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This story was originally reported by Melissa De Witte for Stanford News.

For those who remember Sept. 11, 2001, details of the day – the confusion, chaos and collective grief – are as clear now as they were 20 years ago when the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history occurred.

But many college students today have no memories of 19 al-Qaida operatives hijacking four commercial airplanes and killing nearly 3,000 people in a terrorist attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Teaching this next generation about the passion and the intensity that defined that pivotal moment is difficult, says Condoleezza Rice, who was the U.S. National Security Advisor at the time of the attacks.

For the new generation of students, 9/11 is now a part of history. “It would be like people trying to convey the intensity of World War II to me,” said Rice, who went on to serve as the 66th secretary of state of the United States under President George W. Bush before returning to her professorship at Stanford in 2009.

Rice, now the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution, was in the White House on that Tuesday morning of Sept 11. When she discusses the attacks with her students, her experiences on that day inevitably come up.

She is candid in her recounting. “That helps to vivify it because it’s a personal story,” Rice said.

Condoleezza Rice with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Chief of Staff Andy Card and Special Agent Carl Truscott of the U.S. Secret Service in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center of the White House. Condoleezza Rice with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Chief of Staff Andy Card and Special Agent Carl Truscott of the U.S. Secret Service in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center of the White House. Getty Images

Rice shares how, when the first plane hit the North Tower at the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., she and others were uncertain about the cause of the crash. She remembers wondering whether it could have been an accident. But when the second hijacked plane hit the remaining South Tower 17 minutes later, Rice knew it had to be a terrorist attack on the United States.

Then there was the short period when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could not be reached because the Pentagon was also hit that morning, Rice said. She, along with other senior government leaders, were ushered into the White House bunker. She tells students that around noon that day, oxygen levels started to drop because too many people were crammed into the fortified space. “So the Secret Service was going around saying, ‘You have to leave, you are not essential; you have to leave, you are not essential.’ You would never plan for such a thing as that,” she said.

I try to help them understand how we are still living the effects of 9/11. It isn’t an event that happened one day and then was over, but everything from the way that you go through an airport to something called ‘homeland security,’ which you didn’t have before 9/11.
Condoleezza Rice
Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution

Inevitably, a student will ask her if she was afraid. Rice was so taken aback the first time she faced that question that she actually paused to think about it – and then concluded that she wasn’t. “I didn’t have time to be scared,” Rice recalled. “You can fear for your loved ones, but you are not allowed to feel personal fear. You don’t think about that in the moment.”

Rice also emphasized the importance of talking to students about how 9/11 transformed the world and that what seems routine today – such as additional airport screenings and the formation of new government institutions – didn’t even exist before the attacks.

“I try to help them understand how we are still living the effects of 9/11,” said Rice. “It isn’t an event that happened one day and then was over, but everything from the way that you go through an airport to something called ‘homeland security,’ which you didn’t have before 9/11.”

Teaching 9/11 Since 9/11


The attacks also introduced into the wider vernacular new places – like Afghanistan – and people – like Osama bin Laden – that students 20 years ago knew very little or nothing about.

Stanford scholars Amy Zegart and Martha Crenshaw experienced this firsthand on the day of the attacks when they found themselves in the surreal situation of teaching about 9/11 on 9/11. Both were so shocked by the unfolding events that they were unable to do anything except the one thing they were supposed to do that day, which was teach.

When they showed up to their respective classrooms – at the time, Crenshaw was at Wesleyan University teaching a course on decision making and foreign policy; Zegart at UCLA – they found them packed. There were more students in the lecture hall for Crenshaw’s course than were enrolled.

Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has written extensively on the issue of political terrorism; her first article, "The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism," was published in 1972. L.A. Cicero

Students – horrified and trying to make sense of what was happening – sought clarity and comfort from their teachers, who just happened to be experts on the issues that would come to define the next two decades of U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

“When something that shocking happens, our natural inclination is to make sense of what’s going on together, right now,” said Zegart, who is a leading scholar on national security and the Central Intelligence Agency and is now a senior scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Students wanted to know more about the terms and names they were hearing for the first time that day, like jihadism and the Taliban. Over the months that followed came more complex challenges to explain: the global war on terror, torture, rendition, Guantanamo Bay, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is the world that today’s students have inherited. Even the current generation’s media, as Zegart’s research has shown, has become increasingly saturated with a proliferation of “spytainment”: movies and TV shows depicting, often inaccurately, the clandestine world of intelligence and counterterrorism operations.

Like Rice, Crenshaw has also found herself having to explain that none of this was normal before 9/11.

“I have to go back and say, ‘All this wasn’t always here before 9/11.’ I have to trace the trajectory of policy changes,” said Crenshaw, a senior fellow at FSI and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Shifts in Emotion


In the first decade after the attacks, Zegart said her students were incredibly emotional about 9/11 and its aftermath, including the expansion of U.S. conflict abroad. A few years after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq broke out, Zegart remembers one of her students, a recently returned veteran, telling her that he was taking her intelligence class because he wanted to learn more about why he had gone to Iraq, and what his friend who had deployed with him had died fighting for.

“It was a really raw, personal experience for students studying foreign policy in the first decade after 9/11 because they were living with war and uncertainty,” said Zegart. She had to push them be more analytical and objective in their class discussions of what a post 9/11 world entailed.

As the years progressed, though, 9/11 increasingly became less personal for the next generation of students. Perceptions began to shift. So much so that Zegart now finds herself in the opposite predicament: How to insert those feelings back in.

“Because they didn’t live through it, they look at it distantly and dispassionately,” Zegart said. “The challenge is, how do you help students better understand the context in which decisions were made and the raw emotion that unavoidably affects how we perceive threats and how we deal with policy responses.”

Teaching the Emotions of the Day


To evoke a visceral response to 9/11, Zegart shows a 4-minute montage of news clips. Students get a sense of how the day unfolded, from the breaking reports of the first tower being struck to a reporter’s on-air reaction as the second plane crashes live into the remaining tower. There are also scenes of people fleeing lower Manhattan amid dust, smoke and debris.

“You just cannot convey that day in a normal lecture or a book,” Zegart said. The video is effective; her students are often left with a sense of the sadness, horror and anguish that defined 9/11.

Amy Zegart and Condoleezza Rice co-teaching. In 2018, Stanford scholars Amy Zegart and Condoleezza Rice co-taught the course POLECON 584: Managing Global Political Risk. Rod Searcey

Zegart then asks her students to imagine they are policymakers at the White House and have to decide what to do next. “We often teach U.S. foreign policymaking as a sterile, Spock-like process where people weigh the pros and cons of options and make dispassionate decisions,” Zegart said. “But human emotion and searing national experiences are important and hard to convey. A key part of understanding history is empathy, and thinking about what it was like to live through something rather than only looking at an event through the distance of time. 9/11 looks inevitable in hindsight, but it was unimaginable on September 10.”

Through the exercise, students get a sense of the urgency that policymakers, like Rice, have to grapple with while making decisions amid a national emergency.

“In retrospect, everything looks quite orderly,” said Rice, who co-taught a class on global risk with Zegart at the Graduate School Business. “It looks like ‘of course that decision led to that decision.’ Political scientists are always talking about the options that were put before the president. That’s not how crisis decision making unfolds. You are dealing with really incomplete information, you are dealing with the need to act now, and you are often reacting from instinct because you don’t have time to think through things.”

Viewing the Attacks from All Sides


When political scientist Lisa Blaydes teaches 9/11 to her students, she tries to give an international perspective of the issues, particularly on how grievances can arise – both legitimately or falsely constructed – in countries abroad and how that can lead to extremism and political violence. For example, in her course Political Science 149: Middle Eastern Politics, several classes are dedicated to examining anti-American attitudes in the Islamic world and the conditions under which individuals become radicalized.

“I try to make sure that students understand both the individual motivations associated with the radicalization of political thought as well as the global context that empowers radicalized individuals to undertake violent action,” said Blaydes, a professor of political science in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a senior fellow at FSI. She asks students to read Lawrence Wright’s book The Looming Tower, which picks up on themes Blaydes covers in the course, particularly those dealing with how authoritarian regimes in the Arab world provided a backdrop for the rise of al-Qaida.

In recent years, Blaydes has found her students showing an increased interest in learning more about radical groups like ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and how they have terrorized communities across the Middle East. “While Sept. 11 made terrorism a salient threat for Americans living in U.S. cities, both terrorism and state-sponsored violence are unfortunately a trauma shared by people around the world,” she said.

A key part of understanding history is empathy, and thinking about what it was like to live through something rather than only looking at an event through the distance of time. 9/11 looks inevitable in hindsight, but it was unimaginable on September 10.
Amy Zegart
FSI Senior Fellow at CISAC

Similarly, Crenshaw said, it is important to explain to students the conditions that lead to such extremist views. But, she added, explaining motives should not be mistaken as justifying them. “We are not trying to excuse it; we are trying to understand why something happened,” she said.

With her students, Crenshaw has also looked at how terrorism has been used across history. In the aftermath of 9/11, terrorism almost exclusively became associated with a particular ideology and religion. But there are other examples throughout history of how it has been used as a form of political violence, she said.

“As an instructor, one of my goals was always to show students that 9/11 was something extraordinary, but there are other instances of terrorism and it can be associated with any ideology,” Crenshaw said.

Given its elasticity, terrorism is a confusing and contentious term with no standard definition, Crenshaw said. Thus, as both the term and the acts associated with terrorism have evolved over the past two decades, so has her teaching of it. “The phenomenon that you are trying to teach is changing over time as well, so it’s really a very dynamic subject requiring constant adjustment to take into account the vast outpouring of writing on terrorism but changing terrorism and counterterrorism as well,” she said.

In addition to situating 9/11 against a global and historical backdrop, teaching the attacks also requires a critical look at the domestic challenges that led up to it, including the shortcomings in U.S. intelligence. Zegart assigns students an article she wrote about the failures within the U.S. intelligence communities to adapt to the threat of terrorism, as well as a critique against her piece. “There’s no one perfect view, and if students can realize that their professor is part of an argument and people can disagree, that’s really important,” she said.

Zegart and Crenshaw have also assigned students the 9/11 Commission Report, the official report of the events that led up to the attacks and detailed account of the circumstances surrounding it.

‘Still Hard’


Even though 20 years have passed since 9/11, it does not mean that teaching about the attacks has gotten easier.

“I still have a hard time,” Zegart said. “For years, my screensaver was a picture of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. It was important to me not to forget. I’ve spent my career researching why our intelligence agencies failed to stop 9/11 and how they can better meet threats in the future. I think about that day every day.”

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Sept. 11: Are we safer 10 years later?

Sept. 11: Are we safer 10 years later?
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On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, four Stanford scholars and leading experts in national security, terrorism and contemporary conflict – Condoleezza Rice, Amy Zegart, Martha Crenshaw and Lisa Blaydes – reflect on how their teaching of the terrorist attacks has evolved.

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This year marks both the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the 14th year that U.S. troops have been engaged in conflict since 9/11. How have American writers portrayed the face of battle? What lessons have they learned from their writings about how humans remember or forget the past, and how do the controversies about these wars continue to haunt us still?

Courtesy Stanford LiveNatasha Trethewey

Poet Natasha Trethewey will read from her Pulitzer Prize-winning Native Guard as part of the Writing About War program.

On Tuesday, June 30, award-winning authors Natasha Trethewey and Phil Klay – both known for their acclaimed war-related works – will explore these topics in an evening of readings and conversation. The free program, titled Writing About War, is co-presented by Stanford Live and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford, and is part of a workshop on New Dilemmas of Ethics, Technology and War sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Writing About War begins at 6 p.m. in Bing Concert Hall, with opening remarks by Jonathan Fanton, president of the Academy.

