http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/Recent news from CDDRLen-usPublic domainhttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/images/feed-icon-48x48.jpghttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/60http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2138Summary for the October 22nd class. Peter Semmelhack, founder of BugLabs,spoke about his company’s goal to make hardware as malleable as software, freeing people to create the devices that meet their needs and improve quality of life. While the Open Source movement has enabled rapid progress in the field of software in recent years, hardware innovation lags behind. The way that hardware products come to market is time consuming and expensive for all. A number of factors mean that only big multinational players tend to be able to survive in this space:]]>Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2138?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2135Summary of the October 8th class. Evgeny Morozov's ,Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, presentation sought to challenge a number of assumptions that are often made about the relationship between the web, nation states and democracy.]]>Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2135?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2133Summary of the September 24th class Jonathan Zitrain's presentation raised a number of concerns about current trends in online behavior. He suggested that these developments may undermine the practice of ‘civic technologies’, where unconnected individuals voluntarily come together to achieve something they could not do individually.]]>Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2133?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2114In a new Stanford endeavor, FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law has joined with the Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society to launch an interdisciplinary Program on Human Rights. Introducing its latest program, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond noted that "today's human rights interact with a number of other urgent global issues including climate change, immigration, security, women's rights, poverty, and child soldiers" to name but a few. The campus-wide Human Rights Program builds on the work of CDDRL's Program on Global Justice by bridging the normative and the empirical.]]>Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2114?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2137Summary of the October 15th class. Tapan Parikh, of UC Berkeley School of Information, spoke about a number of projects that are using mobile phone based technology to give small businesses the information they need to improve productivity. He argued that voice technology has distinct advantages over text, because it overcomes challenges of illiteracy while responding to a strong need people feel to be heard.]]>Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2137?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2109As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met in Moscow with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a host of issues were on the table: a new treaty to reduce nuclear arms, efforts to halt nuclear proliferation, and how to address Iran's nuclear program effectively. CDDRL Deputy Director Kathryn Stoner-Weiss provides the context for a re-set of relations with Russia and identifies areas where we might see stepped-up cooperation.]]>Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2109?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2134Summary of the October 1st class. Lucky Gunasekara, a student at Stanford's School of Medicine, and Tom Wiltzius, a student in Stanford's Computer Science program, took us through the rationale behind working with mobile phones and the content of their project working with health workers in Malawi.]]>Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2134?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2093Seven new books have been released by CDDRL affiliated faculty members Joshua Cohen, James Fishkin, Michael McFaul, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Joshua Teitelbaum, and Jeremy Weinstein.]]>Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2093?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2073FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law has launched a new Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World, the result of a generous gift from the Foundation for Reform and Development in the Middle East, in Geneva, Switzerland. The program will examine the social and political dynamics within Arab societies and the evolution of political systems, with an eye on the prospects, conditions, and pathways for political reform. Thanking the Foundation, CDDRL Director %people1% said, "This gift puts Stanford on the map in contemporary Arab studies and will make CDDRL one of the most important academic sites for studying these issues."]]>Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2073?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2065"The Arab and Muslim world is indeed in crisis," CDDRL Visiting Scholar Hicham Ben Abdallah of Morocco writes in an article for the August 2009 edition of Le Monde Diplomatique ("Retour vers le futur dans le monde arabe"). The crisis, he notes, may "give us a new opportunity to reclaim our fate from foreign powers, local autocrats, and religious fanatics." To do so, he adds, "we can benefit from recuperating the best elements from our great tradition of Arab nationalism."]]>Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2065?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2062CDDRL Affiliated Faculty %people1% will receive the Gabriel A. Almond Award for best doctoral dissertation in the field of comparative politics. Hewlett Fellow Mark Massoud will receive the Edward S. Corwin Award for best doctoral dissertation in the field of public law.]]>Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2062?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2051Rising leaders from some of the world's most complex nations, including China, Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, recently completed a three-week seminar at Stanford as Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development. This year's extraordinary fellows included members of parliament, government advisors, civic activists, jurists, journalists, international development experts and founders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The program, now in its fifth year, seeks to foster linkages among democracy, economic development, human rights, and the rule of law, and has received generous gifts from William Draper III and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills.]]>Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2051?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2036"We have seen a trend in a number of our Latin American countries for the executive to bypass the legislature and judiciary by calling for popular referenda that seek to constitutionally eradicate term limits. These 'legal' circumventions of the checks and balances of power become an auto-immune-like disease of the democratic system," Alejandro Toledo, former President of Peru and current Visiting Scholar at CDDRL, stated in an op-ed in the Miami Herald. "With unlimited term limits, even a leader who was at first democratically elected can consolidate enough power to manipulate future elections, thereby undermining the original legitimacy of democracy."]]>Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2036?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2030Professor Sumit Ganguly, currently a Visiting Fellow at CDDRL, comments in Forbes on Secretary Clinton's recent visit to India.]]>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2030?http://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2020Michael McFaul, former CDDRL director and current special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia and Eurasia on the National Security Council, and russia's Vladislav Surkov have been named to head a new working group on civil society, one of 13 groups set up as part of a new U.S.-Russian Bilateral Presidential Commission agreed to by Presidents Medvedev and Obama during President Obama's July 6-7 visit to Moscow.]]>Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PSThttp://cddrl.stanford.edu/news/2020?