Stanford University

Russia's War in Ukraine: What's at stake and what we should do about it | Kristjan Prikk, Rose Gottemoeller, Steven Pifer

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Co-sponsored with Stanford University Libraries

About the Event: Join us for an engaging conversation with the Ambassador of Estonia to the U.S. Kristjan Prikk, Rose Gottemoeller, and Steven Pifer, who will discuss Russia's war in Ukraine - what's at stake and what we should do about it.
Russia's unprovoked war against Ukraine has brought about the most serious reassessment of the European security realities since the end of the Cold War. The epic clash of political wills, the magnitude of military operations, and the scale of atrocities against the Ukrainian people are beyond anything Europe has seen since World War II. The past nine months have forced many to reassess what is possible and impossible in international security A.D. 2022. What is this war about, after all? What's at stake in this – to paraphrase former British PM Chamberlain – "quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom most Americans know nothing?" What should be the lessons for U.S. strategists and policymakers? What are the wider implications for U.S. national security interests, particularly those related to the Indo-Pacific? How has the Alliance supported Ukraine since the war started? What should the end of this war look like and how to get there?

All these questions are relevant and should be carefully weighed with current information from the war as well as historic perspective and regional knowledge in mind.

About the Speakers: 

Estonia's Ambassador to the U.S. Mr. Kristjan Prikk started his mission in Washington, D.C. in May 2021. He is a graduate of the USA Army War College and has served as the National Security Coordinator to the Prime Minister. Prior to arriving in D.C., he was the Permanent Secretary of the Estonian Ministry of Defense. Among his previous assignments are two other tours in Washington as an Estonian diplomat and work on NATO-Russia and NATO-Ukraine topics at a time when these relationships were considerably less charged than today.

Rose Gottemoeller is the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining Stanford, Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO's adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism.  Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. 

Steven Pifer is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation as well as a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. He was a William J. Perry Fellow at the center from 2018-2022 and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin from January-May 2021. Pifer's research focuses on nuclear arms control, Ukraine, Russia, and European security. A retired Foreign Service officer, Pifer's more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues, and included service as the third US ambassador to Ukraine.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Green Library, East Wing 

Kristjan Prikk
Rose Gottemoeller
Steven Pifer
Seminars
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Simon Hix | New Young Liberals: An Emerging Force in European Politics

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Simon Hix

For the past few decades political scientists of electoral politics in Europe have focused on the emergence of 'left-libertarian' values in the European electorate, particularly amongst younger voters. What has largely been ignored, though, is the growing size of voters in many countries who have 'right-libertarian' values. Using European Social Survey data, I estimate the change in the size of this proportion of the electorate across time and across country. I also find these voters with these values tend to be younger, more highly educated, and employed in the private sector. I also look at their vote-choice, and find that they are increasingly pivotal, as they switch their votes away from mainstream centre-right parties to Liberal, Green and even Social Democratic parties.

Simon Hix is the Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics at the European University Institute, in Florence, Italy. Before taking up this position in September 2021, he was the Harold Laski Professor of Political Science and the Pro-Director (Vice President) for Research at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Simon is a leading researcher, teacher, and commentator on comparative European and EU politics, and his research has focused on comparative democratic institutions, voting and party behaviour, and legislative behaviour. Simon also has extensive experience of consulting policy-makers and parties on electoral system and parliamentary reforms and party strategies.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by March 30, 2023.

Anna Grzymała-Busse

Encina Hall 2nd floor, William J. Perry Conference Room

Simon Hix, European University Institute
Seminars

Stefanie Walter | When Voters Challenge International Institutions: Implications at Home and Abroad

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Stefanie Walter

Voter-endorsed challenges to international institutions present a growing problem for international cooperation. This talk discusses the challenges that unilateral, voter-endorsed attempts by one member state to withdraw from or renegotiate the terms of existing international institutions create for the institution’s other member states. It argues that such voter-endorsed “cooperation challenges” tend to reverberate abroad: First, they influence public and elite views about the merits of the international institution and thus can create contagion effects, but can also have stabilizing effects depending on how the they highlight the risks and opportunities associated with exit and renegotiation. Second, the loss of, or change in the distribution of, cooperation gains can have considerable effects on the institutions’ other member states.

Finally, these reverberations abroad influence how member states respond to unilateral voter-endorsed “cooperation challenges.” Drawing on comparative case studies of a diverse set of voter-endorsed challenges to international institutions and on survey evidence from the EU-27 as well as a panel of Swiss respondents, the talk shows that this framework can help us better understand the (non-)existence of contagion effects across member states, variation in the responses of the remaining member states to voter-endorsed challenges to international institutions, and the ultimate outcomes of such cooperation challenges.

Stefanie Walter is Full Professor for International Relations and Political Economy at the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. Her research examines distributional conflicts, political preferences and economic policy outcomes related to globalization, European integration, and financial crises. Current projects examine the backlash against globalization, and challenges to international cooperation.

