Speaker Bio:

David Blair is an Air Force officer with a background in Special Operations who has served as an instructor pilot and subject matter expert on illicit terror networks in Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations. Applying Social Network Analysis, he is now conducting research as a PhD candidate at Georgetown University on the application of principles from the intelligence community, such as data fusion and dark network assessment, to illicit markets in general and human trafficking in particular. David is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School and the US Air Force Academy.

The Program on Human Rights at CDDRL and the Center for South Asia  are honored to host Basharat Peer, Sugi Ganeshananthan, Tsering Wangmo and Pireeni Sundaralingam for the panel debat on Writing Under Seige. This event is part of the PHR Collaboratory project.

The Program on Human Rights at CDDRL and the Center for South Asia  are honored to host Anand Patwardhan, Gopal Guru and Aishwary Kumar for this special film panel discussion as part of the PHR Collaboratory project.

The Program on Human Rights at CDDRL and the Center for South Asia  are honored to host Filmmaker Anand Patwardhan for this special film screening and discussion as part of the Collaboratory project.

Anand Patwardhan's new film "Jai Bhim Comrade" took 14 years to complete. Beginning with an incident at Ramabai Colony in Mumbai where 10 Dalits were shot dead by the police in 1997, the film goes on to explore the music of protest of those who were treated as "untouchables" by a caste hierarchy that has ruled the Indian sub-continent for thousands of years.

It is critically important for cost-effective and efficacious products to be developed indigenously within India. The Stanford-India Biodesign (SIB) program is designed to bring to market novel medical devices for India’s medically underserved, including those living in poverty. The purpose of the study is to identify the barriers that exist in India to commercializing low-cost medical technologies. The current work developed by SIB will be used as case studies, along with a literature review and ecosystem assessment, to determine the key issues that prevent or slow device commercialization in this environment. By studying these issues, new strategies and risk mitigation techniques can be designed to help more of projects succeed. The results are expected to have a wider impact beyond the SIB program given the number of entrepreneurial medical technology opportunities that are just beginning to be developed in India.

Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute. He also serves as the co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Science's Global Nuclear Future Initiative. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989), The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons(Princeton University Press, 1993), and with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (W.W. Norton, 2002). He is the co-editor of Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James L. Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000), the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009), and co-editor with Steven E. Miller of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010). His most recent publications include "Shared Responsibility for Nuclear Disarmament" in the fall 2009 issue of Daedalus and "The Case for No-First Use" in the June 2009 issue of Survival. In addition, he co-edited with Jane Vaynman a special issue of The Nonproliferation Review (March 2011) on the international impact of the 2010 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, also co-authoring the introduction and conclusion articles.  

Sagan has also won four teaching awards: the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009, the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award, Stanford University’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching.