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.

Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt

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Classless Politics seminar

In this talk, Hesham Sallam will discuss his recent book, Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022). The book offers a counterintuitive account of the relationship between neoliberal economics and Islamist politics in Egypt that sheds new light on the worldwide trend of "more identity, less class." It examines why Islamist movements have gained support at the expense of the left, even amid conflicts over the costs of economic reforms.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hesham Sallam
Hesham Sallam is a Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, where he serves as the Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. He is also a co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine. He is the author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013).

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Didi Kuo

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Hesham Sallam

Encina Hall, E105
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. Sallam is co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on political and social development in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).

 

Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Associate Director, Program on Arab Reform and Development
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Who is a Slave? Health of Children at Risk Based on Inequity, Social Acceptance of Servitude

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Slavery victimizes tens of millions of people worldwide. In 2016, 40 million people were identified as slaves, an estimated 25% percent of them children. Given a broader definition of slavery that includes child labor and child servitude, 152 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 were child laborers as of 2016, and many millions more were involved in some form of slavery-like practice.

Stanford PhD candidate Vincent Jappah, MD, notes in his new article published in the journal Medicine, Conflict and Survival, that the gray area surrounding the acceptance of child servitude in many cultures makes formulating the correct number of victims difficult. Call it servitude or slavery, the practice diminishes the health and social well-being of children and causes harmful ripple effects in their communities as well as to the rest of the world.

Jappah notes that policies to address child servitude and other slavery-like practices are fundamental to global health policy and development. Using a health equity framework can help mitigate the negative impacts of child servitude, in that it requires addressing the diverse factors that impact a person’s ability to meet key health milestones. Irrespective of a person’s race, socio-economic status, financial and physical ability, all global citizens have the right to a healthy life.

The study, “The political economy of child service in Liberia, West Africa,” co-authored by Jappah and Danielle Taana Smith, a professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University, notes that modern slavery is often centered around alleviating one’s own personal poverty and gaining power, even if that means exploiting the children of your own community.

Both Liberian natives, the researchers note that Liberians — like those of other countries including the United States — will often target those from low socioeconomic backgrounds and indigenous peoples.

This often takes place “within groups that in many instances share similar racial identities and physical features,” Jappah said. “Today, the child next door in a neighbor’s home may be deprived of going to school and coerced into performing endless hours of chores, with poor food and living conditions, the inability to leave the house, and the constant fear of violence.”

Jappah notes child servitude can potentially have devastating health consequences, and poses a major health challenge for individuals and their communities. Many victims typically live in unsuitable and unsanitary environments often littered with mosquitos, flies, lice, and other transmitters of disease. These children may also face poor mental health outcomes such as depression, social anxiety and social dysfunction, low self-esteem and failure to meet critical developmental milestones.

These children, as all children do, internalize and, to some extent, normalize their living conditions, and society becomes more acquiescent to such practices, despite their detrimental effects.
Vincent Jappah, MD, MPH
PhD Candidate, Stanford Heath Policy

Liberia is one of the poorest countries in the world, having suffered years of civil war and regional conflict. Its human development indicators rank 175 out of 189 countries on the 2019 Human Development Index. The child malnutrition rate is 15% among 5-year-olds and younger and many Liberians lack access to basic needs such as food, water, shelter, education, and health care.

In fact, the authors note, nearly 63% of the people in the West African nation established by freed American slaves live in poverty; 69% of the country’s 5 million people live on less than $3.20 a day.

“A functional economy that ensures that most citizens can earn a living wage does not exist,” the authors wrote. “Extreme poverty in some families, high levels of illiteracy and unemployment, and suboptimal economic activities contribute to child servitude and other forms of child exploitation.”

The children of Liberia are not alone. In societies with inherent instability and ongoing conflict, the practice of child servitude can become accepted as a normal way to make money and centralize power when opportunity and resources are scarce.

Jappah notes that for young children and adolescents, this is the period of forming personality, critical reasoning and developing relationships outside of the home, as well as forming opinions about the world around them. Living in such dehumanizing conditions can result in shame and trauma and often have intergenerational effects. They also have lower levels of education and higher dropout rates, contributing to an ongoing cycle of intergenerational poverty.

