Stanford University

Mother Nature, Bioweapons and Lab Accidents: Guarding Against the Next Global Biological Catastrophe

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For winter quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

YouTube

                                                                                           


About the Event: With the devastating loss of life, economic disruption, and political instability it has wrought, COVID-19 has revealed that national governments and the international community are woefully unprepared to respond to pandemics—underscoring the world’s vulnerability to future catastrophic biological threats that could meet or exceed the severe consequences of the current pandemic. To effectively guard against future biological risks, leaders should take a longer-term view and recognize that, while naturally occurring pandemics remain a threat, the next global catastrophe could result from a laboratory accident or the deliberate misuse of bioscience and biotechnology.   This talk will provide a high-level overview of the broader biothreat landscape and outline actions that national leaders and the international community should take with a view to preventing catastrophic biological events—specifically by constraining capabilities and shaping the intent of powerful actors who may wish to exploit the tools of modern bioscience to cause harm. This talk will outline two priority NTI initiatives to strengthen international capabilities to prevent catastrophic biological events. We are working to develop and launch the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS), a new international organization that will focus on preventing the deliberate abuse or accidental misuse of bioscience and biotechnology by strengthening international biosecurity norms and developing innovative, practical tools to reduce risks throughout the research and development life cycle. NTI is also working to develop the concept of a new Joint Assessment Mechanism to strengthen UN-system capabilities to investigate high-consequence biological events of unknown origin. The ability to rapidly discern the source of emerging pandemics is critical to mitigating their effects in real time and protecting against future risks.
 

About the Speaker: Dr. Jaime M. Yassif is Senior Director and Lead Scientist for Global Biological Policy and Programs at NTI, where her work focuses on strengthening governance of dual-use bioscience and reducing global catastrophic biological risks. Yassif previously served as a Program Officer at Open Philanthropy, where she led the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness initiative. In this role, she managed approximately $40 million in biosecurity grants, which rebuilt the field and supported work in several key areas, including developing new biosecurity programming at leading think tanks, establishing the Global Health Security Index, and initiating new biosecurity work in China and India. Prior to this, Yassif served as a science and technology policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Defense and worked on the Global Health Security Agenda at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Jaime Yassif NTI
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Demand-Driven Ideology on YouTube in the 2020 Election and Beyond

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Kevin Munger photo on a flyer for the Cyber Policy Center's Winter Seminar Series Event Does Demand Create Its Own Supply?: YouTube Politics During the 2020 Presidential Campaign

Join us on Tuesday, February 15 from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for Demand-Driven Ideology on YouTube in the 2020 Election and Beyond​ featuring Kevin Munger of Penn State University in conversation with Nate Persily of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

"YouTube Politics" has evolved considerably over the past decade. Expanding on a supply-and-demand framework, we argue that the changing composition of the audience and the wider political ecosystem influences what videos get created and by whom. Of particular interest is the emergence of a second dimension, largely orthogonal to the traditional left-right divide: the pro- / anti-establishment dimension. The movement of some portion of American citizens across the first dimension towards the anti-establishment pole during the 2000s and 2010s was observed and responded to by media and political entrepreneurs. We chart this process at large scale during the 2020 US Presidential Election campaign and throughout 2021. Using data from nearly three thousand channels who discuss US Politics and a quarter-billion comments left on their videos, we plot the ideological space of YouTube Politics and argue for the insufficiency of a unidimensional model of US politics on YouTube, online, and in general.

About the Speakers:

Kevin Munger
Kevin Munger is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Social Data Analytics at Penn State University. Kevin's research focuses on the implications of the internet and social media for the communication of political information. His specialty is the investigation of the economics of online media; current research models "Clickbait Media" and uses digital experiments to test the implications of these models on consumers of political information.

 

nate persily
Moderator: Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and FSI.  Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.  He also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration.  He is codirector of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet, and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, which supported local election officials in taking the necessary steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide safe voting options for the 2020 election. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a commissioner on the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age.

