Stanford University

Jonathan Levav

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The King Philanthropies Professor of Marketing, Stanford Graduate School of Business
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Jonathan Levav is a professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business. His research is aimed at understanding consumers’ judgments and choices by using tools from experimental psychology and behavioral economics. In particular, he studies the contextual factors that influence people’s choices and judgments. His research is both basic and applied — from probability judgment to product customization decisions.

Jonathan received his PhD in marketing from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and his AB in public and international affairs from Princeton University. He is the winner of the Hillel Einhorn Young Investigator Award, awarded biennially by the Society for Judgment and Decision-Making. Prior to joining Stanford, he was a member of the faculty at Columbia Business School.

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David Cornfield

Pediatric Pulmonary and Cystic Fibrosis Clinic
770 Welch Rd Ste 380
MC 5882
Palo Alto CA 94304

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Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine
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A physician scientist, Dr. Cornfield is actively engaged in clinical medicine, teaching and research. In clinical arena, Dr. Cornfield is a Pediatrician with an active practice in both Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. In the research arena, Dr. Cornfield's lab addresses several large thematic issues. The areas of concentration include: (i) regulation of pulmonary vascular tone; (ii) oxygen sensing in the lung; (iii) biological determinants of preterm labor focusing on myometrial smooth muscle cells; (iv) developmental regulation of barrier function in the lung; and (v) the role of hypoxia-inducible factor-1 in lung development. In addition, there is an active translational research component.

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Vered Karti Shemtov

Pigott Hall, Bldg 260, Rm 214

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Eva Chernov Lokey Senior Lecturer in Hebrew Language and Literature
Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature
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Vered Karti Shemtov teaches Hebrew literature at the Department of Comparative Literature and the Middle Eastern Program at Stanford University.  She is the Director of the Hebrew Project at Stanford and the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Dibur. She previously served as the Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Jewish Studies. Some of Shemtov's publications include: Changing Rhythms: Towards a Theory of Prosody in Cultural Context (Bar Ilan Press, Israel, 2012), several co-edited issues, including: Spoken Word, Written Word: Rethinking the Representation of Speech in Literature (2015), 1948: History and Responsibility (2013), and Jewish Conceptions and Practices of Space (2005). Shemtov published numerous articles, including "Limbotopia: The “New Present”" and the "Literary Imagination" (Journal of Comparative Literature, 2018, with Elana Gomel), "A Sense of No Ending: Contemporary Literature and the Refusal to Write the Future" (Dibur Literary Jounral, 2018, with Elana Gomel), "Poetry and Dwelling: From Martin Heidegger to the Songbook of the Tent Revolution in Israel" (Prooftext). Other articles focus on the works of Amos Oz, Yehudah Amichai, Michal Govrin, A.B Yehoshua, Zruya Shalev, and an entry on “Hebrew Poetry: 1781-2010”  in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Revised Edition. Until 2019, Shemtov served as the Chair of the Literature Committee for the National Organization for Professors of Hebrew.

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Gordon Bloom

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Lecturer, Medicine - Primary Care and Population Health
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Gordon founded the Social Entrepreneurship Collaboratory (SE Labs) at Stanford, Harvard and Princeton. He teaches about the design, development and leadership of innovative social impact ventures in global health and environmental sustainability.

At Stanford, Gordon is director of the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab (SE Lab)- Human & Planetary Health and is a faculty fellow of the Center for Innovation in Global Health. He is a Lecturer in the School of Medicine, Division of Primary Care and Population Health/Dept. of Medicine, and an advisor in the Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI), and the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, and cofounder of the Stanford Sustainable Societies Lab.

At Harvard, Gordon taught jointly on the faculties of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (Health Policy & Management) and the Harvard Kennedy School (Management, Leadership & Decision Sciences) and served as an Expert-in-Residence (EiR) at the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-Lab), and affiliated faculty at the Center for Primary Care, Harvard Medical School (HMS). He was faculty director of the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab (SE Lab) for US & Global Health, an incubator course taught in a new interdisciplinary, collaborative model based at the i-Lab. He has also served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (2013-2014) at Harvard Business School in the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, on the Faculty of Arts & Sciences in the Sociology Department, at the Harvard Kennedy School, on the Leadership & Management faculty, and as a principal of the Hauser Center for Non-Profit Organizations (2004-2007). Gordon served as one of the founding faculty of the $10 million Reynolds Fellows Program in Social Entrepreneurship, a Center for Public Leadership and Harvard President’s interdisciplinary fellowship initiative that paid full tuition and stipend for graduate students from the Harvard Kennedy School, School of Public Health and Graduate School of Education.