"One of the traditions of the American Academy, from its earliest days in the 18th century, is to bring together scientists, social scientists and humanists to address pressing issues of national importance," says Stanford political science Professor Scott Sagan, a senior fellow at CISAC and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Sagan will moderate the discussion.

"Political scientists and historians often study how the evolution of military technology influences politicians and generals who decide to go to war," Sagan adds. "But it is the novelists, the poets and the short story writers whose work helps us better understand how changes in military technology influence the soldiers and the noncombatants on the battlefield and after wars end."

Courtesy Stanford LivePhil Klay

Veteran Phil Klay will read from his short story collection Redeployment, which won the 2014 National Book Award for fiction, at the event.

Klay, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who Sagan calls "a remarkable new voice in American literature," will read from his 2014 National Book Award-winning Redeployment, a collection of short stories that portray war and its aftermath through the memories of ordinary soldiers and officers fighting in Iraq. The characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos in tales interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival.

Born in Gulfport, Mississippi, on April 26, Confederate Memorial Day, Trethewey could hardly have escaped learning about what the American Civil War represented. The 19th U.S. Poet Laureate will read from her 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Native Guard, which was inspired by a real diary of a Union Army officer. Trethewey's "haunting poems about the experiences of black Union soldiers," Sagan describes, "open our eyes to an important part of our nation's history that is too often forgotten."

The event on June 30 also speaks to the larger idea of using art to communicate veterans' trauma, loss and healing – one of the core themes that will be explored through Live Context: Art + Ideas during Stanford Live's 2015-16 season.

"As America's foreign military involvements stretch on seemingly without end, our country's returning veterans are in our consciousness more and more, as they are for the artists with whom Stanford Live has relationships," says Wiley Hausam, executive director of Stanford Live. "The War: Return and Recovery theme emerged from this convergence."

It's a theme that will be anchored by two new works planned by Hausam: the concert premiere of Stanford faculty composer Jonathan Berger's My Lai on Oct. 10, based on the tragic 1968 massacre during the Vietnam War; and a dance creation by choreographer Joe Goode titled to go again for the Oakland-based AXIS Dance Company on April 23, featuring the stories of several American veterans who have recently returned home from war told through a combination of movement, music and text. Additional related events will be announced in the fall.

Writing About War is free and open to the public. For more information or to make advance reservations, visit Stanford Live online.

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Abstract: Governments around the world have been targeting and killing individuals to prevent them from committing terror attacks or other atrocities. They use this method secretly, sometimes without even taking responsibility for such operations, and without making public most of the relevant information: who is being targeted and what are the criteria for targeting individuals, what evidence is used to make targeting decisions, and what procedures are adopted to identify mistakes or misuse of this method. Recently released documents, such as the U.S. Department of Justice Drone Memo (analyzing lethal operations against U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi), the more general White Paper on targeted killings of US citizens, or the Report of the Israeli Special Investigatory Commission on the targeted killing of Salah Shehadeh, shed some light on otherwise highly secretive decision-making processes, thereby introducing to the public debate important information previously unavailable. At the same time, in revealing only a small amount of relevant information, they emphasize the thick veil of secrecy that still surrounds the discussions in this field. Moreover, the information that is available demonstrates the vague nature of the relevant rules; the security-oriented implementation of these rules; and the inadequacy of current oversight mechanisms of targeted killing operations. These challenges to a process designed to take human lives emphasize the need to develop effective and independent accountability mechanisms, with powers to investigate high-level policymakers as well as operational-level decision-makers. This policy-paper proposes concrete solutions to the main weaknesses of the current legal framework: it narrowly (and clearly) defines legal terms such as ‘imminent threat,’ ‘feasibility,’ and ‘last resort’; it develops an activity-based test for determinations on direct participation in hostilities; it designs an independent ex post review mechanism; and it calls for governmental transparency and meaningful oversight. Most importantly, it promotes a targeted killing policy that protects civilians from both terror and counter-terror attacks.

About the Speaker: Shiri Krebs is a JSD Candidate at Stanford Law School, specializing in international criminal and humanitarian law. She was recently awarded the Christiana Shi Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship in International Studies and is a Law and International Security Predoctoral Fellow at Stanford Center on International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

Her doctoral dissertation focuses on war crimes investigations and fact-finding during armed conflicts. This interdisciplinary research project combines theories and methods from law, psychology, sociology and political science, including online survey experiments.

From 2005 to 2010 Shiri served as legal advisor on international law matters in the Chief-Justice's chambers, the Israeli Supreme Court. During that time she has taught public international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a teaching assistantship which granted her the Dean's award for excellent junior faculty members, as well as 'best teacher' award. After leaving the Supreme Court, Shiri joined the Israeli Democracy Institute as a researcher, working on 'Terrorism and Democracy' projects, and publishing frequent op-eds in various newspapers and blogs.

In September 2010 Shiri started her graduate studies at Stanford Law School. Her Masters thesis - an empirical analysis of preventive detention cases - was presented in several international conferences and has won the Steven M. Block Civil Liberties Award. 

In 2012, while working on her dissertation, Shiri was appointed as a Teaching Scholar at Santa Clara University School of Law, teaching international criminal law and international humanitarian law. She is currently serving as a Teaching Assistant for the Stanford Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. 

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Shiri Krebs is a Professor of Law at Deakin University and Director of the Centre for Law as Protection. She is also the Chair of the Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict, an affiliate scholar at Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and co-lead of the Australian Government Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC) Law and Policy Theme. In 2024, she was appointed as a Visiting Legal Fellow at the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Her research on drone warfare and predictive technologies in counterterrorism and armed conflict is currently funded by a 3-year Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA fellowship and an Alexander von Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellowship at the University of Hamburg.

Prof Krebs’ research projects on international fact-finding, biases in counterterrorism decision-making, and human-machine interaction in drone warfare, have influenced decision-making processes through invitations to brief high-level decision-makers, including at the United Nations (CTED, Office of the Secretary-General), the United States Department of Defense, and the Australian Defence Force.

Her recent research awards include the David Caron Prize (American Society of International Law, 2021), the ‘Researcher of the Year’ Award (Australian Women in Law Awards, 2022), the Australian Legal Research Awards (finalist, Article/Chapter (ECR), 2022), and the Vice-Chancellor’s Researcher Award for Career Excellence (Deakin, 2022).

Before joining Deakin University, Prof Krebs has taught in several law schools, including at Stanford University, University of Santa Clara, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she won the Dean’s award recognizing exceptional junior faculty members.

She earned her Doctorate and Master Degrees from Stanford Law School, as well as LL.B. and M.A., both magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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Karl Eikenberry, a William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at FSI, believes the humanities belong at the center of American foreign policy. The retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former ambassador to Afghanistan put cultural ventures, such as the Turquoise Mountain project, at the heart of his diplomacy.

Eikenberry continues his advocacy through his leadership on the congressionally commissioned report "The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a Vibrant, Competitive, and Secure Nation." You can listen to him in conversation with Jerome McDonnell, long-time host of Worldview, the global affairs program on WBEZ public radio in Chicago. The program, recorded on Nov. 8, 2014, was presented in partnership with the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, as part of the 25th Anniversary Chicago Humanities Festival, Journeys.

 

 

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Stanford University today launched the Stanford Cyber Initiative to apply broad campus expertise to the diverse challenges and opportunities that cybersecurity, cyberspace and networked information pose to humanity.                                                      

Information security has an expanding and deepening role in virtually every facet of our personal, social, governmental and economic lives. Yet the Internet is decentralized and vulnerable to malicious use. How does society protect its core values in the face of the promise and perils of digital information? And, how does society adapt to changing technologies?