“These children, as all children do, internalize and, to some extent, normalize their living conditions, and society becomes more acquiescent to such practices, despite their detrimental effects,” Jappah said.  “These practices are widespread in places where laws are not adequate to address them, or if there are laws, few enforcement mechanisms are in place, or they are not enforced.”

Jappah said Liberians must address their cultural history of exploitation if they want to abolish the practice of child servitude. In addition, addressing the larger issues of inequity and the exclusion of marginalized groups is necessary.

“Throughout human history, we have witnessed clashes among social classes and groups,” Jappah said. “The more inequitable a society is, the more likely it is to be rife with social tensions.”

He concluded that those tensions are evident in developing countries as well as the industrialized nations such as the United States, a Western harbor of child trafficking and slavery. According to the Global Slavery Index, on any given day in 2016 there were 403,000 people living in conditions of modern slavery in the United States — or 1.3 victims of slavery for every thousand people in this country.

 “This phenomenon is universal; Liberia is not an exception,” Jappah said.

 

 

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Vincent Jappah, MD, MPH

PhD Candidate
He focuses on public policy, economics, global child and maternal health.
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A new article co-authored by Health Policy PhD candidate Vincent Jappah reveals that the modern drivers of child servitude in Liberia are largely social vulnerability and cultural acceptance of the practice, rather than traditional factors based on race and ethnicity.

How Strong Are International Standards in Practice? Evidence from Cryptocurrency Transactions

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Join the Cyber Policy Center and moderator  Daniel Bateyko in conversation with Karen Nershi for How Strong Are International Standards in Practice?:  Evidence from Cryptocurrency Transactions. 

The rise of cryptocurrency (decentralized digital currency) presents challenges for state regulators given its connection to illegal activity and pseudonymous nature, which has allowed both individuals and businesses to circumvent national laws through regulatory arbitrage. Karen Nershi assess the degree to which states have managed to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges, providing a detailed study of international efforts to impose common regulatory standards for a new technology. To do so, she introduces a dataset of cryptocurrency transactions collected during a two-month period in 2020 from exchanges in countries around the world and employ bunching estimation to compare levels of unusual activity below a threshold at which exchanges must screen customers for money laundering risk. She finds that exchanges in some, but not all, countries show substantial unusual activity below the threshold; these findings suggest that while countries have made progress toward regulating cryptocurrency exchanges, gaps in enforcement across countries allow for regulatory arbitrage. 

This session is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a months-long series designed to bring researchers, policy makers, scholars and industry professionals together to share research, findings and trends in the cyber policy space. Both in-person (Stanford-affiliation required) and virtual attendance (open to the public) is available; registration is required.

Karen Nershi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Stanford Internet Observatory and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). In the summer of 2021, she completed her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in the fields of international relations and comparative politics. Through an empirical lens, her research examines questions of international cooperation and regulation within international political economy, including challenges emerging from the adoption of decentralized digital currency and other new technologies. 

Specific topics Dr. Nershi explores in her research include ransomware, cross-national regulation of the cryptocurrency sector, and international cooperation around anti-money laundering enforcement. Her research has been supported by the University of Pennsylvania GAPSA Provost Fellowship for Innovation and the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics. 

Before beginning her doctorate, Karen Nershi earned a B.A. in International Studies with honors at the University of Alabama. She lived and studied Arabic in Amman, Jordan and Meknes, Morocco as a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow and a Critical Language Scholarship recipient. She also lived and studied in Mannheim, Germany, in addition to interning at the U.S. Consulate General Frankfurt (Frankfurt, Germany).

Dan Bateyko is the Special Projects Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory.

Dan worked previously as a Research Coordinator for The Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, where he investigated Immigration and Customs Enforcement surveillance practices, co-authoring American Dragnet: Data-Drive Deportation in the 21st Century. He has worked at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, the Dangerous Speech Project, and as a research assistant for Amanda Levendowski, whom he assisted with legal scholarship on facial surveillance.

In 2016, he received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. He spent his fellowship year talking with people about digital surveillance and Internet infrastructure in South Korea, China, Malaysia, Germany, Ghana, Russia, and Iceland. His writing has appeared in Georgetown Tech Law Review, Columbia Journalism Review, Dazed Magazine, The Internet Health Report, Council on Foreign Relations' Net Politics, and Global Voices. He is a 2022 Internet Law & Policy Foundry Fellow.

Dan received his Masters of Law & Technology from Georgetown University Law Center (where he received the IAPP Westin Scholar Book Award for excellence in Privacy Law), and his B.A. from Middlebury College.

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Karen Nershi
Seminars

Engagement Outweighs Exposure to Partisan and Unreliable News within Google Search

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Join the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) and moderator Alex Stamos in conversation with Ronald E. Robertson for Engagement Outweighs Exposure to Partisan and Unreliable News within Google Search 

This session is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a months-long series designed to bring researchers, policy makers, scholars and industry professionals together to share research, findings and trends in the cyber policy space. Both in-person (Stanford-affiliation required) and virtual attendance (open to the public) is available; registration is required.

If popular online platforms systematically expose their users to partisan and unreliable news, they could potentially contribute to societal issues like rising political polarization. This concern is central to the echo chamber and filter bubble debates, which critique the roles that user choice and algorithmic curation play in guiding users to different online information sources. These roles can be measured in terms of exposure, the URLs seen while using an online platform, and engagement, the URLs selected while on that platform or browsing the web more generally. However, due to the challenges of obtaining ecologically valid exposure data--what real users saw during their regular platform use--studies in this vein often only examine engagement data, or estimate exposure via simulated behavior or inference. Despite their centrality to the contemporary information ecosystem, few such studies have focused on web search, and even fewer have examined both exposure and engagement on any platform. To address these gaps, we conducted a two-wave study pairing surveys with ecologically valid measures of exposure and engagement on Google Search during the 2018 and 2020 US elections. We found that participants' partisan identification had a small and inconsistent relationship with the amount of partisan and unreliable news they were exposed to on Google Search, a more consistent relationship with the search results they chose to follow, and the most consistent relationship with their overall engagement. That is, compared to the news sources our participants were exposed to on Google Search, we found more identity-congruent and unreliable news sources in their engagement choices, both within Google Search and overall. These results suggest that exposure and engagement with partisan or unreliable news on Google Search are not primarily driven by algorithmic curation, but by users' own choices.

Dr. Ronald E Robertson received his Ph.D. in Network Science from Northeastern University in 2021. He was advised by Christo Wilson, a computer scientist, and David Lazer, a political scientist. For his research, Dr. Robertson uses computational tools, behavioral experiments, and qualitative user studies to measure user activity, algorithmic personalization, and choice architecture in online platforms. By rooting his questions in findings and frameworks from the social, behavioral, and network sciences, his goal is to foster a deeper and more widespread understanding of how humans and algorithms interact in digital spaces. Prior to Northeastern, Dr. Robertson obtained a BA in Psychology from the University of California San Diego and worked with research psychologist Robert Epstein at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.

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Alex Stamos

Ronald E. Robertson

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Dr. Ronald E Robertson received his Ph.D. in Network Science from Northeastern University in 2021. He was advised by Christo Wilson, a computer scientist, and David Lazer, a political scientist. For his research, Dr. Robertson uses computational tools, behavioral experiments, and qualitative user studies to measure user activity, algorithmic personalization, and choice architecture in online platforms. By rooting his questions in findings and frameworks from the social, behavioral, and network sciences, his goal is to foster a deeper and more widespread understanding of how humans and algorithms interact in digital spaces.

Prior to Northeastern, Dr. Robertson obtained a BA in Psychology from the University of California San Diego and worked with research psychologist Robert Epstein at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.

Research Scientist
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Good to Be Back Again: Reflections on the 2022 Leadership Network for Change Reunion

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The Leadership Network for Change (LNC) is an expansive group that encompasses over 2,100 up-and-coming leaders and change-makers from all corners of the globe. This diverse and widespread network is comprised of alumni of three practitioner programs based at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL): the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, Leadership Academy for Development, and the Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development Program (formerly the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program). These practitioner-based training programs engage emerging civic leaders and social entrepreneurs who are working to achieve or deepen democracy and social justice in some of the most challenging environments around the world.

Reunions are always marked by the distinct nostalgia of your most memorable moments with people whom you shared lengths of time with. No doubt that the Leadership Network for Change reunion held this past summer at Stanford was one such event for me. Right from walking back into Munger residence, I immediately remembered how, with newly made friends in the Draper Hills class of 2018, we chatted as we walked back and forth to our classes or spent many hours sitting on the benches talking about global events or sharing personal stories – almost always with a bottle of wine (the famous room 555 of the class of 2018 comes to mind). For most of the people I spoke to during this reunion, there was a shared sense despite our different cohorts, of how ‘not long ago’ it was since leaving (not even the occurrence of the pandemic made it seem like it was a long time ago). It felt like we’d just been there months earlier. It speaks to how impactful our time together was and the deep connections made in and out of class experiences. 

Seeing the familiar faces of Larry Diamond, Francis Fukuyama, Michael McFaul, Kathryn Stoner, and Erik Jensen reminded me how fortunate I was to have had access to legendary global democracy shaping minds. What is always humbling, however, is when they each tell you that it is an honor for them to meet us.

Over a weekend of thought-provoking panels and lectures, we had tough conversations about the global state of democracy since COVID and more recently since Russian troops had attacked Ukraine. With the depressing reality of rising authoritarianism staring us in the face, one could only marvel at the moments of inspiration that brewed during this reunion. There was a spontaneous and very somber time when during one of the sessions fellows stood up and celebrated the alumni (by name) who were no longer with us and some who languish in prisons under the grip of dictatorships. Michael McFaul followed that by asking us to share stories of hope from our regions — igniting a crackling bonfire of hope with both tears and laughter that lifted our spirits.

Honoring the life and work of Carl Gershman, the former president of the National Endowment for Democracy, at this reunion was a moment to reflect on my own journey. Carl is a giant of his era and as he recounted his years of service in support of global democracy, it felt like a challenge to serve humanity’s fragile freedom with strategy, determination, and whatever resources are at our disposal. And that, in my humble opinion, is the enduring legacy of the CDDRL Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program. It was good to be back again.

Applications for the 2023 Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program and the Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development Program are open now through 5:00 pm PT on January 15, 2023. Visit each program's web page to learn more and apply.

Reunion Highlights

2022 LNC reunion attendees
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2021 DHSF fellows at 2022 LNC reunion
Kathryn Stoner presents Quick Facts About Russia
Filip Nelkovski
Outdoor breakout group during LNC reunion with Erik Jensen
Eka Gigauri LNC reunion
McFaul and LNC alumni
Carl Gershman addresses LNC alumni
Larry Diamond toasts LNC alumni
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Larry Diamond, Kathryn Stoner, Erik Jensen and Francis Fukuyama at the opening session of the 2022 Draper Hills Fellows Program
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Stanford summer fellowship crafts next generation of global leaders

The Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program reconvened in person for the first time, bringing budding leaders together with the world’s most influential democracy scholars.
Stanford summer fellowship crafts next generation of global leaders
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Evan Mawarire, center left, poses for a photo next to Francis Fukuyama with fellow alumni during the LNC reunion, August 13-15, 2022.
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Over the weekend of August 13-15, 2022, CDDRL hosted a reunion for the LNC community on campus at Stanford. It was the first global meeting and an exciting opportunity to bring together all generations of our fellows to connect, engage, and envision ways of advancing democratic development. 2018 Draper Hills alum Evan Mawarire (Zimbabwe) reflects on the experience.

China Chats with Stanford Faculty: From Picking Stones in Sand to Inventing Skin-like Electronics that will Change the Future of Electronics: A Conversation with Professor Zhenan Bao

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China Chats with Stanford Faculty 

Friday, December 16, 2022          5 - 6 PM Pacific Time 
Saturday, December 17, 2022    9 - 10 AM Beijing Time

From Picking Stones in Sand to Inventing Skin-like Electronics that will Change the Future of Electronics
A Conversation with Professor Zhenan Bao

What’s the secret to innovation? How do scientific findings transfer to the real world? Professor Zhenan Bao, K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University and former department chair of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, sits down with Scott Rozelle, the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, to answer these questions and more. Born in China, Professor Bao moved to the U.S. during college and rose to become a leading scientist and professor of chemical engineering whose work pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in fundamental science. During the conversation, she will share how she became who she is today, her thoughts on Stanford’s culture of innovation, and her passion for mentoring the next generation of innovators. 

About the Speakers

 

Zhenan Bao

Zhenan Bao is K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Bao founded the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiate (eWEAR) in 2016 and serves as the faculty director.

Prior to joining Stanford in 2004, she was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1995-2004. She received her Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995.  She has over 700 refereed publications and over 100 US patents with a Google Scholar H-Index 190.
 

Bao has received notable recognition for her work in chemical engineering. Most recently, she was the inaugural recipient of the VinFuture Prize Female Innovator 2021, the ACS Chemistry of Materials Award 2022, MRS Mid-Career Award in 2021, AICHE Alpha Chi Sigma Award 2021, ACS Central Science Disruptor and Innovator Prize in 2020, and the Gibbs Medal by the Chicago session of ACS in 2020. 

Bao is a co-founder and on the Board of Directors for C3 Nano and PyrAmes, both are silicon-valley venture funded start-ups. She serves as an advising Partner for Fusion Venture Capital.
 

 

Scott Rozelle

Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University.  For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Most recently, Rozelle's research focuses on the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition in China. In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner.
 

Watch the Recording

Questions? Contact Tina Shi at shiying@stanford.edu

Scott Rozelle

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Zhenan Bao K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering Stanford University
Lectures

Create a Market for Safe, Secure Software

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Join the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) and moderator Andrew Grotto, in conversation with L. Jean Camp for Create a Market for Safe, Secure Software. 

This session is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a months-long series designed to bring researchers, policy makers, scholars and industry professionals together to share research, findings and trends in the cyber policy space. Both in-person (Stanford-affiliation required) and virtual attendance (open to the public) is available; registration is required.

Today the security market, particularly in embedded software and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, is a lemons market.  Buyers simply cannot distinguish between secure and insecure products. To enable the market for secure high quality products to thrive,  buyers need to have some knowledge of the contents of these digital products. Once purchased, ensuring a product or software package remains safe requires knowing if these include publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. Again this requires knowledge of the contents.  When consumers do not know the contents of their digital products, they can not know if they are at risk and need to take action.

The Software Bill of Materials  is a proposal that was identified as a critical instrument for meeting these challenges and securing software supply chains in the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity} by the Biden Administration (EO 14028. In this presentation Camp will introduce SBOMs, provide examples, and explain the components that are needed in the marketplace for this initiative to meet its potential.

Jean Camp is a Professor at Indiana University with appointments in Informatics and Computer Science.  She is a Fellow of the AAAS (2017), the IEEE (2018), and the ACM (2021).  She joined Indiana after eight years at Harvard’s Kennedy School. A year after earning her doctorate from Carnegie Mellon she served as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. She began her career as an engineer at Catawba Nuclear Station after a double major in electrical engineering and mathematics, followed by a MSEE in optoelectronics at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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Andrew Grotto
L. Jean Camp Professor at Indiana University
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Southeast Asia in the New Cold War: Choosing Not to Choose?

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Event flyer with portraits of Richard Heydarian, Huong Le Thu, and Don Emmerson

When the U.S. Senate voted to expand NATO into the USSR’s sphere of influence in Europe in 1988, American diplomat-scholar George Kennan called it "the beginning of a new [U.S.-Russia] cold war” and said that Moscow would “gradually react quite adversely." Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 following a joint statement by Moscow and Beijing criticizing the United States. In May 2022, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said U.S.-China relations were on the "brink of a new Cold War.”  What does this mean for Southeast Asians? Are they refusing to choose between the United States and its opponents? How much does the fate of Ukraine matter to Southeast Asians? Do they want peace or justice—to prevent big-power escalation or to reverse imperial expansion? How are they balancing those different views and the contending pressures to side with the United States or Russia+China?

This event is part of APARC’s 2022 Fall webinar series, Asian Perspectives on the US-China Competition.

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Richard Heydarian is a Manila-based scholar and columnist serving as a senior lecturer at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman. His academic career has included professorial positions in political and social science at the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, and a visiting fellowship at National Chengchi University. As a columnist, he has written for leading publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, and The New York Times, and has regularly contributed, for example, to Al Jazeera English, Nikkei Asian Review, South China Morning Post, and The Straits Times. His books include The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China, and the New Struggle for Global Mastery (2019); The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt against Elite Democracy (2017), and Asia's New Battlefield: The USA, China and the Struggle for the Western Pacific (2015).