Nate Persily

Zoom

Kevin Munger Program on Democracy and the Internet

Sharon Beckstrand

Stanford Health Policy
Encina Commons, Room 185
615 Crothers Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6019

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sharon_medium.jpg

Sharon Beckstrand currently supports the faculty and staff at the Center for Health Policy and the Department of Health Policy. Before coming to Stanford, Sharon was a technical and marketing writer for companies in the Austin area, as well as a supply chain analyst. She received a BA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe.

Administrative Associate

Russia, Ukraine and NATO: The View from London

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 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

YouTube
 

                      

About the Event: The Russian military continues to mass forces near Ukraine, while the Kremlin says that the United States and NATO have addressed its secondary concerns but have ignored its key demands, such as that the Alliance foreswear further enlargement. Britain has played a critical role in NATO deliberations on how to respond to Moscow proposals and actions, and the British military is sending additional forces to bolster the Alliance's eastern flank. Sir Roderic Lyne, a former British ambassador to Russia and former foreign policy advisor to the prime minister, will describe how the crisis is viewed in London, the motivations driving Russian actions, and how the West should respond.

 

About the Speaker: Roderic Lyne served in the UK's Diplomatic Service for 34 years, including three postings to Moscow between 1972 and 2004, and was the last Head of the Soviet Department in the Foreign Office. In the mid-1990s he was the adviser to the Prime Minister on foreign affairs, security and Northern Ireland. Since retiring as Ambassador to the Russian Federation in 2004 he has visited Russia about fifty times as a business consultant and lecturer, and has written extensively on the subject. His most recent article was "Putin's Gamble: Must It End Up As Lose/Lose", published by Chatham House in late January. From 2009 to 2016 Roderic Lyne served on the UK's Inquiry into the Iraq conflict of 2003.

Virtual only.

Sir Roderic Lyne
Seminars
European Security Initiative

Research Seminar with Adrienne Sabety — The ActionHealthNYC Experiment: Providing Health Care Access for Undocumented Immigrants

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Adrienne Sabety of University of Notre Dame

Adrienne Sabety, PhD, is a Wilson Family LEO Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. She is also a research faculty member at the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at Notre Dame. Her research focuses on access to care and treatment for disadvantaged populations, like undocumented immigrants. She also studies major changes in health care markets, such as the design of insurance marketplaces and adverse climate shocks. She received an AS in Mathematics from Cuesta Community College, a BA in Economics from UC Berkeley, and a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard in 2020.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. 

When: Feb. 18, 2022, at 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Zoom Link

Seminars

Cheap Speech

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image showing Richard Hasen and the cover of his new book, Cheap Speech, on a blue background with Encina Hall

What can be done consistent with the First Amendment to ensure that American voters can make informed election decisions and hold free elections amid a flood of virally spread disinformation and the collapse of local news reporting? How should American society counter the actions of people like former President Donald J. Trump, who used social media to convince millions of his followers to doubt the integrity of U.S. elections and helped foment a violent insurrection? What can we do to minimize disinformation campaigns aimed at suppressing voter turnout?Join us on March 8 for a book talk with author Rick Hasen, the Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine in discussion with Cyber Policy Center co-director, Nate Persily on Rick’s newly released book, Cheap Speech.

Note the publisher is offering a 30% discount with code YECS30. Visit yalebooks.com for purchase.

About the Speaker:

Richard L. Hasen
Professor Richard L. Hasen is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine and is Co-Director of the Fair Elections and Free Speech Center. Hasen is a nationally recognized expert in election law and campaign finance regulation, writing as well in the areas of legislation and statutory interpretation, remedies, and torts. He is co-author of leading casebooks in election law and remedies. He served in 2020 as a CNN Election Law Analyst. From 2001-2010, he served (with Dan Lowenstein) as founding co-editor of the quarterly peer-reviewed publication, Election Law Journal. He is the author of over 100 articles on election law issues, published in numerous journals including the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review and Supreme Court Review. He was elected to The American Law Institute in 2009 and serves as Reporter (with Professor Douglas Laycock) on the ALI’s law reform project: Restatement (Third) of Torts: Remedies. He also is an adviser on the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Concluding Provisions. Professor Hasen was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by The National Law Journal in 2013, and one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California in 2005 and 2016 by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal.