These are the type of questions that Stanford researchers will study, thanks to the jumpstart given by a $15 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Stanford's initiative will be highly interdisciplinary in building a new policy framework for cyber issues. It will draw on the campus' experience with multidisciplinary, university-wide initiatives to focus on the core themes of trustworthiness, governance and the emergence of unexpected impacts of technological change over time.

"Our increasing reliance on technology, combined with the unpredictable vulnerabilities of networked information, pose future challenges for all of society," said Stanford President John Hennessy. "We share the Hewlett Foundation’s goal to seek a robust understanding of how new technologies affect us all at the most fundamental human levels. Stanford has a long history of fostering interdisciplinary collaborations to find thoughtful and enlightened answers to these paramount questions." 

Building on Stanford strengths

The Stanford Cyber Initiative will build upon the university's already extensive inquiry and research into Internet security. In doing so, Stanford has drawn on connections with industry and government by establishing, for example, a "cyber boot camp" for U.S. congressional staff (a Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies/Hoover Institution collaboration,) a conference on the "ethics of data in civil society" and an ongoing "security conundrum" speaker series on cyber issues.

The initiative will work with Stanford’s existing research hubs addressing cyber issues, including those in the Computer Security Lab in the Department of Computer Science, the Freeman Spogli Institute's Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Hoover Institution and the Law School's Center for Internet and Society. FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law will also play a key role in the initiative.

The initiative will launch immediately and develop faculty seminars and conferences, organize working groups of faculty and students to tackle policy-relevant problems in information security, and provide support for internal research awards, teaching and curriculum development. Collaborations with industry and government are a vital part of the initiative.

The Stanford Cyber Initiative includes roles for faculty and students across a wide swath of research disciplines – computer science, law, the social sciences, engineering, political science and education, among others. And it will also enlist Stanford alumni who are leaders in the policy and technology fields.

For those seeking to participate, information is available on the Stanford Cyber Initiative website

A central hub

"We are deeply grateful to the Hewlett Foundation for recognizing Stanford's ongoing work and future potential in this area. With the help of their generous grant, this initiative will grow into a central presence on campus that more broadly comprehends the possibilities and perils of networked information," said Stanford law Professor George Triantis, who will chair the steering committee for the initiative.

The committee currently includes professors Jeremy Bailenson (communications,) Stephen Barley (management science and engineering,) Ian Morris (classics and history,) John Mitchell (computer science and electrical engineering,) Dan Boneh (computer science and electrical engineering,) Amy Zegart (Hoover Institution and CISAC) and Barbara van Schewick (law).

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, the director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Stanford law professor, is one of the founders of the initiative. 

"The Stanford initiative will create vast opportunities to advance knowledge about the future of cyberspace and cybersecurity," Cuéllar said. "Faculty and students will expand existing research efforts and conversations with the goal of building a safer, better world that balances humanity's concerns with the promise of new technologies."

Cuéllar noted that crucial areas of examination include how to resolve trust and security problems endemic to networked information technologies, how to govern the Internet in a world where people often disagree about what they value, and how to anticipate unexpected developments in information technologies that could affect national security, intellectual property, civil liberties and society.

Ann Arvin, Stanford's vice provost and dean of research, said, "Our scholars and students will examine pressing questions about how can we ensure security and protect privacy while continuing to foster an open, innovative and entrepreneurial culture and society. We want to better understand the short- and long-term consequences and implications of the pervasiveness of digital technology in our lives."

In exploring this conundrum, the initiative will encourage collaborative focus across disciplines on the challenges of trustworthiness – for example, can individuals trust that information technologies will deliver on their promise and also avoid the hazards of deliberately hostile or antisocial actions? 

A central goal is to create a policy framework that can generate lasting solutions not only to existing problems but also to problems that may emerge in the future.  

'Profound implications'

The new program is supported through the Hewlett Foundation's Cyber Initiative, which has now committed $65 million over the next five years to the study of cybersecurity, the largest amount given to date by a private donor to this topic.

"Choices we are making today about Internet governance and security have profound implications for the future," said Hewlett Foundation President Larry Kramer, a former dean of the Stanford Law School. "To make those choices well, it is imperative that they be made with some sense of what lies ahead and, still more important, of where we want to go."