Huong Le Thu 112922
Huong Le Thu, an Australia-resident analyst of geopolitics in Southeast Asia, is a principal policy fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre, University of Western Australia and a non-resident fellow in CSIS Washington’s Southeast Asia Program. She has worked in universities and think tanks in Australia, Singapore, and Taiwan, and has held visiting positions in the University of Malaya and the ASEAN Secretariat among other places.  Her scholarly writings have appeared in journals including Asia Policy, Asia-Pacific Review, Asian Security, and Foreign Policy, and  she has been quoted in the Financial Times, The Japan Times, The New York Times, The Straits Times, and The Washington Post among other media.  Her degrees are from the National Chengchi University (PhD) and Jagiellonian University in Poland (MA).  She speaks five languages and has published in four of them.

Donald K. Emmerson

Via Zoom webinar

Richard Heydarian Senior Lecturer, Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman
Huong Le Thu Principal Policy Fellow, PerthUSA Centre, University of Western Australia
Seminars

European Developments in Internet Regulation

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Join the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) and moderator Daphne Keller, in conversation with Aleksandra Kuczerawy for European Developments in Internet Regulation.

This session is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a months-long series designed to bring researchers, policy makers, scholars and industry professionals together to share research, findings and trends in the cyber policy space. Both in-person (Stanford-affiliation required) and virtual attendance (open to the public) is available; registration is required.

The Digital Services Act is a new landmark European Union legislation addressing illegal and harmful content online. Its main goals are to create a safer digital space but also to enhance protection of fundamental rights online. In this talk, Aleksandra Kuczerawy will discuss the core elements of the DSA, such as the layered system of due diligence obligations, content moderation rules and the enforcement framework, while providing underlying policy context for the US audience.

Aleksandra Kuczerawy is a postdoctoral scholar at the Program on Platform Regulation and has been a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven’s Centre for IT & IP Law and is assistant editor of the International Encyclopedia of Law (IEL) – Cyber Law. She has worked on the topics of privacy and data protection, media law, and the liability of Internet intermediaries since 2010 (projects PrimeLife, Experimedia, REVEAL). In 2017 she participated in the works of the Committee of experts on Internet Intermediaries (MSI-NET) at the Council of Europe, responsible for drafting a recommendation by the Committee of Ministers on the roles and responsibilties of internet intermediaries and a study on Algorithms and Human Rights.

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Daphne Keller
Aleksandra Kuczerawy Postdoctoral Scholar at the Program on Platform Regulation (PPR)
Seminars

Media, Politics, and Polarization in Asia

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Flyer for webinar "Media, Politics, and Polarization in Asia" with portraits of speakers Cherian George and Zuraidah Ibrahim.

Stark contradictions mark Asia’s news and information landscape.  Citizens have gained unprecedented ability to express and inform themselves through media.  Yet the internet, once thought of as a great liberator and equalizer, has been harnessed by powerful interests.  Social media platforms, even as they facilitate collective action, have deepened divisions, circulated hate, and undermined public-interest journalism.  What are the political and other effects of this combination of abundant informative discourse and divisive manipulative bias?  A media scholar and a media practitioner with professional experience in both Southeast Asia and Hong Kong will reflect on these contrary trends and their implications.

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Cherian George, a media professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, is a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Department of Communication. His books include Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle Against Censorship, a double finalist for the American Association of Publishers PROSE award for scholarly books (2021); Media and Power in Southeast Asia (2019); and Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and its Threat to Democracy (2016).

Zuraidah Ibrahim 110922
Zuraidah Ibrahim is executive managing editor at Hong Kong’s English language daily, South China Morning Post, where her responsibilities include overseeing Hong Kong and international coverage. She was previously deputy editor and political editor of Singapore’s Straits Times. Her books include Rebel City: Hong Kong’s Year of Water and Fire (2020); Singapore Chronicles: Opposition (2017); and Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going (2011).

Donald K. Emmerson

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Cherian George Professor of Media Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University
Zuraidah Ibrahim Executive Managing Editor, South China Morning Post
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