This workshop is sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Program, and co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, the Europe Center,  and the Stanford Humanities Center

Stanford faculty, students, scholars and staff are welcome to attend. To RSVP, please contact medstudies@stanford.edu.

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE:
 
November  15th
 
10:30 am – Noon:   Conceptual Explorations

Haldun Gulalp (Department Political Science, Yildiz Technical University)
“Rethinking Islam and Secularization in Turkey: A Durkheimian Perspective”

Ahmet Kuru (Department of Political Science, San Diego State University)
“Islamism, Secularism, and Democracy in Turkey”
 
2:00 pm- 3:30 pm:  Managing the Difference

Aykan Erdemir (Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University)
“Faith-based Activism for Secularism: The Transformation of Alevi Collective Action Repertoire in Turkey”

Murat Somer (Department of International Relations, Koc University; Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University)
“Islamic-Conservative and Pro-Secular Values and the Management of Ethnic Diversity and Conflict”
 
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm: Claiming Secularism

Umit Kurt (Department of History, Clark University)
“Military’s Perceptions of Islam and Secularism in Contemporary Turkey”

Kabir Tambar (Department of Religion, University of Vermont)
“Staging Alevi Pasts in Secular Time”
 
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November 16th
 
10: 30 am- Noon: Turkey’s “Islamists” and “Secularists” Abroad

Betul Balkan (Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Northeastern University)
“Opinions of Turkish Immigrants in Houston About Secularism and Islam in Turkey”

Zeynep Atalay (Department of Sociology, University of Maryland-College Park; The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Stanford University)
“From the Neighborhood to Umma: Global Networks of Muslim Civil Society in Turkey”
 
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm: Contextualizing the Turkish Case

Hootan Shambayati (Division of Public Affairs, Florida Gulf Coast University)
“Controlled Democratization, Moderate Islam, and Radical Secularism: Lessons from Turkey and their Implications for the Middle East”

Nora Fisher-Onar (Department of Politics and International Relations, Bahcesehir University; Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford)
“Vision or Cacophony?:  Mixing Liberal-Democratic, Religious-Conservative, Power Political, and Ottomanist Metaphors in Contemporary Turkey”
 
4:00 pm- 5:30 pm:  Concluding Session

Riva Kastoryano (Center for International Studies and Research, Sciences Politique)

Larry Diamond (Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University)

In this special seminar, Professor John F. Copper will introduce his new book on Taiwan during the Chen Shui-bian era. This is one of the very first books in the western scholarship assessing the process of democratization in Taiwan during the Chen Shui-bian presidency and after. The speaker will delineate and evaluate the factors that produced the Taiwan political miracle up to 2000, when Chen was elected president and Taiwan’s democratization was reportedly consolidated with a change in ruling political parties and a president that was said for the first time to represent Taiwan’s majority. Several key factors the local population in particular considered important to the democratization process, such as economic growth, political reform, ethnic relations, freedom of the press, and clean government, will be carefully assessed in this talk.    

John F. Copper is the Stanley J. Buckman Distinguished Professor of International Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of more than twenty books on Asia and international affairs. He has testified several times before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee and its Sub-committee on Asia and Pacific Affairs. He was a member of the Board of Governors of the East West Center from 1983 to 1989, and was the recipient of the International Communications Award in 1997. 

In medicine, transportation, commerce and entertainment, and countless other fields, technology has transformed our lives and provided immense value for millions.

Yet despite all of these revolutionary advances, it has yet to have a similar impact to radically improve the workings of public policy. This situation is especially unfortunate given the fiscal, economic, and social challenges facing our democracy and those around the world. If there's ever a time where politics could use some creative solutions, it's now.

This seminar will highlight some of the legal, political, and social barriers preventing disruptive innovation from taking hold in the public policy sphere, as well as ways to remove these barriers. Drawing on sources ranging from theoretical physics and constitutional law to popular culture, the seminar will provide unique and practical perspectives on how technology can help democracies around the world evolve.

The seminar will offer provocative insights, thought-provoking discussions, and practical tools to help our society can facilitate the evolution of better political, economic, and social institutions.

Matt Harrison graduated from the University of Miami with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Political Science and from the University of Southern California with a joint law degree and Master of Public Policy. Matt founded Prometheus in 2003 and serves as the Institute's President. As the driving force behind the creative and strategic vision of Prometheus, Matt identified and recruited a talented team of engineers, designers and contributors. He was the brainchild behind the DIY Democracy iPhone app, has authored over 200 articles, publications and other features for Prometheus, has been a guest on several talk radio shows and has been quoted in the Orange County Register and Chicago Tribune.

The Gov 2.0 movement, centered on open public data and low cost communications tools, is making an impact on public life in the US and UK. To what extent do these tools matter for the increasing proportion of the world's population living in urban poverty? This talk explores the case of Map Kibera, a project in Nairobi's largest slum, that utilizes open data combined with new and traditional advocacy tools, to fight for improved social services and increased accountability for public officials. Map Kibera helps us think about the role a robust Gov 2.0 eco-system can play in supporting grassroots leaders as the fight for the future of their communities. 

Joshua Goldstein (@african_minute) is a PhD candidate at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, where he works with the Center for Information Technology Policy. He serves on the Board of the Ugandan software consultancy Appfrica Labs, and has worked extensively in East Africa, most recently consulting with UNICEF Innovations, and working on projects such as Map Kibera and Apps4Africa.

While completing his masters degree at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, he interned with Google Inc. on technology policy in Africa and with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, exploring the effect of Internet on democracy. Before graduate school he worked extensively in Uganda.

Join us for a discussion on human rights and environmental justice implications surrounding the BP oil spill from regulatory, litigation and conceptual perspectives.

Introduced and moderated by Dr. Helen Stacy, Co-ordinator, Program on Human Rights in the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law and Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute.

Panelists:

Meg Caldwell, Director, Environmental and Natural Resources Law & Policy Program; Executive Director, Center for Ocean Solutions, Woods Institute for the Environment. Professor Caldwell's scholarship focuses on the environmental effects of local land use decisions, the use of science in environmental and marine resource policy development and implementation, and developing private and public incentives for natural resource conservation.

Deborah Sivas, Luke W. Cole Professor of Environmental Law and Director, Environmental Law Clinic. Professor Sivas's current research is focused on the interaction of law and science in the arena of climate change and coastal/marine policy and the ability of the public to hold policymakers accountable.

Ursula Heise, Director, Program in Modern Thought & Literature and Professor of English; member of the Executive Committee of the Program in Science, Technology & Society; Affiliated Faculty of the Woods Institute for the Environment. Author of Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global (Oxford University Press, 2008), After Nature: Species Extinction and Modern Culture, (forthcoming) and The Avantgarde and the Forms of Nature (in progress).