Stanford University

Former president of Mexico to give public lecture March 5

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Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, will give a talk at Stanford titled "Economic Growth, Poverty and Democracy in Latin America—A President's Perspective" from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 5, in Bishop Auditorium.

The address is free and open to the public and is the 2008 Robert G. Wesson Lecture in International Relations Theory and Practice offered by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). It is co-sponsored this year by the Graduate School of Business.

Fox ran for the presidency in 2000 as the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN) on a platform focused on ending corruption and improving the economy, and was the first to defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had governed Mexico for more than 70 years. A former rancher, businessman and chief executive of Coca-Cola in Mexico, Fox devoted his efforts as president to expanding trade with the United States, promoting economic growth and job creation, and reducing corruption, crime and drug trafficking.

Since leaving office, Fox has been involved with a sweeping initiative to construct a social agenda for democracy in Latin America for the next 20 years, launched by Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru from 2001 to 2006. Toledo is a Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Stanford this year.

"It is a pleasure to welcome my friend, former President Vicente Fox, to Stanford, the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, where serious scholars and practitioners are committed to develop democracy that delivers concrete results for the poor and fosters social inclusion," said Toledo.

FSI Director Coit D. Blacker and Toledo will give opening remarks. Toledo will join Fox for the question-and-answer session at the conclusion of the lecture.

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Savings, Sustainability and Equity

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Kirsten finished her PhD at Stanford’s Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources in 2007. Her dissertation was entitled: Sustainability of Comprehensive Wealth – A practical and normative assessment. In a truely interdisciplinary manner, she combined economics, ethics, and engineering to improve and assess a macroeconomic sustainability indicator. She is currently a Teaching Fellow with Stanford’s Public Policy Program and a Research Associate at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. She teaches classes at the intersection of policy analysis and ethics, leads a seminar on comparative research design, and convenes a weekly environmental ethics working group. Her research interests lie in combining quantitative data with normative argument, to this end, she is co-Investigator on a Woods Institute for Environment grant working with PIs Kenneth Arrow and Debra Satz.

Prior to entering Stanford’s Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources in 2003 Kirsten worked at the World Bank for five years. Her work at the World Bank focused on the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects, remediation of industrial sites, carbon finance, compliance of projects with the World Bank’s environmental and social policies and corporate environmental strategy development. Her projects spanned the globe, including India, Kazakhstan, Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia and Brazil. She is comfortable holding conversations over a beer or two in French, Spanish and Dutch. For two years, she served as an elected official of the World Bank’s Staff Association board, representing 8,500 staff to management on myriad issues. She won numerous awards at the World Bank and from community groups for her professional achievements and volunteer work.

Kirsten is an environmental engineer trained first at the University of Virginia (BS ‘96) and the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands (MS ’98). More recently, she completed an MS in Applied Environmental Economics from Imperial College of London (’05).

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Kirsten Oleson Public Policy Speaker Stanford University
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Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice

Larry Diamond releases a new book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World

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In his new book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books 2008), Larry Diamond intensely scrutinizes the global effort on democracy promotion.

In his new book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books 2008), Larry Diamond intensely scrutinizes the global effort on democracy promotion. By both exploring the sources of progress as well as the locations and reasons for failure, Diamond presents a comprehensive assessment that is realistic but also hopeful. Diamond presents his arguments through a world of examples, citing the negative Putin's Russia and Musharraf's Pakistan; the unsuccessful politcally but nevertheless exemplary Toledo's Peru; and even the more difficult places like Nepal, Iran, and Thailand.

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The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World

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In his new book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books 2008), Larry Diamond intensely scrutinizes the global effort on democracy promotion. By both exploring the sources of progress as well as the locations and reasons for failure, Diamond presents a comprehensive assessment that is realistic but also hopeful. Diamond presents his arguments through a world of examples, citing the negative Putin's Russia and Musharraf's Pakistan; the unsuccessful politically but nevertheless exemplary Toledo's Peru; and even the more difficult places like Nepal, Iran, and Thailand.

By comparing the progress of today with that of the mid 1970s, when he was a Vietnam War protester, Diamond expresses hope. At that time, Diamond notes, barely a quarter of all independent states were using free and fair elections. But times have changed since then: "by the mid-1990s," he writes, "it had become clear to me, as it had to many of my colleagues involved in the global struggle for democracy, that if some three-fifths of the world's states, many of them poor and non-Western, could become democracies, there was no intrinsic reason why the rest of the world could not do as well."

Jessica Tuchman Mathews, president, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes that "no one has thought harder or more broadly about the past and future of democracy than Larry Diamond. A passionate treatment, infused with optimism and eminently readable, The Spirit of Democracy is a must for anyone who cares about the toughest challenge of balancing national values and national interests."
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Ray Jennings

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(202) 421-5184
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Ray Salvatore Jennings is a practitioner scholar with extensive experience within war to peace transitions in over 20 countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Peru, and Sierra Leone. Over the last twenty years, he has served as country director and senior consultant with the United States Institute of Peace, the United Nations, the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and many non-governmental organizations. He has served as a Senior Fellow with the United States Institute of Peace, and as a Public Policy Scholar and an Eastern European Research Scholar with the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He is currently conducting research with the Stanford University Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law on comparative cases of democratic breakthrough, teaching post-conflict reconstruction and transitional development at Georgetown and Syracuse Universities and is a social development consultant to the World Bank on Middle East and North African affairs. He is the author of numerous articles and is co-authoring a book on democratic breakthrough with Michael McFaul. His media appearances include CNN, CSPAN, NPR and the BBC.

10th United Nations Association Film Festival

UNAFF, which is now completing its first decade, was originally conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was created with the help of members of the Stanford Film Society and United Nations Association Midpeninsula Chapter, a grassroots, community-based, nonprofit organization. The 10th UNAFF will be held from October 24-28, 2007 at Stanford University with screenings in San Francisco on October 17 and 18, East Palo Alto on October 19 and San Jose on October 21. The theme for this year is "CAMERA AS WITNESS."

UNAFF celebrates the power of films dealing with human rights, environmental survival, women's issues, protection of refugees, homelessness, racism, disease control, universal education, war and peace. Documentaries often elicit a very personal, emotional response that encourages dialogue and action by humanizing global and local problems. To further this goal, UNAFF hosts academics and filmmakers from around the world to discuss the topics in the films with the audience, groups and individuals who are often separated by geography, ethnicity and economic constraints.

Over three hundred sixty submissions from all over the world have been carefully reviewed for the tenth annual UNAFF. The jury has selected 32 films to be presented at this year's festival. The documentaries selected showcase topics from Afghanistan, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cuba, France, Haiti, Kenya, Kosovo, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Iran, Israel, Italy, Lesotho, Macedonia, Mongolia, Nigeria, Norway, Palestine, Peru, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Spain, Sudan, Uganda, the UK, Ukraine, the US, Vietnam and Zambia.

Cubberley Auditorium (October 24)
Annenberg Auditorium (October 25-28)

Conferences

Can Democracy Reach the Poor? A Presidential Perspective on Education, Poverty and Democracy in Latin America

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Dr. Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; a Stanford professor of political science, and sociology by courtesy; and coordinator of the Democracy Program at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). A specialist on democratic development and regime change and U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad, he is the founding co-editor of the Journal on Democracy.

He has written extensively on the factors that facilitate and obstruct democracy in developing countries and on problems of democracy, development, and corruption, particularly in Africa. He is the author of Squandered Victory:The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq; Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation; and Promoting Democracy in the 1990s.

He received a BA, MA, and PhD from Stanford University, all in Sociology.

For more information about this event, please refer to the article in The Stanford Report.

Cubberley Auditorium (School of Education)
485 Lausen Mall
Stanford, CA 94305

Alejandro Toledo Speaker

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
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MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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2008 Payne Lecture Series: Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective (Final Lecture)

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The Honorable Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

Bechtel Conference Center

Alejandro Toledo Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, CDDRL Visiting Scholar, and Former President of Peru Speaker
Lectures
Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series

2008 Payne Lecture Series: Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective (Lecture 2)

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The Honorable Alejandro Toledo was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006.

He was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

Thanks to an accidental access to education, Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

He received a BA from San Francisco University in Economics and Business Administration. From Stanford University, he received a MA in Economics of Human Resources, a MA in Economics, and a PhD in Economics of Human Resources.

This is the second lecture in a series of lectures Dr. Toledo will give. His final lecture will be on May 14th.

Bechtel Conference Center

Alejandro Toledo Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, CDDRL Visiting Scholar, and Former President of Peru Speaker
Lectures
Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series
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