"America, born with the aspiration of becoming “a city on a hill,” faces the serious danger of becoming a fortress, deluded in the belief that walls and airport detention rooms will offer security and prosperity. Through hard work, entrepreneurship, and complete allegiance to their adopted country, generations of immigrants helped create the most prosperous, powerful, and open society in human history. Throughout American history, but especially in the last two decades, immigrants have risen to the forefront of the country’s business, technology, science, and culture. But now the United States runs the risk not only of gravely damaging its competitive edge but also undermining its security by shutting its doors to a broad group of people whose cooperation America needs, both for economic growth and to win the war on terror," write Abbas Milani, Larry Diamond and Michael McFaul in The Atlantic. Read the article here.

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University collaborates widely with academics, policymakers and practitioners around the world to advance knowledge and practice about democracy, broad-based economic development, human rights, and the rule of law. We are deeply concerned by the recent executive order on immigration issued by the new administration. This order impacts members of our community - students, practitioners, academics, and visitors - who come to Stanford to attend our training programs, conferences and conduct research. Ultimately, barring entry into the country of citizens from a specific set of countries compromises the quality of our research, programming and intellectual activities. It also violates our shared values and integrity as an academic research institute.

CDDRL is currently in the process of reviewing the applications for our 2017 Draper Hills Summer Fellowship program and we want to assure everyone that each applicant will be equally considered, regardless of their country of origin.

In over a decade of working and training democracy activists from all over the world – including Muslim majority countries – we have developed friendships with colleagues who are working against great odds to build democratic institutions. The overwhelming majority is risking their lives to do so. These fellows together with students and researchers challenge our theories about democratic development and help inspire new projects and ideas to enrich our research agenda, not only for our center, but also for our broader institute - The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

We will continue to build our relationships equally with all countries around the world regardless of this new policy, and will stand in solidarity with those who are targeted by the adverse effects. The one lesson that recent events have conveyed is the resounding importance of the work we do to understand how countries become just, democratic and well-governed states.

"As an American citizen, I have been rather appalled, like many others, at the rise of Donald Trump. I find it hard to imagine a personality less suited by temperament and background to be the leader of the world’s foremost democracy. On the other hand, as a political scientist, I am looking ahead to his presidency with great interest, since it will be a fascinating test of how strong American institutions are," writes CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama in his article in Politico Magazine from January 23. Read the article here.

"The book on Trump is still not written. We must to await the coming months to see which man, the deal-maker or the extremist, comes to the fore. But Trump’s victory also represents the latest stage in a global shift toward populist nationalism, a pattern whose meaning is starting to become frighteningly clear," writes our Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama in Prospect Magazine. Read the article here.

"One mistake was to discount Russia’s importance in international affairs. The U.S. became engrossed in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, thinking that Russia was weak, and generally unimportant. Under President George W. Bush, the U.S. assumed that the world was unipolar after the Cold War, and that it would always be so," writes Kathryn Stoner, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and faculty director of the Ford Dorsey Program on International Policy Studies at Stanford for the New York Times "Room for Debate". Read the article here.

"I don't think anyone, including many in the media themselves, would say that they are somehow completely political neutral, but a much deeper assertion was made where even factual statements and fact-checking done by organizations like the New York Times or CNN were called into question, and they were called into question by people purporting to put forward facts that really had no actual empirical basis other than the fact that someone had said it on the Internet," says CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama.