Stanford University

Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

The Whistle-Blower Really Knows How to Write

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Amy Zegart
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Smoking guns are the stuff of spy movies. In real-life intelligence-gathering, they are exceptionally rare. That’s why the business of intelligence typically requires collecting and analyzing fragments of information—putting together secret nuggets with unclassified information—to try to make sense of complex reality. If nothing else, the whistle-blower who filed a complaint against President Donald Trump clearly followed his or her training. SECOND PARAGRAPH I’ve spent 20 years reading intelligence reports and researching the U.S. intelligence community. And I’m not automatically inclined to believe the worst allegations about any administration; everyone has agendas and incentives to reveal information, some more noble than others. Trump and his allies have dismissed the complaint as hearsay and accused the whistle-blower of acting on political motives. But a close reading of the whistle-blower’s lengthy complaint, which accuses Trump of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” yields a lot of concrete leads for investigators to follow.

Here are three things I learned:

 

Read the rest at The Atlantic

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President Trump, Quid Pro Quos and U.S.-Ukraine Relations: Five Observations

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Over the past two weeks, a CIA whistleblower’s complaint, a White House record of a July 25 telephone conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and texts exchanged by American diplomats have dominated the news and raised questions about the president’s handling of policy toward Ukraine. Here are five observations: SECOND PARAGRAPH First, President Trump was not doing the nation’s business on July 25. Trump has described the call as “perfect,” but the memorandum of conversation shows that he did not seek to advance U.S. interests. He did not ask Zelensky about progress in ending Russia’s war against Ukraine. He did not propose steps to facilitate more American trade. He did not raise how U.S. liquified natural gas might strengthen Ukraine’s energy security (something of interest to Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, whom Trump now says instigated a call that he did not want to make).

 

Read the Rest at FSI's Medium.com

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China, U.S. Universities and the U.S. Science and Technology Workforce

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This event is at full capacity and we are no longer accepting registrations.

China, U.S. Universities and the U.S. Science and Technology Workforce

The US is presently searching for the wisest policies relevant to the relationships between US universities and China.  China is the only country that can supplant the United States as the economic, scientific, technological, military and ideological world leader.  Consciousness of that, coupled with reports of serious misappropriations of US intellectual property, have led federal leaders to propose and, in some cases, to implement serious limits on collaborations between US and Chinese scientists and engineers in “strategic” research fields as well as to introduce serious impediments to the education of Chinese nationals by US higher education institutions.  These actions are aimed at  protecting US intellectual property and scientific ideas.  In this talk, the proposals are briefly summarized.  Analyses of scientific R&D, international scientific collaboration and the US scientific workforce are then presented.  These analyses indicate that the limitations and impediments could very well weaken US capabilities and standing in some of the fields the nation is most anxious to protect unless those limitations and impediments are very carefully crafted.  Some policy recommendations are provided.

 

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Arthur Bienenstock is co-chair, with Peter Michelson, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Scientific Partnerships.  He has also been a member of the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, since 2012.  From November, 1997 to January, 2001, he was Associate Director for Science of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  At Stanford, he is Special Assistant to the President for Federal Research Policy,  Associate Director of the Wallenberg Research Link and a professor emeritus of Photon Science, having joined the faculty in 1967.  He was Vice Provost and Dean of Research and Graduate Policy during the period September 2003 to November 2006, Director of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource from 1978 to 1977 and Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs from 1972 to 1977. 

Philippines Conference Room
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, Central, 3rd Floor
Stanford, CA 94305

 

Arthur Bienenstock <br><i>Co-chair, American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Scientific Partnerships; Professor of Photon Science, Emeritus, Stanford University</i><br><br>
Lectures

CPC Lunch Seminar Series | Cybersecurity Futures: Tempering the Dystopia

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Vic Baines Vic Baines

Abstract:

Predicting the future is a fool's errand. Or is it? Technology has proved an agent of unprecedented disruption in recent years, but the instinct of some humans to do harm to others remains a constant. Cyber attacks continue to take the global community by surprise, and government actors still have a tendency to describe cybercrime as a new phenomenon. Knowing what we know about criminal modi operandi ​and motivations, can we speculate on the future of cybercrime in a way that enables governments, businesses and citizens to anticipate and prepare for the threats to come? Vic will present her ongoing work to review a past cybersecurity futures exercise, and a new project that aims to see further.

Vic Baines Bio

Downloable Flyer: The Cyber Policy Center Lunch Seminar Series

 

 
Seminars

Dueling U.S. Approaches to Ukraine Pose Risk

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CISAC’s Steven Pifer, former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine, looks at the dueling US foreign policies toward Ukraine – one aimed at U.S. national interests, the other at President Donald Trump’s reelection – and the risk that poses for Ukraine. “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Kyiv should take care, lest their country become a political football in America’s domestic politics,” writes Pifer in a piece for Brookings. Read the rest at Brookings.edu.

 

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CPC Lunch Seminar Series: Platforms, Speech and Governance

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Daphne Keller Daphne Keller
Abstract:

Facebook recently announced its own version of the Supreme Court: a 40-member board that will make final decisions about user posts that Facebook has taken down. The announcement came after extended deliberations that have been described as Facebook’s “constitutional convention.” Sweeping terms such as Supreme Court and constitution are not commonly used to describe the operation of private companies, but here they seem appropriate given the platforms’ importance for the many people who use them in place of newspapers, TV stations, the postal service, and even money. Yet private platforms aren’t really the public square, and internet companies aren’t governments. That’s exactly why they are free to do what so many people seem to want: set aside the First Amendment’s speech rules in favor of new, more restrictive ones. 

Mimicking a few government systems will not make internet platforms adequate substitutes for real governments, subject to real laws and real rights-based constraints on their power. Compared with democratic governments, platforms are far more capable of restricting speech. And they are far less accountable than elected officials for their choices. In this talk, I will delve into the differences we should be considering before urging platforms to take on greater roles as arbiters of speech and information.

Daphne Keller Bio

 

Lunch Seminar Series Flyer
  • E207, Encina Hall
  • 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305
 

 

Daphne Keller

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Daphne Keller is the Director of Platform Regulation at the Stanford Program in Law, Science, & Technology. Her academic, policy, and popular press writing focuses on platform regulation and Internet users'; rights in the U.S., EU, and around the world. Her recent work has focused on platform transparency, data collection for artificial intelligence, interoperability models, and “must-carry” obligations. She has testified before legislatures, courts, and regulatory bodies around the world on topics ranging from the practical realities of content moderation to copyright and data protection. She was previously Associate General Counsel for Google, where she had responsibility for the company’s web search products. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, Brown University, and Head Start.

SHORT PIECES

 

ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

 

POLICY PUBLICATIONS

 

FILINGS

  • U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of Francis Fukuyama, NetChoice v. Moody (2024)
  • U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief with ACLU, Gonzalez v. Google (2023)
  • Comment to European Commission on data access under EU Digital Services Act
  • U.S. Senate testimony on platform transparency

 

PUBLICATIONS LIST

Director of Platform Regulation, Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology (LST)
Social Science Research Scholar
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Director of Intermediary Liability Center for Internet and Society
Seminars

CANCELED: Developments in Genome Editing Politics and Policy

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CISAC will be canceling all public events and seminars until at least April 5th due to the ongoing developments associated with COVID-19.

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About this Event: Somatic (i.e. non-heritable) genome editing is already in clinical trials for the treatment of diseases ranging from certain cancers to sickle cell anemia.  But public fascination has largely focused on germline editing, especially with the startling late 2018 announcement that human embryos had been edited and then used for a pregnancy resulting in two live-born girls.  This talk will highlight key scientific and political responses since that announcement, and offer insights into ongoing debates and ongoing work by international commissions looking at whether there are any conditions under which such experiments could be done responsibly in the future.

 

About the Speaker:

R. Alta Charo, J.D., is a 2019-2020 Berggruen Fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin.  She was co-chair of the National Academies’ 2017 report on human genome editing, and a member of the organizing committee for the 2019 international summit on genome editing in Hong Kong.  At present, she serves on the  World Health Organization committee developing global governance standards for genome editing, and on the steering committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research effort to revise and expand ethical guidelines for research and development of both heritable and non-heritable human genome editing.

 

 

Alta Charo Professor of Law University of Wisconsin, and Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Stacie Vilendrer

