Stanford University

International Development

FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.

They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.

FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.

FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.

Stanford Human Rights Summer Fellowship now accepting applications

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The Program on Human Rights at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, in partnership with the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, is offering up to three summer fellowships to talented Stanford undergraduates interested in gaining practical experience at human rights organizations around the world. The fellowship will award grants of up to $5,000 for students undertaking a human rights project for a minimum of eight weeks during the summer. The deadline to apply is Dec. 9, 2013. 

Students have the opportunity to focus on issues that include freedom of speech; discrimination against women; the rights of children, elderly and minorities; and access to food, health, education and housing. Past fellows have identified and worked with a number of different organizations based in the U.S. and abroad that promote, monitor, evaluate, or advance human rights work.
Photo Credit: Adrian Bonifacio

Former Human Rights Fellows include computer science major Firas Abuzaid (’14), who spent the summer of 2013 in Amman, Jordan working with Visualizing Justice, an organization that is dedicated to empowering people worldwide to create visual stories for social justice and human rights. In 2011, Adrian Bonifacio (’13) worked with the Asian Pacific Mission for Migrants, a non-governmental organization based in Hong Kong, China that promotes and defends the rights of migrant workers. Garima Sharma (’15), an economics major, spent this past summer working with Apne Aap: Women Worldwide, an anti-trafficking NGO based in Forbesganj, India.

In order to apply to the fellowship, students must submit a proposal that identifies a partner organization, a project that would contribute towards the organization’s mission and a tentative budget. The application period for the summer fellowship is now open to Stanford undergraduates through Dec. 9. To view profiles of the four 2013 fellows please click here. Additional information about the fellowship - including the application - is available here.

For more information, please contact Joan Berry, the executive director at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at joanberry@stanford.edu or Ana Bracic, the fellowship mentor at the Program on Human Rights at bracic@stanford.edu. 

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SHREI Workshop on Human Trafficking for Community College Instructors

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The Program on Human Rights (PHR), in partnership with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) and the Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative (SHREI), is working to develop a human rights curriculurm to be implemented by college and high school educators wishing to incorporate human rights into their teaching.

As part of the Stanford Human Rights Education initiative, the PHR helps organize a series of workshops with Bay area community college instructors to enable the implementation of the human rights curricula in community colleges. Under this project, the PHR also supervises students from Stanford School of Education to develop teaching modules that include PHR's areas of research, such as human trafficking and indigenous populations rights, in accessible reference materials for informing and helping community college educators in their lesson plans.

All workshops and activities on this vital pedagogical initiative are documented and available online on SHREI's website: http://shrei.stanford.edu

All workshops and activities on this vital pedagogical initiative are documented and available online on SHREI's website: http://shrei.stanford.edu

Helen Stacy Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and Director of the Program on Human Rights at CDDRL Speaker
Lectures
Human Rights Education

The Changing Field of Power in Post-Martial Law Taiwan

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Abstract:

Professor Gold will make a presentation that is part of a larger book project that applies the theory of fields as elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu, Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam to the remaking of Taiwan since the end of martial law in 1987. He argues that political democratization is only one part of the larger dispersal of all forms of power (what Bourdieu terms “capital”) away from the tight centralized control of the mainlander—dominated KMT to broader segments of Taiwan’s society. This talk will look at this process of the breakdown and reconstruction of the old order of various fields, in particular the political, economic and cultural fields, and the effect of this on the overarching field of power.

 

Speaker Bio:

Thomas B. Gold is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Executive Director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies, whose executive office is at Berkeley and teaching program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He received his B.A. in Chinese Studies from Oberlin College, and M.A. in Regional Studies – East Asia and PhD in Sociology from Harvard University. He taught English at Tunghai University in Taiwan. He was in the first group of U.S. government-sponsored students to study in China, spending a year at Shanghai’s Fudan University from 1979-1980. Prof Gold’s research has examined numerous topics on the societies on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. These include: youth; guanxi; urban private entrepreneurs (getihu); non-governmental organizations; popular culture; and social and political change. He is very active in civil society in the United States, currently serving on the boards of several organizations such as the Asia Society of Northern California, International Technological University, Teach for China, and the East Bay College Fund.  His books include State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle, and the co-edited volumes Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture, and the Changing Nature ofGuanxi, The New Entrepreneurs of Europe and Asia: Patterns of Business Development in Russia, Eastern Europe and China, and Laid-Off Workers in a Workers’ State: Unemployment With Chinese Characteristics.  

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Thomas B. Gold Professor of Sociology Speaker UC Berkeley
Seminars

Why Do Parents Abort Girls? Patrilocality and Its Historical Origin

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Co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for International Development

Recent scholarship has documented an alarming increase in the sex ratio at birth in parts of East Asia, South Asia and the Caucuses. In this paper, I argue that parents in these regions engage in sex selection because of patrilocal norms that dictate elderly coresidence between parents and sons. Sex ratios and coresidence rates are positively correlated when looking across countries, within countries across districts, and within districts across ethnic groups. The paper then examines the roots of patrilocality and biased sex ratios using the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock 1965). I find that ethnic groups in areas with land conducive to intensive agriculture have stronger patrilocal norms, higher modern coresidence rates, and higher sex ratios at birth. The paper concludes with an examination of the expansion to old age support in South Korea. Consistent with the paper’s argument, I find that the program was associated with a normalization in the sex ratio at birth.