 

Nathaniel Persily

Zoom

Richard L. Hasen Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science UC Irvine Law
Seminars

Research Seminar with Stephen Kissler — Building Computational Resources for Pandemic Readiness

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Stephen Kissler
Stephen Kissler is an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He earned his PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar, where he studied the transmission of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. At Harvard, Stephen has focused on identifying drivers of antibiotic resistance and, more recently, on SARS-CoV-2 response. In addition to his research, he has consulted with Partners in Health and provided comments for numerous media outlets during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. 

When: Feb. 14, 2022, at 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Zoom Link

Seminars

The Quantum Age

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Event flyer on blue background for the event Quantum Age with photos of speakers Chris Hoofnagle and Zahra Takhshid

Join us on Tuesday, February 8 from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for “The Quantum Age” featuring Chris Hoofnagle, Faculty Director, Center for Long–Term Cybersecurity at UC Berkeley, and Zahra Takhshid, University of Denver Sturm College of Law in conversation with Kelly Born of the Hewlett Foundation. This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative. 

Quantum technologies have provided capabilities that seem strange, are powerful, and at times, frightening. These capabilities are so different from our conventional intuition that they seem to ride the fine border between science fiction and fantasy—yet some quantum technologies can be commercially purchased today, and more are just around the corner. This discussion will explore the different kinds of quantum technologies and their legal, political, and social implications and, more broadly, the ways we can think about regulating the fast growing ecosystem of emerging technologies.

About the Speakers:

chris hoofnagle Chris Hoofnagle
Chris Jay Hoofnagle is Professor of Law in Residence at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where he teaches cybersecurity, programming for lawyers and torts. He is an affiliated faculty member with the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, a Professor of Practice in the School of Information, and a faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. Hoofnagle’s new book with Simson Garfinkel, Law and Policy for the Quantum Age is now available (open access) from Cambridge University Press, which also published his first book, Federal Trade Commission Privacy Law and Policy (2016). An elected member of the American Law Institute, Hoofnagle is of counsel to Gunderson Dettmer LLP, and serves on boards for Constella Intelligence and Palantir Technologies.

Zahra Takhshid Zahra Takhshid
Zahra Takhshid is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Before joining DU, she was the Lewis Fellow for Law Teaching and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School where she taught “Common Law and Privacy Torts.” Zahra is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and has been selected as the 2021 Quantum Fellow at the Center for Quantum Networks of the University of Arizona in partnership with Yale Law School’s Information Society Project (ISP). She teaches and writes about torts, privacy, technology and the law.  A second strand of her interest is comparative and Islamic law. Zahra’s research has been published or is forthcoming in Cardozo Law Review, Minnesota Law Review Online, UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near. Eastern Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology, among others.

 

Kelly Born
Moderator: Kelly Born is the Director of the Cyber Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. She leads a ten-year, $130 million grantmaking effort that aims to build a more robust cybersecurity field and improve policymaking. Previously, Kelly was executive director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. Prior to that, she was a Program Officer for the Madison Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, an 8-year, $150 million portfolio focused on improving U.S. democracy. Kelly oversaw Madison’s grantmaking on campaigns and elections, and digital disinformation. Before that, Kelly worked as a strategy consultant with the Monitor Institute, a nonprofit consulting firm, where she supported strategic planning efforts at a number of foundations. Earlier in her career, she consulted with nonprofits, the private sector, and governments in the United States, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe.

Kelly Born

Zoom

Chris Hoofnagle Berkeley Center for Law & Technology
Zahra Takhshid Denver Sturm College of Law

Algorithmic Newsfeeds and Elections

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alessandro vecchiato

Join us on Tuesday, February 1st from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for Algorithmic Newsfeeds and Elections featuring one of our postdoctoral scholars, Alessandro Vecchiato. This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

While personalization algorithms are ubiquitous online, their impact on public opinion and voting behavior is still largely unknown. This talk looks at this question by presenting results from a globally replicable, lab-in-the-field experiment with a custom-developed news app. We evaluate the impact of personalized news feed on news consumption, public opinion, turnout, and voting behavior. The results show that personalization significantly skews the news consumption of politically extreme users while allowing most other users to maintain a moderate news diet. However, personalized news feeds are shown to reinforce pre-existing beliefs for all users, including a demobilizing effect for unlikely voters. While our effects are small due to design constraints, our findings call for more transparency and regulation on platforms.

