This series will examine scholarly and institutional efforts to create new national narratives that walk the fine line between before and after, memory and truth, compensation and reconciliation, justice and peace.
The lecture is preceded by a workshop at 10am in the same location. For additional information please access the DLCL site listing here.
Margaret Jacks Hall (Building 460)
Terrace Room (Room 429)
Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has been awarded $500,000 by the National Science Foundation to identify patterns in the evolution of terrorist organizations and to analyze their comparative development.
The three-year grant is part of the Department of Defense's Minerva Initiative launched in 2008, which focuses on "supporting research related to basic social and behavioral science of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy."
Crenshaw's interdisciplinary project, "Mapping Terrorist Organizations," will analyze terrorist groups and trace their relationships over time. It will be the first worldwide, comprehensive study of its kind-extending back to the Russian revolutionary movement up to Al Qaeda today.
"We want to understand how groups affiliate with Al Qaeda and analyze their relationships," Crenshaw said. "Evolutionary mapping can enhance our understanding of how terrorist groups develop and interact with each other and with the government, how strategies of violence and non-violence are related, why groups persist or disappear, and how opportunities and constraints in the environment change organizational behavior over time."
According to Crenshaw, it is critical to understand the organization and evolution of terrorism in multiple contexts. "To craft effective counter-terrorism strategies, governments need to know not only what type of adversary they are confronting but its stage of organizational development and relationship to other groups," Crenshaw wrote in the project summary. "The timing of a government policy initiative may be as important as its substance."
"Mapping Terrorist Organizations" will incorporate research in economics, sociology, business, biology, political science and history. It will include existing research to build a new database using original language sources rather than secondary analyses. The goal is to produce an online database and series of interactive maps that will generate new observations and research questions, Crenshaw said.
The results, for example, could reveal the structure of violent and non-violent opposition groups within the same movements or conflicts, and identify patterns that explain how these groups evolve over time. Such findings could be used to analyze the development of Al Qaeda and its Islamist or jihadist affiliates, including the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, she said.
The findings may also shed light on what happens when a group splits due to leadership quarrels or when a government is overturned, Crenshaw said. "Analysis that links levels of terrorist violence to changes in organizational structures and explains the complex relationships among actors in protracted conflicts will break new ground," the summary noted.
Extensive information on terrorist groups already exists, but it has been difficult to compile and analyze. Despite such obstacles, Crenshaw said, violent organizations can be understood in the same terms as other political or economic groups. "Terrorist groups are not anomalous or unique," she wrote. "In fact, they can be compared to transnational activist networks."
Crenshaw should know. Widely respected as a pioneer in terrorism studies, the political scientist was one of a handful of scholars who followed the subject decades before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She joined CISAC in 2007, following a long career at Wesleyan University, where she was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought. In addition to her research at Stanford, Crenshaw is a lead investigator at START, the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.
End goal
Crenshaw wants to use the findings to better analyze how threats to U.S. security evolve over time. "Terrorist attacks on the United States and its allies abroad often appear to come without warning, but they are the result of a long process of organizational development," she wrote. "Terrorist organizations do not operate in isolation from a wider social environment. Without understanding processes of development and interaction, governments may miss signals along the way and be vulnerable to surprise attack. They may also respond ineffectively because they cannot anticipate the consequences of their actions." The project seeks to find patterns in the evolution of terrorism and to explain their causes and consequences. This, in turn, should contribute to developing more effective counter-terrorism policy, Crenshaw said.
Conflicts to be mapped
Sarah Catanzaro is a senior undergraduate student at Stanford University majoring in international relations and minoring in Art History. Her interest in international security studies was provoked by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. Living on Long Island in a community that was impacted by this tragedy, she experienced firsthand the acute anxiety and sense of vulnerability induced by terrorism and sought to understand this phenomenon through academic research. As a result, she, like Ms. Esberg worked as a research assistant for Jacob Shapiro, a former postgraduate fellow at CISAC, examining the inefficiencies and vulnerabilities of terrorist groups. Since her junior year, she has served as a research assistant for Professor Martha Crenshaw. Moreover, Sarah interned at the Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, where she created a database of released Guantanamo Bay detainees that now serves as a crucial research tool for the executive director of the Center, Karen Greenberg. She is also active in the Stanford community as the President of the Public Health Initiative and former Events Director of Stanford Women in Business. She looks forward to expand her knowledge and professional experiences in the field of international security in the near future.
Jane Esberg is a CISAC Undergraduate Honors Student graduating this June with a B.A. in International Relations. She currently works as a research assistant for acting co-director of CISAC, Professor Lynn Eden, investigating US nuclear war planning. Previously, she has researched for Professor Kenneth A. Schultz, CISAC Homeland Security Fellow Jacob Shapiro, and PhD Candidate Luke Condra. In Summer 2008 Jane received a Stanford in Government Fellowship to work with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, in the Transnational Threats and Political Risks division. She studied abroad at Oxford University, where she completed a tutorial on "the Politics of Terrorism," and in Santiago, Chile, where she was awarded a Stanford Quarterly Research Grant to conduct independent research for use in her thesis. After graduation, she will be traveling as a Haas Center Fellow to the Tambopata region of the Peruvian Amazon to conduct a research and service project on the impact of national policy, urbanization, and immigration on agricultural sustainability.