Stefanie Walter’s work has been published in journals such as the Annual Review of Political Science, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and International Organization. She is the author of “Financial Crises and the Politics of Macroeconomic Adjustments” (2013, Cambridge University Press) and co-author of “The Politics of Bad Options” (2020, Oxford University Press).

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by January 12, 2023.

Anna Grzymała-Busse

Encina Hall 2nd floor, William J. Perry Conference Room

Stefanie Walter, University of Zurich
Seminars

European Developments in Internet Regulation

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Aleksandra Kuczerawy headshot on a blue background with text European Developments in Internet Regulation

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

Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program Information Session AY 24-25

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Honors students with the Washington Monument in the background

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) will be accepting applications from eligible juniors from any university department who are interested in writing their senior thesis on a subject touching upon democracy, economic development, and rule of law (DDRL). 

On Wednesday, January 17 at 12:00 pm PT, join CDDRL faculty and current honors students to discuss the program and answer questions.

The application period opens on January 8, 2024, and runs through February 9, 2024.

For more information on the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program, please click here.

Stephen J. Stedman

CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-2705 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
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PhD

Stephen Stedman is a Freeman Spogli senior fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and FSI, an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. 

In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance. In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.  His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Didi Kuo

Encina Hall, C150
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Center Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Didi Kuo is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is a scholar of comparative politics with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform. She is the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

She has been at Stanford since 2013 as the manager of the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective and is co-director of the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL. She was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America and is a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Emory University.

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The Transatlantic Summit 2022: Sovereignty vs. Cooperation in the Digital Era - Conference on Technology and Geopolitics

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Please note, event is now sold out, though waitlist is available through the registration link above.

The Transatlantic Summit is where the worlds of cutting-edge research, industry, and policy come together to find answers on geopolitics, digital platforms and emerging tech as well as digital sovereignty. Whether you're an industry leader, policy maker, or student - join the start of a new Transatlantic movement seeking synergies between technology and society and become part of the international conversation going forward.

About:

  • Creates a vibrant forum for a dialogue between the US and Europe in Silicon Valley about the impact of digital technologies on business and society
  • Builds a strong network for German American collaboration in digital innovation, business, and geopolitics
  • Excite, connect and inspire: Participants meet the movers and shakers of the digital future from business, academia, and politics

 

Topics:

  1. Digital Sovereignty
  2. Geopolitics of Emerging Technologies
  3. Digital Platforms and Misinformation

 

The conference, which is jointly organized by the German Federal Foreign Office, The Representatives of German Business (GAAC West), German Consulate General of San Francisco, Stanford German Student Association and Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center addresses current discussions about digital technologies, business and society. Join us and get inspired by our series of speakers and networking sessions to bring together leaders, politicians, students, and changemakers.

Digital Sovereignty and Multilateral Collaboration

Digital sovereignty vs. cooperation: What should the future of the transatlantic partnership on digital policies look like, and how do we reach it?

Technology increasingly sits at the epicenter of geopolitics. In recent years, the notion of technological or digital sovereignty has emerged in Europe as a means of promoting the notion of European leadership and strategic autonomy in the digital field. On the other side of the Atlantic, the United States find themselves in an increasingly fierce race with China for global technology dominance. Against this backdrop, cooperation between the European Union and the United States may be more critical than ever. This raises important questions: What does Europe's move toward digital sovereignty and self- determination mean for the transatlantic partnership? And how should the US and EU balance sovereignty and cooperation in digital and technology policy? Our panel will explore tensions between sovereignty and cooperation and what the future of transatlantic policy may look like on issues from data protection to semiconductors, in light of the rising technological influence and ambitions of China.

John Zysman, Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley
Maryam Cope, Head of Government Affairs, ASML U. S.
Hannah Bracken, Policy Advisor -Privacy Shield, U.S. Department of Commerce
Adriana Groh, Co-Founder, Sovereign Tech Fund

Agenda & Speakers

Transatlantic Summit: Sovereignty vs. Cooperation in the Digital Era
Thursday, Nov. 17th, 2022, 9:00am – 6:00pm PT
Vidalakis Dining Hall, Schwab Residential Center Stanford, CA 94305

FULL AGENDA
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Conferences

Priests' Wives and Concubines In the Medieval West

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Fiona Griffith Conference poster

This conference focuses on medieval women married to or living with priests, with the goal of restoring priests’ wives to scholarship on gender, spirituality, family life, and the church, particularly in western Europe. Speakers will explore the lives and circumstances of priests’ women, the sources that can reveal or shed light on their status or experiences, and the various roles—social as well as cultural—that they played within the family, their local communities, and the church more broadly.  More information about the project can be found here. 

Organized by the Department of History with generous funding from France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. Cosponsored by Department of Religious Studies, Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Language, and The Europe Center.