At Princeton, Gordon served as Dean’s Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship in 2009-2010. Working together with the School of Engineering & Applied Science, the [Woodrow Wilson] School of Public & International Affairs, and the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, he launched a new set of programs and prizes in social innovation and entrepreneurship in collaboration with students, faculty and alumni.

At Stanford in 2001-2002, Gordon created the SE Lab, a Silicon Valley and technology–influenced, interdisciplinary incubator for social impact ventures and global problem solving. Gordon taught on the Public Policy Program and Urban Studies Program faculties (School of Humanities & Sciences) and served as a faculty affiliate at the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a Program Officer at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Many of the talented students and fellows in Gordon’s SE Labs have won the top awards of prestigious idea and business plan competitions, including those at Stanford, Harvard, Princeton and MIT.

Gordon is a co-author in the edited volume Frontiers in Social Innovation (N. Malhotra, ed., Harvard Business Review Press, 2022) and Social Entrepreneurship: New Models of Sustainable Social Change (A. Nicholls, ed., Oxford University Press, 2006/2008) and served as a founding member of the Oxford/Ashoka led University Network for Social Entrepreneurship. His interest in entrepreneurship is informed by work in both the private and nonprofit sectors in the U.S. (New York, Cambridge, Palo Alto), Europe (London, Paris) and Asia (Hong Kong), as CEO of a medical technology company (EDAP Technomed, USA) and in international strategy consulting (Bain & Co. Ltd.).

Gordon is married to Sara Singer- they on occasion teach together at Stanford, have a daughter Audrey and son Jason, and live in the Frenchman's Hill residential section of campus.

Co-founder, Stanford Sustainable Societies Lab
Director, Stanford Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab (SE Lab)- Human & Planetary Health
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Trading Stocks and Trusting Others

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Motivation & Summary


Social, political, and religious polarization has steadily grown in many longstanding democracies. Some elected representatives and voters have come to view their opponents as illegitimate participants in politics who pose an existential threat to the nation-state; this justifies ignoring or violating democratic norms and procedures to prevent them from gaining power. As polarization increases, voters may prefer to support authoritarian parties that are viewed as better expressing their group identities, as opposed to democratic parties seen as hostile to those identities.

Trust lies at the root of these processes: polarized individuals tend to believe that those who differ from them will not act from a place of goodwill and will lack the incentive to promote their interests. Revitalizing democracy would thus seem to require revitalizing trust. Yet one’s sense of trust is often shaped by factors that are difficult to change, such as childhood socialization. How, then, can trust be increased?

In “Financial market exposure increases generalized trust,” Saumitra Jha, Moses Shayo, and Chagai M. Weiss provide evidence from an experiment conducted among Israelis in 2015. The authors find that individuals who participated in the stock market were more likely to agree with the statement that “most people can be trusted.”

Their argument builds on the intuition that stock markets are fundamentally about trust: investors take a risk by placing their assets in the hands of unfamiliar people who nonetheless have an incentive to promote their interests. As these assets grow, participants ought to become more trusting, not only of financial markets but also of people more generally. Surprisingly, the authors find that even those whose assets did not grow became more trusting. Another surprise is that the increases in trust were higher for Israelis on the political left and right. In other words, polarized voters — those who especially struggle to trust others — exhibited greater increases in trust than centrists.

Prior Research


Social scientists have analyzed trust as both a cause and a consequence. Much of this research concerns the economy, as transactions, contracts, and negotiations all require the belief that other parties will honor their commitments. Higher levels of trust may be a cause of higher economic growth. Conversely, consumers tend to distrust firms that are subject to scandals, leading the corresponding value of those stocks to decrease.

Apart from the economy, trust is also a central aspect of ‘social capital,’ which consists of the resources gained from one’s social networks. Trust can also promote good governance by enabling collective action and by providing legitimacy to political institutions. And as Americans and others learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, trust is central to public health compliance.