Twitter: @StacieVilendrer

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Stacie grew up in Minnesota where she decided to become a physician after watching her grandfather survive metastatic cancer with the support of his medical team. She honored in Human Biology at Stanford, where her senior thesis investigated community beliefs around childhood malaria in rural Tanzania. She continued to pursue global health work with nonprofits in India and Tanzania prior to medical school that sought to scale the capacity of health worker training programs.   Stacie returned to Stanford School of Medicine to complete her medical degree where she focused on cost-effectiveness research for a genetic screening tool. Recognizing the increasing importance of market dynamics in healthcare delivery, Stacie also chose to pursue her MBA at the Graduate School of Business where she gained additional experience in the private sector with Medtronic and McKinsey & Company. Stacie completed her medical training at UCSF-affiliate Santa Rosa Family Medicine and is a practicing board-certified family physician. She is currently pursuing the Stanford-Intermountain Fellowship in Population Health Sciences.    Stacie’s current research seeks to bring rigorous methodologies to answer those questions most relevant to the hospital C-suite: How to effectively manage physicians and other healthcare workers? How to achieve the quadruple aim of improving patient outcomes, lowering cost, and improving the physician and patient experience? How to transition from a fee-for-service to a value-based health system? Her work is based in implementation science, using quantitative and qualitative methodologies to answer the above questions. Her ongoing projects relate to physician incentives, physician burnout, policy impacts on population health, corporate benefit management strategies, medical assistant turnover, and social determinants of health.
Stanford/Intermountain Fellow, PCPH

Russia, The West and Sanctions

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Click here to RSVP

 

Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

 

Abstract: The West’s sanctions regime on Russia is unprecedented. Russia is the largest economy ever to be subject to major sanctions. And for the first time, the West is now the major constraint on Russia’s participation in the global economy. This experience is driving adaptation and innovation in both Russian public policy and Western sanctions practice.

What do Russian sanctions reveal about both Russia and sanctions? What count as good and bad tests of sanctions’ efficacy? What implications do sanctions hold for Russia’s domestic evolution and its relationship with the West?

 

Speaker's Biography:

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Nigel Gould-Davies is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He teaches at Mahidol University International College in Thailand.

Nigel taught at Oxford University before joining the British Foreign Office, where his roles included Ambassador to Belarus. From 2010-14 he was Vice President, Policy and Corporate Affairs for BG Group in Asia.

He is the author of Tectonic Politics: Global Political Risk in an Age of Transformation (Brookings Institution, 2019). He received his B.A. and M.Phil. from Oxford and his Ph.D. from Harvard.

 

Nigel Gould-Davies Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House
Seminars
Russian Power and Purpose in the 21st Century Seminars

Interpreting U.S.-China Trade War: Background, Negotiations and Consequences

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Interpreting U.S.-China Trade War: Background, Negotiations and Consequences

Since March 2018, the US–China trade conflict has escalated from a tariff war to a technology war, and a strategic competition between the two giants. The direction of the trade war and China–US relations will reshape the world order of the future. In this talk, Professor Wang Yong will explore questions like: What major goals does the US have in the trade war against China? How should one evaluate the influence of domestic structural changes in the two countries on the trade conflict? Will a possible deal stop the spiraling of strategic competition between the two major powers? By answering these questions, Professor Wang will analyze the political and economic forces driving this current US–China trade war and the factors affecting the negotiations. Major arguments include that trade frictions have deep roots in the restructuring of domestic politics taking place in the two countries; while extreme thoughts define US–China relationship from the perspectives of ideology and strategic rivalry, economic interdependence and shared stakes set the ground for negotiation and possible compromise between the two countries. Rebuilding political trust will be the key to dealing with strategic rivalry and avoiding a new cold war between China and the US.

 

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Professor Wang Yong is director of the Center for International Political Economy and professor at the School of International Studies, both at Peking University. He is also professor at the Party School of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and president-appointed professor for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Senior Civil Servants Training Program on Chinese Affairs at Peking University and a member of the Ministry of Commerce Economic Diplomacy Expert Working Group. Professor Wang was formerly a consultant of the Asia Development Bank, Visiting Chevalier Chair Professor at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Global Trade and Foreign Direct Investment.

Professor Wang received his B.A. and M.A. in law and international politics and Ph.D. in law from Peking University. He joined the faculty of the School of International Studies at Peking University in 1990. He studied at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (an educational collaboration between the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University) and was also a visiting scholar at the University of California San Diego and a joint visiting fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy and the University of Southern California.

His major authored books include International Political Economy in China: The Global Conversation (co-edited with Greg Chin and Margaret Pearson, Routledge, 2015), Political Economy of International Trade (China Market Press, 2008) and Political Economy of China-U.S. Trade Relations (China Market Press, 2007), which was awarded the first prize for Excellent Social Sciences Works by the Beijing Municipal Government and the Beijing Confederation of Social Scientists in 2008.

Philippines Conference Room
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, Central, 3rd Floor
Stanford, CA 94305

WANG Yong <br><i>Director, Center for International Political Economy; Professor of International Studies, Peking University</i><br><br>
Lectures
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