The other universities receiving Hewlett grants of $15 million each – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley – will take a complementary approach in setting up the new centers based on their particular strengths and expertise.

 

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Sandrine Kott was educated in France (Paris), Germany (Bielefeld and Berlin) and the USA (New York). She has been a Professor of European contemporary history at the University of Geneva since 2004. Her principal fields of expertise are the history of social welfare and labor law in France and Germany since the end of the nineteenth century and labor relations in those countries of real socialism, in particular in the German Democratic Republic. Since 2004, she has developed the transnational and global dimensions of each of her fields of expertise in utilizing the archives and resources of international organizations and particularly the International Labor Organization. She has published over 80 articles in French, German and Anglo-Saxon journals and collective volumes, edited 4 volumes and published 6 books.

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Sandrine Kott University of Geneva Professor of European contemporary history
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Ken Bernard Former Special Assistant to the President for Biodefense Speaker

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David A. Relman, M.D., is the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine, and of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University, and Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California. He is also Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford, and served as science co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford from 2013-2017. He is currently director of a new Biosecurity Initiative at FSI.

Relman was an early pioneer in the modern study of the human indigenous microbiota. Most recently, his work has focused on human microbial community assembly, and community stability and resilience in the face of disturbance. Ecological theory and predictions are tested in clinical studies with multiple approaches for characterizing the human microbiome. Previous work included the development of molecular methods for identifying novel microbial pathogens, and the subsequent identification of several historically important microbial disease agents. One of his papers was selected as “one of the 50 most important publications of the past century” by the American Society for Microbiology.

Dr. Relman received an S.B. (Biology) from MIT, M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and joined the faculty at Stanford in 1994. He served as vice-chair of the NAS Committee that reviewed the science performed as part of the FBI investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters, as a member of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity, and as President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He is currently a member of the Intelligence Community Studies Board and the Committee on Science, Technology and the Law, both at the National Academies of Science. He has received an NIH Pioneer Award, an NIH Transformative Research Award, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2011.

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David Relman Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor, Departments of Medicine and of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford School of Medicine; CISAC Co-Director; FSI Senior Fellow; Stanford Health Policy Affiliate Moderator
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Gil-li Vardi joined CISAC as a visiting scholar in December 2011. She completed her PhD at the London School of Economics in 2008, and spent two years as a research fellow at the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War at the University of Oxford, after which she joined Notre Dame university as a J. P. Moran Family Assistant Professor of Military History.

Her research examines the interplay between organizational culture, doctrine, and operational patterns in military organizations, and focuses on the incentives and dynamics of change in military thought and practice.

Driven by her interest in both the German and Israeli militaries and their organizational cultures, Vardi is currently revising her dissertation, "The Enigma of Wehrmacht Operational Doctrine: The Evolution of Military Thought in Germany, 1919-1941," alongside preparing a book manuscript on the sources of the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) early strategic and operational perceptions and preferences.

CISAC Conference Room

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Gil-li Vardi joined CISAC as a visiting scholar in December 2011. She completed her PhD at the London School of Economics in 2008, and spent two years as a research fellow at the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War at the University of Oxford, after which she joined Notre Dame university as a J. P. Moran Family Assistant Professor of Military History.

Her research examines the interplay between organizational culture, doctrine, and operational patterns in military organizations, and focuses on the incentives and dynamics of change in military thought and practice.

Driven by her interest in both the German and Israeli militaries and their organizational cultures, Vardi is currently revising her dissertation, "The Enigma of Wehrmacht Operational Doctrine: The Evolution of Military Thought in Germany, 1919-1941," alongside preparing a book manuscript on the sources of the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) early strategic and operational perceptions and preferences.