Survey research has identified a persistent trust deficit; less than a quarter of respondents to the World Values Survey agree with the statement that “most people can be trusted.” This deficit has many root causes. At the personal and psychological level, one’s sense of trust likely develops in childhood. Meanwhile, people who have experienced trauma or discrimination are less likely to trust others. Whether or not two people are from the same country or the same ethnic or religious group also affects their sense of trust. Those whose ancestors were victims of the African slave trade centuries ago exhibit lower levels of trust today. People in economically unequal societies are also less likely to trust each other. All of this suggests that improving trust is very difficult, especially in polarized societies.
 

 

Fig. 1. Generalized trust around the world. (a) Geographic Distribution of Generalized Trust

Fig. 1. Generalized trust around the world. (a) Geographic Distribution of Generalized Trust. This figure reports cross-national patterns of generalized trust from the World Values Survey (Wave 7). For each country, we report the share of respondents who state that most people can be trusted. Since Israel is not included in the most recent wave of the World Value Survey, the figure shows generalized trust data from the 2004 World Value Survey.


The Experiment


Studying whether stock market participation affects trust is difficult because participation is itself correlated with pre-existing levels of trust, as well as with other relevant factors like gender or personality traits (such as excitability). The authors’ experimental methodology seeks to overcome this by randomly allocating a large number of participants (over 1300) into treatment and control groups. Prior to this allocation, the authors conducted a survey to establish participants’ baseline levels of trust.

Those in the treatment group participated in an additional survey that explained the study rules as well as how their asset values would be determined on the stock market, quizzing them on these topics afterwards. Participants were given either $50 or $100 (USD), which was between 64% and 128% of the average Israeli daily wage in 2015.

Stock market participants received weekly updates on the prices of their assigned assets, along with a description and valuation of their portfolio, when the markets closed at the end of each week. Individuals in the treatment group were given weekly opportunities to decide whether to buy up to 10% of their portfolio, sell up to 10% of it, or make no change. (If no decision was made, they lost the 10% that could have been traded.) Participants ultimately traded at high levels: around 70% did so at every opportunity, and 80% did so in six out of the seven weeks.

As stated above, participation increased the probability of expressing trust by around six percentage points. These effects were largest for polarized voters and for those whose stocks performed well; however, even those who suffered market losses exhibited increases in trust.
 

 

Table 1. Trading Stock Increases Generalized Trust (Weighted) Outcome: Generalized Trust (0/1).

 


The authors carefully show how trust can be not only a cause but a consequence of stock market participation. Their approach is not paternalistic because it lets participants make independent financial decisions — as opposed to lecturing them — from which trusting attitudes then develop. In addition, the study can be replicated on a large scale because (a) it can be integrated within existing government cash aid programs and (b) participants would not need much special teaching or supervision. The authors’ approach should appeal to both those who seek solutions that promote equality and empowerment and to those who oppose top-down social programs but support market-driven solutions.

*Research-in-Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

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Forex trading using smartphones and laptops. Marga Santoso via Unsplash
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Book Launch | Explaining Israel: The Jewish State, the Middle East, and America, by Peter Berkowitz

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Peter Berkowitz book launch

Join the Israel Studies Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Hoover Institution for the launch of Peter Berkowitz's new book, Explaining Israel: The Jewish State, the Middle East, and America, at Shultz Auditorium on Wednesday, October 29, from 4:00 - 5:30 PM, followed by a reception from 5:30 - 6:30 PM.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In this collection of 40 columns written for RealClearPolitics between 2014 and 2024, Peter Berkowitz explains Israel by reporting events, examining ideas, and placing both in their larger geopolitical context.

The senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution draws on the great Israeli mosaic of people, opinions, and aspirations to illuminate the domestic politics, diplomatic and national security imperatives, and multivalent spirit of the Middle East’s only rights-protecting democracy.

The carefully curated collection of essays in Explaining Israel demonstrates that to understand the Jewish state, it is necessary to appreciate the nation’s accomplishments and setbacks, the sources of its political cohesiveness and the forces dividing it, and the splendid opportunities and grave threats that it confronts.