CISAC Conference Room
Mark Thurber, Acting Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development will be moderating a panel, "Clean Energy in the Developing World: Identifying and Implementing Energy Solutions."
This forum will explore the real energy needs of the developing world
and the lessons we can learn from past efforts to meet them. The three
panelists bring highly complementary perspectives to bear on this
topic: Dr. Alejandro Toledo is the former President of Peru, Dr. Susan
Amrose Addy is a social entrepreneur and expert on innovative
technologies for the developing world, and Mr. Harry Shimp is a former
CEO with extensive experience with energy development in poor
countries. Each of the panelists will give a presentation reflecting
on their experiences, followed by a moderated discussion and a question
and answer session with members of the audience. The event is free and
open to the public.
The distinguished speakers include:
Oak Lounge
Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall East, Rm E412
Stanford, CA 94305
Mark C. Thurber is Associate Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) at Stanford University, where he studies and teaches about energy and environmental markets and policy. Dr. Thurber has written and edited books and articles on topics including global fossil fuel markets, climate policy, integration of renewable energy into electricity markets, and provision of energy services to low-income populations.
Dr. Thurber co-edited and contributed to Oil and Governance: State-owned Enterprises and the World Energy Supply (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and The Global Coal Market: Supplying the Major Fuel for Emerging Economies (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is the author of Coal (Polity Press, 2019) about why coal has thus far remained the preeminent fuel for electricity generation around the world despite its negative impacts on local air quality and the global climate.
Dr. Thurber teaches a course on energy markets and policy at Stanford, in which he runs a game-based simulation of electricity, carbon, and renewable energy markets. With Dr. Frank Wolak, he also conducts game-based workshops for policymakers and regulators. These workshops explore timely policy topics including how to ensure resource adequacy in a world with very high shares of renewable energy generation.
Dr. Thurber has previous experience working in high-tech industry. From 2003-2005, he was an engineering manager at a plant in Guadalajara, México that manufactured hard disk drive heads. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.S.E. from Princeton University.
Dr. Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru, describes his vision as “democracy that delivers.”
“My colleagues and I who have taken the challenge of public life as a vocation and a life commitment,” Toledo says, “cannot but feel concerned about the great challenges faced by our continent where half its population lives between poverty and misery and where inequalities and social exclusion are at their highest.” Toledo has spent the past academic year in residence at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, applying theoretical rigor to a bold new plan for Latin America and also making a sweeping call to action. At the same time, as Distinguished Visiting Payne Lecturer for the Freeman Spogli Institute, Toledo has shared his vision and his plans for the future with the Stanford community in a three-part special Payne Lecture Series, titled “Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective.”
Forty percent of Latin Americans — 230 million people — are trying to survive on less than $2 a day, and 110 million live on less than $1 a day, Toledo is quick to point out. He also notes that income levels do not reflect the “drama of poverty”— things like infant mortality, malnutrition, lack of access to health care and education, and ethnically based social exclusion. Impoverished populations see corruption, exclusion, and economic inequality, and they begin to associate these things with democracy and become impatient with it. Toledo is calling for leaders to have the courage to invest in human development through nutrition, education, and microfinance programs and to make decisions that may not have short-term political benefits. “This is a moment for more leadership and less politics,” he said in January.
With the Global Center for Development and Democracy, the non-governmental organization that he founded, Toledo is organizing a new, broad-sweeping initiative to construct a social agenda for democracy in Latin America for the next 20 years. This Social Agenda for Democracy Initiative will identify specific and measurable goals to demonstrate that democracy is capable of “delivering concrete results to the poor.” To do this, Toledo says, the group of former Latin American presidents, democratic leaders, experts, and exponents of civil society that he is organizing will need to map out an agenda for both stimulating economic growth and reducing inequality and exclusion. Their agenda will be supported by parallel and ongoing efforts to promote and strengthen democratic institutions including judicial systems, freedom of speech, human rights, and the independence of all branches of government.
Toledo’s working group met for the first time on November 26, 2007, at the National Endowment of Democracy in Washington, D.C. The core team is made up of 12 former presidents, including Presidents Vicente Fox (Mexico), Fernando H. Cardoso (Brazil), Carlos Mesa (Bolivia), Ricardo Lagos (Chile), Cesar Gaviria (Colombia), Jose Maria Aznar (Spain), Rodrigo Carazo (Costa Rica), and Ricardo Maduro (Honduras). The group met again in Lima, Peru, on April 25, a meeting that Toledo is particularly excited about. “Our meeting in Lima has special significance for the initiative,” Toledo explains. “First, because the Latin American, Caribbean, and European Union Summit between 60 heads of state was held this year in Lima, just one month later, and second, because the theme of this year’s summit is ‘Poverty, Inequality, and Exclusion.’”
Which is the task that lies before Toledo and his colleagues.