Gil-li Vardi Visiting Scholar, CISAC; Lecturer, Department of History, Stanford; Research Fellow, Hoover Institution Speaker
Joel Beinin Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford Commentator
Seminars
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ABOUT THE TOPIC: Key human rights instruments and leading scholars argue that minority language rights should be treated as human rights, both because language is constitutive of an individual’s cultural identity and because linguistic pluralism increases diversity. These treaties and academics assign the value of linguistic pluralism in diversity. But, this paper demonstrates, major human rights courts and quasi-judicial institutions are not, in fact, prepared to force states to swallow the dramatic costs entailed by a true diversity-protecting regime. Outside narrow exceptions or a path dependent national-political compromise, these enforcement bodies continuously allow the state to actively incentivize assimilation into the dominant culture and language of the majority. The minority can still maintain its distinct language, but only at its own cost. The slippage between the promise of rights and their actual interpretation carries some important political and economic benefits, but the resulting legal outcome does not provide the robust protection of diversity to which lip service is paid.  Importantly, the assimilationist nature of the jurisprudence is not indifferent to human rights. However, instead of advancing maximal linguistic diversity as a preeminent norm, the regime that is applied by judicial bodies supports a different set of human rights, those protecting linguistic minorities from discrimination, and promoting equal access of the group to market and political institutions.  The result is a tension between two human rights values: pluralism and equality.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Moria Paz is a Law and International Security Fellow at CISAC. She was an affiliate at CISAC from February 2012-July 2013. Before joining CISAC, she was a Lecturer at Stanford Law School and the Teaching Fellow of the Stanford Program for International Legal Studies (SPILS). Her current research examines issues of state control and freedom of movement through the entry point of travel documents. Earlier work examined the intersection between minorities, language rights, and international law. Moria received her S.J.D. degree from Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, she was awarded a number of fellowships, including at the Hauser Center for Non-Profit Organizations, The European Law Research Center, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

CISAC Conference Room

Moria Paz Law and International Security Fellow, CISAC Speaker

Department of Political Science
Stanford University
Encina Hall, W423
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

(650) 725-9556 (650) 723-1808
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James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science
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PhD

David Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science and a co-director of the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford. He has conducted field research in Somalia, Nigeria, Spain, Estonia and France. His principal research interest is on how culture – specifically, language and religion – guides political behavior. He is the author of “Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-heritage Societies” and a series of articles on immigrant integration, civil war and terrorism. Laitin received his BA from Swarthmore College and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
David Laitin James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science, Stanford Commentator
Seminars
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ABOUT THE TOPIC: Culture is often understood as a system of "shared understandings." But what does that mean? Amir Goldberg argues that having a shared understanding with others does not necessarily imply espousing similar beliefs or attitudes. Rather, culture prescribes which beliefs and attitudes go with one another; sharing an understanding therefore suggests being in agreement about the structures of relevance and opposition that make symbols and actions meaningful. Amir uses relational class analysis - a network-based method for analyzing survey data - to map these structures, and find groups of people who share distinctive cultural schemes. This approach lends new insights into understanding the social underpinnings of Americans' complex understandings of music, politics, economic morality, and more.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Professor Goldberg received bachelors' degrees in Computer Science and Film Studies from Tel Aviv University, and an MA in Sociology from Goldsmith’s College, University of London. Before pursuing a PhD in Sociology at Princeton University, he worked for several years as a software programmer, an IT consultant and a technology journalist. An Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, his research projects all share an overarching theme: the desire to understand the social mechanisms that underlie how people construct meaning, and consequently pursue action. His work has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, and he was awarded Princeton University’s Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellowship.

ABOUT THE COMMENTATOR: Marc Ventresca is University Lecturer in Strategic Management at Said Business School (University of Oxford), England's foremost graduate school of business. Dr. Ventresca, who earned his PhD in Sociology at Stanford, specializes in governance, entrepreneurship, market and network formation, and technology strategy.

CISAC Conference Room

Amir Goldberg Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Assistant Professor (by courtesy) of Sociology, School of Humanities and Sciences Speaker
Marc Ventresca University Lecturer in Strategic Management, Said Business School, University of Oxford; PhD, Sociology, Stanford University Commentator
Seminars
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