The essays commence with Israel in 2014 at the height of its prosperity and self-confidence. They explore intensifying schisms inside the country and gathering dangers on its borders and throughout the region. And they culminate in penetrating analyses of the two crises that struck Israel in 2023. In January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sweeping judicial reform proposals set off bitter controversy and months of massive protests. Then on October 7, Iran-backed Hamas jihadists invaded Israel, massacred some 1,200 people, and kidnapped around 250, enmeshing Israel in a seven-front war against Iran and its regional proxies.

Berkowitz’s essays clarify the breathtaking achievements, the heartbreak, and the remarkable resilience of a nation struggling valiantly to be Jewish, free, and democratic in a dangerous region crucial to America’s interests.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also a columnist for RealClearPolitics and serves as director of studies for The Public Interest Fellowship. From 2019 to 2021, he served as the director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, executive secretary of the department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, and senior advisor to the secretary of state. Berkowitz is a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters and a 2017 recipient of the Bradley Prize. He is the author of Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation; Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War; Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism; and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist. In addition, Berkowitz is the editor of seven collections of essays on political ideas and institutions and has written hundreds of articles, essays, and reviews on a range of subjects for a variety of publications.

Larry Diamond
Larry Diamond
Amichai Magen
Amichai Magen

Shultz Auditorium, Hoover Institution (426 Galvez Mall, Stanford)

Registration required.

Peter Berkowitz
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Ambassador Kerim Uras — The Israel-Syria-Turkey Triangle: Where Do We Go From Here?

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The Israel-Syria-Turkey Triangle: Where Do We Go From Here?

The Israel-Syria-Turkey triangle has long been shaped by a mix of historical grievances, shifting alliances, and pressing security concerns. Today, the region faces overlapping crises—from the Syrian conflict and its humanitarian toll, to Israel’s evolving regional posture, to Turkey’s delicate balancing between strategic interests and domestic imperatives. This seminar will examine the dynamics driving relations among the three states, focusing on how unresolved disputes intersect with new opportunities for dialogue and resolution. Particular attention will be given to the fault-lines, the influence of external powers, energy and water security, and the role of regional normalization efforts. The central question remains: can pragmatic cooperation overcome entrenched mistrust, or will the region remain locked in cycles of confrontation? The seminar will outline potential scenarios and policy pathways to navigate this volatile triangle toward greater stability.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Kerim Uras graduated from Ankara University, Political Science Faculty, International Relations Department in 1985 and completed his master's degree from Ankara University on Iraq and its Ethnic Structure in 1987. Starting his career in 1985 in the Cyprus Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara, Uras carried out various diplomatic missions abroad, in Germany-Hannover, Cyprus, London, and New York UN, in addition to working at the Cyprus-Greece, Middle East, Europe, and NATO Departments in Capital. He served as Ambassador-designate to Israel while residing in Ankara (due to the Mavi Marmara incident) between 2010 and 2011. Kerim Uras served as Turkish Ambassador to Greece between 2011 and 2016. In Ankara, he served as Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of Türkiye and as a Member of the Foreign Policy Board from 2016 to 2018. He served as Turkish Ambassador to Canada between 2018 and 2023 and retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Kerim Uras has been working as Advisor to the Chairman at Çalık Holding and is Honorary Fellow at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, in NPSIA-MTS as of 2023. He is married with three children. 

Amichai Magen
Amichai Magen
Ali Yaycioglu

Registration required. Virtual to Public. If prompted for a password, use: 123456.
Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina Hall C231 (William J. Perry Conference Room) may attend in person. 

Kerim Uras
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Israel Studies
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Israel Insights Webinar with Masua Sagiv — Who Stands for Democracy? Understanding Israel's Constitutional Crisis

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Historically, external threats have tended to unite Israelis and impose a measure of national cohesion on its fractured politics. Yet two years after the worst external attack in the country's history, and in the face of multiple external challenges, Israel is internally divided as never before. Indeed, the country can now be said to be in the midst of a constitutional crisis centered on competing interpretations of democracy and Jewish identity. Few scholars are better placed to analyze this crisis than Dr. Masua Sagiv, a leading analyst of Israeli political culture and constitutional order. Join Amichai Magen in conversation with Masua Sagiv.