Avi Ebenstein received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007 is a Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Department of Economics. His fields of interest include environmental economics, economic demography, and international trade. Avi's past research has focused primarily on issues related to  China, including the health impacts of air and water pollution, causes and consequences for the country’s high sex ratio at birth, internal migration, and the impact of China’s entry into the global economy on wage patterns domestically and in the United States. He is currently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University.

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Avraham Ebenstein Lecturer Speaker The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Department of Economics
Seminars

Stanford Social Entrepreneurship Exchange

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Oberndorf Event Center
Zambrano Building, 3rd Floor
Stanford Graduate School of Business

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Can We Measure Shared Understandings? A Network-Based Approach to the Analysis of Culture

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ABOUT THE TOPIC: Culture is often understood as a system of "shared understandings." But what does that mean? Amir Goldberg argues that having a shared understanding with others does not necessarily imply espousing similar beliefs or attitudes. Rather, culture prescribes which beliefs and attitudes go with one another; sharing an understanding therefore suggests being in agreement about the structures of relevance and opposition that make symbols and actions meaningful. Amir uses relational class analysis - a network-based method for analyzing survey data - to map these structures, and find groups of people who share distinctive cultural schemes. This approach lends new insights into understanding the social underpinnings of Americans' complex understandings of music, politics, economic morality, and more.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Professor Goldberg received bachelors' degrees in Computer Science and Film Studies from Tel Aviv University, and an MA in Sociology from Goldsmith’s College, University of London. Before pursuing a PhD in Sociology at Princeton University, he worked for several years as a software programmer, an IT consultant and a technology journalist. An Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, his research projects all share an overarching theme: the desire to understand the social mechanisms that underlie how people construct meaning, and consequently pursue action. His work has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, and he was awarded Princeton University’s Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellowship.

ABOUT THE COMMENTATOR: Marc Ventresca is University Lecturer in Strategic Management at Said Business School (University of Oxford), England's foremost graduate school of business. Dr. Ventresca, who earned his PhD in Sociology at Stanford, specializes in governance, entrepreneurship, market and network formation, and technology strategy.

CISAC Conference Room

Amir Goldberg Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Assistant Professor (by courtesy) of Sociology, School of Humanities and Sciences Speaker
Marc Ventresca University Lecturer in Strategic Management, Said Business School, University of Oxford; PhD, Sociology, Stanford University Commentator
Seminars

China’s Political System

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This talk is presented by the Greater China Business Club (GCBC) of Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Stanford (ACSSS). 

In July 2013, a Ted Talk “A tale of two political systems” was posted, and was instantly viewed millions of times around the world. In the talk, Mr. Eric X. Li, a venture capitalist and a political scientist argued that the universality claim of Western democratic systems was going to be "morally challenged" by China.  

Do you agree? What do you think? Now you have the opportunity to discuss with Mr. Li face to face!

On Nov.6, Mr. Li will come to Stanford and talk with Professor Thomas Fingar on China’s Political System, its status, development, competitiveness and so on. Watch the Ted Talk and come to the event. We look forward to seeing you there!

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Eric X. Li is a political scientist and an active participant in the intellectual discourses on the re-emergence of China as a great power and its impact on the world.  His writings on comparative political governance and international relations have been widely published in leading publications such as the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, and Huffington Post.  His most recent publications, The Life of the Party (Foreign Affairs, January/February, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138476/eric-x-li/the-life-of-the-party), Warring States (http://www.theasanforum.org/warring-states-the-coming-new-world-disorder/) and his talk at TED Global 2013 (http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_systems.html), have generated active debates around the globe.

Mr. Li is a native of Shanghai.  He received his B.A. in Economics from University of California, Berkeley, M.B.A. from Stanford Business School, and PhD from Fudan University’s School of International Relations and Public Affairs.

Thomas Fingar is the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford during January to December 2009. 

From May 2005 through December 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2004–2005), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001–2003), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994–2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989–1994), and chief of the China Division (1986–1989). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (AB in government and history, 1968), and Stanford University (MA, 1969 and PhD, 1977 both in political science). His most recent book is Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011).

Room 380W, Building 380, Main Quad
Stanford University

Eric X. Li Founding and Managing Partner Speaker Chengwei Capital

Thomas Fingar

Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C-327
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-9149 (650) 723-6530
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Shorenstein APARC Fellow
Affiliated Scholar at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
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Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.

From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (A.B. in Government and History, 1968), and Stanford University (M.A., 1969 and Ph.D., 1977 both in political science). His most recent books are From Mandate to Blueprint: Lessons from Intelligence Reform (Stanford University Press, 2021), Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011), The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, editor (Stanford University Press, 2016), Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017), and Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Jean Oi (Stanford, 2020). His most recent article is, "The Role of Intelligence in Countering Illicit Nuclear-Related Procurement,” in Matthew Bunn, Martin B. Malin, William C. Potter, and Leonard S Spector, eds., Preventing Black Market Trade in Nuclear Technology (Cambridge, 2018)."

China and the World

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