coauthor of the leading election law casebook, The Law of Democracy (Foundation Press, 5th ed., 2016), with Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan, and Richard Pildes. His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration. He is codirector of the Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet, and Social Science One, a project to make available to the world’s research community privacy-protected Facebook data to study the impact of social media on democracy. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a commissioner on the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age. Along with Professor Charles Stewart III, he recently founded HealthyElections.Org (the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project) which aims to support local election officials in taking the necessary steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide safe voting options for the 2020 election. He received a B.A. and M.A. in political science from Yale (1992); a J.D. from Stanford (1998) where he was President of the Stanford Law Review, and a Ph.D. in political science from U.C. Berkeley in 2002.
Technology companies in South Korea helped tackle COVID-19. The U.S. government can incentivize U.S. tech companies do the same.
As a resident of Silicon Valley heading into our second week under the shelter in place order, what surprises me is the sudden low profile of the tech companies that dominate this area. Until just a month ago it seemed like these companies were taking over the world - churning out new products, connecting people online, providing information and news, and in turn driving equity and real estate prices to unprecedented new highs. But as the COVID-19 cases explode in the US, we rarely hear about them. Public health workers are at the frontlines fighting the war against COVID-19, and grocery stores and retailers are stepping up to the challenge of trying to maintain normalcy of life and providing for the people.
I wonder whether Apple is still pre-occupied with the development of the next iteration of the iPhone, and Google with the development for better search algorithms. Wouldn’t today’s tech companies with their vast resources, creative minds, and technical skill be able to help minimize the impact of COVID-19?
Tech companies in South Korea have played an important role in containing the spread of the virus and reducing casualties. Soon after the first COVID-19 case was confirmed within South Korea, at least four tech companies have launched apps that provide detailed information of the movement of all people who tested positive for COVID-19 – from which restaurant the person visited at what time, to the seat number the person sat in which movie theatre.
The information was collected from a variety of sources including smartphone location data and credit card transactions. The names were anonymized but providing such detailed information raised privacy concerns. However, the South Korean government was swift to declare COVID-19 a public health emergency, which ultimately gave the people the right to information for their safety, and companies to use such data. Moreover, the government allowed companies to by-pass traditional regulatory hurdles.
When Seegene, a biotech company in Seoul, used artificial intelligence to develop South Korea’s first COVID-19 test kit, it needed to get government approval for use. The approval process typically can take over a year, but the Korea Center for Disease Control approved it in a week. Though COVID-19 cases surged in South Korea soon after its first case, the aggressive testing policy and the information provided through these apps have helped South Korea to quickly “flatten the curve,” that is, slow the rate of new infections.
So why don’t we see U.S. tech companies developing new technologies and innovation that can help contain the spread of the virus, minimize the impact, and develop strategies that help people cope with the crisis? It’s because such actions would not generate immediate returns to the company. Despite the greater societal benefit of slowing down the spread of the virus, unless there are clear private returns CEOs and shareholders will be unlikely to devote their resources to fighting a virus with so much uncertainty.
In simple economics terms, it’s a classic case of market failure; and the standard remedy in cases of market failure is government intervention. The government needs to provide incentives, either through relaxing regulatory hurdles or by subsidizing research and development, to encourage tech companies to help contain the virus and minimize the impact of COVID-19 on our society. It is not an issue of big vs. small government, but governments creating the right incentives when private firms can’t easily make the right call.
The U.S. has finally taken measures in the manufacturing sector to fight COVID-19. The White House after several days of going back and forth, eventually invoked the Defense Production Act to order GM to produce ventilators. But hospitals around the country also need masks and personal protection equipment. Unlike smaller countries without a strong manufacturing base, the U.S. has the manufacturing capacity to produce these goods, if the will is there. These manufactured goods are essential for our doctors and nurses in helping patients and fighting the virus.
However, we need more innovative approaches, beyond traditional public health approaches, to fight COVID-19 and future pandemics. Tech companies, in addition to pharmaceuticals and biotech companies that are developing vaccines and cures, can play a significant role in fighting pandemics. Tech companies can use information and communication technology (ICT) to inform the public and reduce the spread of diseases, use machine learning to diagnose new diseases, predict future outbreaks and the spread of current outbreaks, and predict when and which resources would be in need in different parts of the country. Furthermore, there may be more innovative ways to tackle the virus that many of us have not yet thought of. The government can induce tech companies to actively take action by offering R&D grants and loans, providing access to critical information and data, and reducing red-tape.
The South Korean government recognized the urgency of the situation and enlisted the help of private tech firms allowing them to do what they do best with minimal red tape and access to the necessary resources. The European Union has recently put out a call for startups that are developing technologies and innovation related to COVID-19 to apply for fast-track funding.
Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent, potentially through explicit or implicit government directive, have been actively involved in fighting the COVID-19 crisis. Alibaba has deployed an AI algorithm that predicts COVID-19 from lung CT scans. The procedure only takes a few seconds, which not only substantially speeds up diagnosis but also reduces the risk of doctors and nurses being exposed to the virus. Tencent has committed over 1.5 billion Yuan (over 210 million USD) to help fight COVID-19, which will be spent on prevention and control but also on funding companies that are developing new ways to overcome the pandemic and help with the recovery.
People are sacrificing their individual rights and income. Small businesses are closing doors. All this for the good of the greater public. U.S. tech companies, together with the right push from the federal and state governments, should be able to put aside private returns and short-termism for the moment and work towards an innovative approach to mitigating the impact of today’s crisis.
Yong Suk Lee is an Economist at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Deputy Director of the Korea Program at Stanford University.
The run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election illustrated how vulnerable our most venerated journalistic outlets are to a new kind of information warfare. Reporters are a targeted adversary of foreign and domestic actors who want to harm our democracy. And to cope with this threat, especially in an election year, news organizations need to prepare for another wave of false, misleading, and hacked information. Often, the information will be newsworthy. Expecting reporters to refrain from covering news goes against core principles of American journalism and the practical business drivers that shape the intensely competitive media marketplace. In these cases, the question is not whether to report but how to do so most responsibly. Our goal is to give journalists actionable guidance.
Included in the report is the Newsroom Playbook for Propaganda Reporting and a helpful Implementing the Playbook flowchart.
David was previously the Chief Technologist of the Stanford Internet Observatory. He performs research in the areas of coordinated disinformation campaigns, the dynamics of various "alt" platforms, decentralized social media, and issues affecting online child safety. He is also a managing editor of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety.
Prior to Stanford, David worked at Facebook, primarily focusing on security and safety for Facebook Connectivity, a collection of projects aimed at providing faster and less expensive internet connectivity to unconnected or underconnected communities. Projects included the Terragraph mesh networking system, the Magma open source mobile network platform, Express Wi-Fi and Facebook Lite.
Before Facebook, David was a VP at iSEC Partners and later NCC Group, managing the North American security consulting and research team, as well as producing original security research, coordinating vulnerability disclosure and performing security assessments and penetration testing for companies across a wide range of business sectors.
David has spoken at various industry conferences, including Black Hat, DEFCON, PacSec and the Crimes Against Children Conference. He is also the author of iOS Application Security (No Starch Press) and coauthor of Mobile Application Security (McGraw-Hill).
COVID-19 presents us with both our worst public health crisis in a century and the greatest challenge to our democracy since World War II. Here is a national strategy to address both challenges, writes Larry Diamond. Read here.
The authors of “The End of History” and “Reading Lolita in Tehran” discuss coronavirus, Iran, James Baldwin, campus culture, and why imagination and literature are essential to combatting authoritarianism. Read here.