One of the main aims of the Social Agenda for Democracy Initiative is to develop a social matrix to measure progress on key indicators such as economic growth, health, education, employment and salaries, poverty and income distribution, and access to technology. Several working group members reported on May 14 to the Latin American, Caribbean, and European Union Summit on the Social Agenda for Democracy Initiative and their progress in constructing this social matrix — giving the bold plan of this already super-charged group additional visibility and opportunity for capacity building. The group will meet two more times in 2008: in Bolivia this July and again in September in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
For Toledo, the link between democracy and social change is palpable — he is both the product of and an advocate for the transformative powers of these two processes. Democratically elected in 2001, Toledo was Peru’s first president of indigenous descent, having grown up in an impoverished and remote Andean village. “For 500 years, someone with my ethnic background was never accepted to be a candidate,” Toledo said in May, in his final Payne lecture. “I was a political intruder in the establishment of politics in Latin America and in Peru.”
In his five-year term as president, Toledo achieved 6 percent average annual growth, increased foreign direct investment by 50 percent, balanced the budget, and brought 25 percent of the population above the poverty line. He also initiated a program called Juntos, or “Together,” a system of conditional, direct cash transfers to female heads of the poorest households. In return for obtaining pre- and post-natal checkups, vaccinating their children, and making sure their children went to school, the women received $30 per month to invest in their economic self-sufficiency. The short-term solution provided by Juntos was initially criticized by the IMF but has been so successful that it is now being evaluated as a policy option by both the IMF and the World Bank and has been continued by the current government.
In his first Payne lecture, held in January, Toledo interwove firsthand observations with quantitative research to support his argument that a reduction in poverty and inequality does not necessarily follow economic growth. While he has “cautious optimism” that Latin America is poised to “make a substantial jump and take a prominent place in the world economy in the next 15 to 20 years,” he said that only an ambitious social agenda to reduce poverty and inequality will stimulate economic growth, strengthen democratic institutions, and consolidate democratic governance in the region.
Having analyzed the relationship between democratic reform, economic growth, and poverty, inequality, and social exclusion in Latin America, Toledo focused his second Payne lecture, in April, on some of the political dynamics in Peru leading up to his election to president. His multimedia presentation included footage of the mass protests that followed Alberto Fujimori’s controversial re-election to a third term in 2000 amid allegations of electoral fraud. Fujimori ultimately agreed to schedule a new election the following year and stepped down as a candidate.
In his third and final Payne lecture, on May 14, Toledo answered the question that served as the organizing principle for the series: Can the poor afford democracy? Yes, he said — but more importantly, “Democracy cannot afford to neglect the poor.”
Like Toledo, former president of Mexico and Social Agenda for Democracy colleague Vicente Fox sees positive economic and social growth for Latin America. He accepted Toledo’s invitation to visit the Stanford community and on March 5 spoke with intensity about Latin America’s prospects for both social welfare and economic well-being in the coming century. Mexico, which Goldman Sachs recently projected to be the world’s fifth largest economy by 2040, was emblematic of this electrifying future, he said. On the one hand, there is great promise for economic growth, stability, and entrepreneurship; and with this great promise, he was careful to note, comes great responsibility for the reduction of poverty and inequality through a “package of powerful social policies.”
Looking ahead, Fox hoped that Latin American democracy would not to be taken for granted; “it has to be nourished, it has to be taken care of, it has to be promoted.” But his outlook for Latin America is that this is a time for its countries to consolidate democracies and freedoms, consolidate economies, and promote new leadership. After years of military dictatorships, corruption, inefficiency, and poor development, “People decided to go for change,” Fox said, “and change is a magic word. It moves people to action.”
Latin America today is split between those who share former President of Peru Alejandro Toledo's positive outlook and those who think that the '21st century socialism' of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez offers the way forward for the region, despite the fact that Chavez's solutions are heavily dependant on the revenues generated by high oil prices. On May 28 Dr Alejandro Toledo discussed the current state of affairs in Latin America with members of the London-based Henry Jackson Society.
The society is dedicated to researching and debating the principles of democratic geopolitics. Dr Toledo debated with members how the Latin America as a region can take real strides in reducing poverty, improving development and strengthening democracy, as well as develop its role as an essential part of the global economy.
In the third of three Payne Distinguished lectures under the heading of "Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective" former president of Peru Alejandro Toledo tackled "Economic Growth, Poverty, Populism, and Democracy." Toledo told a rapt audience that it was time to move from theory and analysis to action, and said that he personally planned to devote the rest of his life to ending poverty and social exclusion in Latin America. Twelve former presidents from Latin America have joined Toledo to develop a social agenda for democracy for the next 20 years and construct a matrix of key indicators to measure progress toward concrete goals, such as access to education, healthcare, adequate food, clean water, and technology. In addition to economic growth, investment, and trade, the group will monitor employment, salaries, income distribution, and povery reduction. Toledo expects to launch the social agenda for democracy, and a secretariat to monitor progress, in September when the presidents' group meets in Sao Paulo, Brazil under the leadership of Henrique Cardoso.
