Stanford University

Crime

Nancy Ruttenburg

Building 460, Room 418
Main Quad
Stanford University

(650) 725-1644
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William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature
Professor of English
Professor, by courtesy, of Comparative Literature
Professor, by courtesy, of Slavic Languages and Literatures
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PhD

Nancy Ruttenburg is the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature in the English Department at Stanford. She also holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.  She received the PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford (1988) and taught at Harvard, Berkeley, and most recently at NYU, where she was chair of the Department of Comparative Literature from 2002-2008.   Her research interests lie at the intersection of political, religious, and literary expression in colonial through antebellum America and nineteenth-century Russia, with a particular focus on the development of liberal and non-liberal forms of democratic subjectivity.  Related interests include history of the novel, novel theory, and the global novel; philosophy of religion and ethics; and problems of comparative method, especially as they pertain to North American literature and history.

Prof. Ruttenburg is the author of Democratic Personality: Popular Voice and the Trial of American Authorship (Stanford UP, 1998) and Dostoevsky's Democracy (Princeton UP, 2008), and she has recently written on the work of J. M. Coetzee and on Melville’s “Bartleby.”  Books in progress include a study of secularization in the postrevolutionary United States arising out of the naturalization of “conscience” as inalienable right, entitled Conscience, Rights, and 'The Delirium of Democracy'; and a comparative work entitled  Dostoevsky And for which the Russian writer serves as a lens on the historical development of a set of intercalated themes in the literature of American modernity.  These encompass self-making and self-loss (beginning with Frederick Douglass's serial autobiographies); sentimentalism and sadism (in abolitionist fiction); crime and masculinity (including Mailer's The Executioner's Song); and the intersection of race, religious fundamentalism, and radical politics (focusing on the works of James Baldwin and Marilynne Robinson).  Her courses will draw from both these projects.  

Prof. Ruttenburg is past president of the Charles Brockden Brown Society and has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Humanities Center Fellowship, a University of California President's Research Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Social Science Research Council for Russian and East European Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council for Learned Societies.

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center

Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict

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At least 200,000-250,000 people died in the war in Bosnia. "There are three million child soldiers in Africa." "More than 650,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. occupation of Iraq." "Between 600,000 and 800,000 women are trafficked across borders every year." "Money laundering represents as much as 10 percent of global GDP." "Internet child porn is a $20 billion-a-year industry." These are big, attention-grabbing numbers, frequently used in policy debates and media reporting. Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill see only one problem: these numbers are probably false. Their continued use and abuse reflect a much larger and troubling pattern: policymakers and the media naively or deliberately accept highly politicized and questionable statistical claims about activities that are extremely difficult to measure. As a result, we too often become trapped by these mythical numbers, with perverse and counterproductive consequences.

This problem exists in myriad policy realms. But it is particularly pronounced in statistics related to the politically charged realms of global crime and conflict-numbers of people killed in massacres and during genocides, the size of refugee flows, the magnitude of the illicit global trade in drugs and human beings, and so on. In Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and policy analysts critically examine the murky origins of some of these statistics and trace their remarkable proliferation. They also assess the standard metrics used to evaluate policy effectiveness in combating problems such as terrorist financing, sex trafficking, and the drug trade.

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Publication Type
Books
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Cornell University Press
Authors
Kelly Greenhill
Peter Andreas

$100 a Day Justice Delayed Film Screening and Panel

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On December 10, 1991, East Palo Alto resident Rick Walker was convicted of a murder he did not commit. Linked to the crime by false testimony and questionable legal tactics, Walker would spend the next 12 years of his life in some of California's most dangerous prisons. Once exonerated, he would face yet another barrier to justice: the California State Legislature. Entitled to one hundred dollars for every day spent falsely imprisoned, Walker's attempts to receive his just due became caught in the partisan battle over the 2003
California budget.

$100 a Day examines this story of gross injustice, political partisanship, and the heroic struggle to prove Walker's innocence and help him rebuild his life. Associate Dean Larry Marshall, who co-founded and served as legal director of the world-renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions, where he represented many wrongly convicted inmates, will introduce the documentary.  After the screening, Professor Juliet Brodie, Director of the Stanford Community Law Clinic, will moderate a panel featuring:

  • Rick Walker
  • State Senator Joe Simitian
  • filmmaker Gwen Essegian

Co-sponsored by the Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law; Haas Center for Public Service; Center on Philanthropy and Civic Society; Stanford Law School Criminal Law Society; American Constitution Society; Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; Stanford in Government; and the Program on Human Rights, CDDRL.