Cecil H. Green Library, Hohbach Hall
557 Escondido Mall Stanford, CA

Fiona Griffiths

Lane History Corner

450 Serra Mall

200-118
 

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Professor of History
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Fiona Griffiths is a historian of medieval Western Europe, focusing on intellectual and religious life from the ninth to the thirteenth century. Her work explores the possibilities for social experimentation and cultural production inherent in medieval religious reform movements, addressing questions of gender, spirituality, and authority, particularly as they pertain to the experiences and interactions of religious men (priests or monks) with women (nuns and clerical wives). Griffiths is the author of Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women's Monastic Life, The Middle Ages Series (The University of Pennsylvania Press: 2018); and The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century, The Middle Ages Series (The University of Pennsylvania Press: 2007); as well as co-editor of Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, (with Kathryn Starkey (De Gruyter: 2018); and Partners in Spirit: Men, Women, and Religious Life in Germany, 1100-1500, (with Julie Hotchin) (Brepols: 2014). Her essays have appeared in Speculum, Church History, the Journal of Medieval History, and Viator. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; the Stanford Humanities Center; and the Institute of Historical Research (University of London).

Griffith's research was featured in The Europe Center October 2017 Newsletter.

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Seminars

European Developments in Internet Regulation

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Join the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) and moderator Nate Persily, 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 only) and virtual attendance (open to public) is available; registration is required.

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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Nathaniel Persily
Aleksandra Kuczerawy Postdoctoral Scholar at the Program on Platform Regulation (PDI)
Seminars

The Evolving Role of AI In Political News Consumption: The Effects of Algorithmic vs. Community Label on Perceived Accuracy of Hyper-partisan Misinformation

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chenyan jia headshot on flyer

Join the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) and moderator Nate Persily, in conversation with Chenyan Jia for The Evolving Role of AI In Political News Consumption: The Effects of Algorithmic vs. Community Label on Perceived Accuracy of Hyper-partisan Misinformation.

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 only) and virtual attendance (open to the public) is available; registration is required.

Chenyan Jia (Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin) is a postdoctoral scholar in The Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) at Stanford University. In 2023 Fall, she will be joining Northeastern University as an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism in the College of Arts, Media, and Design with a joint appointment in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. She has been working as a research assistant for UT's Human–AI Interaction Lab.

Her research interests lie at the intersection of communication and human-computer interaction. Her work has examined (a) the influence of emerging media technologies such as automated journalism and misinformation detection algorithms on people’s political attitudes and news consumption behaviors; (b) the political bias in news coverage through NLP techniques; (c) how to leverage AI technologies to reduce bias and promote democracy.

Her research has appeared in mass communication journals and top-tier AI and HCI venues including Human-Computer Interaction Journal (CSCW), Journal of Artificial Intelligence, International Journal of Communication, Media and Communication, ICLR, ICWSM, EMNLP, ACL, and AAAI. Her research has been awarded the Best Paper Award at AAAI 21. She was the recipient of the Harrington Dissertation Fellowship and the Dallas Morning News Graduate Fellowship for Journalism Innovation.

YOUTUBE RECORDING

Nathaniel Persily
Chenyan Jia Postdoctoral Scholar at the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) 
Seminars

Internet Control as A Winning Strategy: How the Duality of Information Consolidates Autocratic Rule in the Digital Age

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Join the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) and moderator Nate Persily, in conversation with Meicen Sun for Internet Control as A Winning Strategy: How the Duality of Information Consolidates Autocratic Rule in the Digital Age.

This paper advances a new theory on how the Internet as a digital technology helps consolidate autocratic rule. Exploiting a major Internet control shock in China in 2014, this paper finds that Chinese data-intensive firms have gained from Internet control a 10% increase in revenue over other Chinese firms, and about 1-2% over their U.S. competitors. Meanwhile, the same Internet control has incurred an up to 25% reduction in research quality for Chinese scholars conditional on the knowledge-intensity of their discipline. This occurred specifically via a reduction in the access to cutting-edge knowledge from the outside world. These findings suggest that while politically motivated information flow restrictions do take a toll on the country’s long-term capacity for innovation, they lend a short-term benefit to its data-intensive sectors. Conventional wisdom on the inherent limit to information control by autocracies overlooks this crucial protectionist benefit that aids in autocratic power consolidation in the digital age. 

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 and virtual attendance is available; registration is required.

Meicen Sun is a postdoctoral scholar with the Program on Democracy and the Internet at Stanford University. Her research examines the political economy of information and the effect of information policy on the future of innovation and state power. Her writings have appeared in academic and policy outlets including Foreign Policy Analysis, Harvard Business Review, World Economic Forum, the Asian Development Bank Institute, and The Diplomat among others. She had previously conducted research at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and at the UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa. Bilingual in English and Chinese, she has also written stories, plays, and music and staged many of her works -- in both languages -- in China, Singapore and the U.S. Sun has served as a Fellow on the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on China and as a Research Affiliate with the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. She holds an A.B. with Honors from Princeton University, an A.M. with a Certificate in Law from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Nathaniel Persily
Meicen Sun Postdoctoral scholar with the Program on Democracy and the Internet
Seminars
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