Dr. Masua Sagiv is Senior Faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute and Senior Fellow at the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley School of Law. Masua’s scholarly work focuses on the development of contemporary Judaism in Israel, as a culture, religion, nationality, and as part of Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. Her research explores the role of law, state actors, and civil society organizations in promoting social change across diverse issues: shared society, religion and gender, religion and state, and Jewish peoplehood. Her recently published book Radical Conservatism (Carmel, 2024) examines the use of law in the Halachic Feminist struggle in Israel.

Virtual Event Only.

Amichai Magen
Amichai Magen

Virtual Only Event.

Masua Sagiv
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Israel Insights Webinar with Oded Ailam — Hamas, Israel, and the West: Why This Conflict Matters Far Beyond Gaza

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The 2023-25 Hamas-Israel war proved to be not only the longest war in Israel's history but, remarkably, given that Hamas is a non-state terrorist organization, a war with profound regional consequences. As multiple regional and global actors seek to influence the "day after" in Gaza for their own strategic interests, questions about the broader meaning and implications of the Gaza-centered conflict assume greater international importance. The war has catalyzed a series of regional and global shifts, exposing the limits of external actors, testing the resilience of long-standing alliances, and reshaping the strategic landscape of the Middle East. In this timely conversation, moderated by Or Rabinowitz, Oded Ailam, former head of the Mossad’s Counterterrorism Division, will offer an in-depth analysis of how the Hamas-Israel war continues to reverberate across the region and beyond.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Oded Ailam is a seasoned security and intelligence expert with a career spanning over two decades in Israel’s elite intelligence agency the Mossad. Among his many high-ranking roles, he was the director of the Mossad’s Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC). After retiring from the Mossad, Ailam transitioned into the private sector, offering security and strategic consulting services. Ailam is frequently invited to lecture at international conferences. His insights are regularly featured on FOX News, CNN, Newsmax, The Washington Post, Newsweek, as well as most of the major European media. Ailam writes regularly in Israel Hayom newspaper and other international outlets and appears regularly on prime-time television in Israel.  Ailam is a senior researcher in the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), and an advising analyst to FDD, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. Ailam is a graduate of Ben-Gurion University, where he earned a degree in Industrial Engineering and Management. He also founded a company specializing in industrial quality control solutions. He published his first short novel, a bestseller in Israel. He is a writer and contributor to scripts in Hollywood, France, and Israel, bringing his expertise in espionage and security to the world of storytelling.

Virtual Event Only.

Or Rabinowitz

Virtual Only Event.

Oded Ailam
Seminars

Wednesday, February 25, 10:00 am PT. Click to register.

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Israel Insights Webinar with Karnit Flug — The Israeli Economy: Quo Vadis?

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Professor Karnit Flug served the the Governor of the Bank of Israel from 2013 to 2018, overseeing the stability of the country's financial system and advising the Israeli government on economic policy, taxation, and growth strategies. In a career spanning four decades, Professor Flug has gained an unparalled insider's view into the stucture, strengths, vulnerabilities, and possible trajectories of the Israeli economy. After two years of war and growing international challenges, where is the Israeli economy now and where might it be going? Join Amichai Magen in conversation with Karnit Flug. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Karnit Flug is the William Davidson Senior Fellow for Economic Policy at the Center for Governance and the Economy at the Israel Democracy Institute. After she completed her five-year term as Governor of the Bank of Israel in 2018, she joined the Department of Economics at Hebrew University. Prior to her appointment as Governor, Flug was the Bank of Israel’s Deputy Governor. Previously, Flug was Director of the Research Department and Chief Economist of the Bank of Israel. She published numerous papers on macroeconomic policies, the labor market, balance of payments and social policies. She was an economist at the International Monetary Fund, before returning to Israel to join the Research Department of the Bank of Israel. She also worked at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington D.C. as a Senior Research Economist. She served on a number of public and government committees, including the Committee on Increasing Competitiveness in the Economy, the Committee for Social and Economic Change ("the Trajtenberg Committee"), the Defense Budget. Flug received her M.A. (cum laude) in Economics from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University.

Virtual Event Only.

Amichai Magen
Amichai Magen

Virtual Only Event.

Karnit Flug
Seminars

Join us for our next webinar with Karnit Flug, the William Davidson Senior Fellow for Economic Policy at the Center for Governance and the Economy at the Israel Democracy Institute, on Wednesday, February 11, at 10:00 am PT.

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