Stanford Law School
Room 280B

Larry Marshall Associate Dean Commentator Stanford Law School
Juliet Brody Director Commentator Stanford Community Law Clinic
Rick Walker Panelist
Joe Simitian California State Senator Panelist
Gwen Esseglan Filmmaker Panelist
Conferences

Exporting U.S. Criminal Justice

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Abstract
In the years leading up to and following the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government embarked on a new legal transplant project, carried out through the foreign promotion of U.S. criminal justice techniques, procedures, and transnational crime priorities. Over the course of the 1990s, U.S. foreign criminal justice development initiatives rapidly expanded. This Article seeks to answer two questions, which to date remain largely unaddressed in the relevant scholarly literatures: Why, in the Cold War's wake, when the U.S. criminal justice system had come to be viewed in significant respects in terms of failure, did U.S. criminal law development programs take shape and proliferate? What have been the associated outcomes?
In discussing the paper it would be most useful to discuss the Introduction, Parts I, II.A-C4a, (skipping II.C.4.b&c), Part III.B (skipping part III.A), and the Conclusion section.  Included is  a table of contents and hope that helps this make sense: basically, if time doesn't permit a skim through the whole article, read 1-35, 42-44, and 55-74 (skipping 36-41 and 45-54).
Download pdf

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Allegra McLeod Post Doctoral Fellow Speaker Program on Global Justice at Stanford University
Workshops

Fear Factor: Understanding the Origins and Consequences of Beliefs about National Security and the Threats We Face

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The routine employment of torture on the popular television series 24 has given rise to the charge that the program lends verisimilitude to  the questionable premise that torture is a legitimate and effective means of interrogation. A growing body of evidence suggests the critics' charge is correct. Indeed, the Dean of the US Military Academy at West Point grew sufficiently concerned about the pernicious effects 24 was having on his cadets that he traveled to California to meet with the show's creators to ask them to tone down the use of torture on the program. The Intelligence Science Board has echoed the critics' concerns, arguing that similar reality-distorting attitudes towards torture can be seen in the public at large. But how and why can a wholly fictional program like 24 actually influence political reality? Is this case something of an exception, or more akin to the rule?  Unfortunately, evidence suggests that fiction and other socially constructed portrayals of political reality-including propaganda, false flag operations and conspiracy theories-have long exercised demonstrable effects on political reality, often in unforeseen and unintentional ways.

Through the lens of the invasion panic that gripped Great Britain in the late nineteenth century, Greenhill will explore how and why national security-related "social facts"-i.e., things that are deemed to be "true" simply because they are widely believed to be true-can become broadly adopted and disseminated and, by extension, thereby influence the development and conduct of national security policy. Greenhill will further explore what this historical case can tell us about the theoretical and policy implications such "social facts" may hold for the threats we face today, including terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Kelly M. Greenhill is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Tufts University and Research Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She holds a Ph.D. and an S.M. from M.I.T., a C.S.S. from Harvard University, and a B.A. from UC Berkeley. Greenhill previously held pre- or post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and at CISAC.

Her work has appeared in a variety of venues, including the journals International Security, Security Studies, and International Migration as well as in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and in briefs prepared for the U.S. Supreme Court. Greenhill has two books shortly forthcoming with Cornell University Press: the first, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion and Foreign Policy, focuses on the use of large-scale population movements as instruments of state-level coercion; and the second, Sex, Drugs and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict (co-edited with Peter Andreas), examines the politicization and manipulation of crime and conflict-related statistics. She is currently at work on a new book, a cross-national study that explores why, when, and under what conditions, fiction, so-called "social facts" and other non-factual sources of information-such as rumors, conspiracy theories and propaganda-materially influence the development and conduct of national security policies.

Lynn Eden is Associate Director for Research at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford. In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Kelly M. Greenhill CISAC Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, Tufts University Speaker

Lynn Eden

Not in residence

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Affiliate
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PhD

Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.

In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.

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Lynn Eden Senior Research Scholar and Associate Director for Research, CISAC Commentator
Seminars

Information Security Law in the EU and the U.S.: A Risk-Based Assessment of Implicit and Explicit Regulatory Policies

The level of information security currently provided by governments and private entities leaves them and the (personal) data they store exposed to a high level of risk. To manage that risk, different regulatory measures have been proposed and adopted. They range from anti-hacking criminal statutes to producer liability for security vulnerabilities or an obligation for companies to notify their customers in the event of a data breach.

Defining the Crime of Aggression

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Beth Van Schaack is Associate Professor of Law with Santa Clara University School of Law, where she teaches and writes in the areas of human rights, transitional justice, international criminal law, public international law, international humanitarian law, and civil procedure. 

Prof. Van Schaack joined the law faculty from private practice at Morrison & Foerster LLP where her practice focused on international law, commercial law, criminal defense, and human rights. Prior to entering private practice, Prof. Van Schaack was Acting Executive Director and Staff Attorney with The Center for Justice & Accountability, a non-profit law firm in San Francisco dedicated to the representation of victims of torture and other grave human rights abuses. She was also a law clerk with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.  

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Beth Van Schaack Visiting Scholar Speaker CDDRL
Seminars
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