The session is open to the public, but registration is required.

 

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Alessandro Vecchiato
Alessandro Vecchiato is a postdoctoral fellow at the Program on Democracy and the Internet at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Politics from New York University in May 2019. His work looks at internet technologies' role in shaping political beliefs and electoral outcomes. In his dissertation, he uses primarily experimental methods to study how algorithmic personalization in social media news feeds affects the beliefs and preferences of voters. In other work, he investigated how internet-mediated communication through social media has affected politicians' relationships with voters.

 

Nate Persily
Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and FSI.  Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.  He also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration.  He is codirector of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet, and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, which supported local election officials in taking the necessary steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide safe voting options for the 2020 election. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a commissioner on the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age.

REGISTER

Seminars

Inclusive Content Moderation Is Innovative Content Moderation

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Julie Owono event

Join us on Tuesday, January 25 from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for “Inclusive Content Moderation Is Innovative Content Moderation” featuring Aerica Shimizu Banks, founder of Shiso in conversation with Julie Owono, executive director of the Content Policy and Society Lab. This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

Content moderation policies are perhaps the most scrutinized aspects of online platform operations, and are implicated in the most urgent current and political events globally. And yet, companies struggle to meet the moment, in part because of historical ignorance of a foundational component to adaptive policies: inclusion and accessibility. In creating the Beyond The Statement: Tech Framework for Color Of Change, Aerica Shimizu Banks illuminated a pathway to consistent and nimble innovation through  the “Curb-Cut Effect” of inclusive practices and policies. This presentation will explore how she found, through developing this framework, that the more inclusive a policy, the more innovative possibilities become for content moderation.

REGISTER

 

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Aerica Shimizu Banks is a tech policy expert and inclusion innovator. She is the founder of Shiso, a consultancy that applies an intersectional equity lens to business development, tech, and policy challenges. After experiencing the triumphs and trials of tech – building successful DEI programs at Google and then holding Pinterest accountable for its racism and sexism – she now creates systems and frameworks to elevate and restore equity in our institutions at her firm. Named to the 2021 Root 100, a 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur, and a 2017 Washingtonian Magazine Tech Titan, Aerica's career is a testament to the values she lives in her personal and professional life. In her personal capacity, she served on President Biden's innovation policy committee, helped pass the Silenced No More Act in California, and currently advises federal tech policy legislation. Professional highlights include founding Pinterest's DC office and leading federal affairs; leading diversity and equity initiatives on Google's legal team and serving as the Black small business liaison for the DC area; co-founding BEACON: The DC Women Founders Initiative; and serving as a political appointee in the Obama Administration. She holds an MSc in Environmental Policy from Oxford University and a BA in Environmental Studies and Public Affairs from Seattle University. 

Julie Owono is the Executive Director of the Content Policy & Society Lab (CPSL) and a fellow of the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) at Stanford University. She is also the Executive Director of digital rights organization Internet Sans Frontières, one of the inaugural members of the Facebook Oversight Board, and an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. She holds a Master’s degree in International Law from la Sorbonne University in Paris, and practiced as a lawyer at the Paris Bar. With a fluency in five languages, a childhood spent in various countries, and an educational background at the Lyçée Français Alexandre Dumas in Moscow, Julie has a unique perspective to understand the challenges and opportunities of a global Internet. This background has shaped her belief that global and multi stakeholder collaborations can be instrumental in the emergence of rights-based content policies and regulations. Julie is a member of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) created by France and Canada, as well as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on AI for Humanity, and of the WEF Council on the Connected World. She was also a member of UNESCO’s Ad Hoc Expert Group (AHEG), which drafted the first international text on Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Julie is a Member of the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Expert Committee on Digital Inclusion.

Seminars
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