Stanford University

Migration and Citizenship (Society)

CISAC-SCICN Special Seminar: Investigating Post-Conflict Violence at the Micro-Level: Accounting for Patterns among Victims of Past Atrocities in Liberia

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Anupma Kulkarni is currently a Fellow of the Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN) and Co-director of the West Africa Transitional Justice (WATJ) Project, a cross-national study on the impact of truth commissions and international criminal tribunals from the perspective of victims of human rights violations in Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.  Dr. Kulkarni received her PhD in Political Science from Stanford University and was Assistant Professor at Arizona State University from 2007-2009.  She has been a MacArthur International Peace and Cooperation Fellow at CISAC and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law.  Her research specializes in transitional justice, the ways in which post-war and post-authoritarian societies address matters of memory and accountability for human rights violations as part of the larger project of effecting democratic change and political and social reconciliation.  Her book manuscript, Demons and Demos: Truth, Accountability and Democracy in Post-Apartheid South Africa, is based on her award-winning fieldwork in South Africa.  She is also co-authoring, with David Backer, The Arc of Transitional Justice: Violent Conflict, Its Victims & Pursuing Redress in Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, a book based on primary research conducted under the auspices of the WATJ Project, made possible through generous support from the National Science Foundation.

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Anupma Kulkarni Fellow Speaker Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN)

Shiri Krebs

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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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Shiri Krebs Predoctoral Fellow Commentator CISAC
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Regional Conflict and Cooperation

Empirical Studies of Conflict Project launches data archive

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Joseph Felter, a senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel, spent much of his military career in areas impacted by insurgency and civil war, gaining firsthand knowledge about the complex nature of threat environments. Later, as a Stanford Ph.D. student in political science, Felter was struck by the significant barriers confronting scholars conducting research on the dynamics of politically motivated violence and conflict. 

Prior to deploying to Afghanistan in late 2009, Felter joined forces with Jake Shapiro, an assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, to build a team of researchers and establish the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC). They wanted to make conflict analysis easier for academic colleagues and create mechanisms that would allow them to share their results with military and government decision-makers. 

They spent the last four years building a team of scholars from across multiple universities committed to conducting high-quality, evidence-based conflict research. The team developed an open-source website devoted to compiling micro-data and analysis on insurgency, civil war and other politically motivated violence around the world. The site launched this week, with the stated goal of “empowering the nation’s best minds with the quality of data and information needed to address some of the most enduring and pressing challenges to international security.” 

The U.S. government and its allies produce massive amounts of data for their internal use, ranging from public opinion surveys and administrative tracking data on spending, to detailed incident reports on conflict. But this information is rarely made available outside official channels.

The site hopes to empower the nation’s best minds with the quality of data and information needed to address some of the most enduring and pressing challenges to international security." - Felter

“Consequently, military commanders and government policymakers are denied a significant pool of expertise, and outside scholars lose the potential to better support national security priorities,” said Felter, former director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and commander of the International Security Assistance Force’s Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team in Afghanistan, reporting directly to both U.S. Army Gens. Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus. 

The independent research by the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project is supported in part by a variety of research grants including a substantial one from the Defense Department’s Minerva Research Initiative, administered through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UC San Diego and the Hoover Institution at Stanford have provided critical resources and archival support. Private supporters include the Palo Alto-based data analysis software company, Palantir Technologies, which made a significant donation of software licenses for use by ESOC researchers. 

Felter said the website is designed to make it easier for other conflict scholars to do the kind of research that can make for better decisions and more efficient allocation of resources by military leaders and civilian policymakers, thereby enhancing security and good governance worldwide. 

CISAC's Joe Felter, left, and Eli Berman of UCSD on a research mission in Chamkani, eastern Afghanistan in April 2010.
Photo Credit: Joe Felter

 

“Decisions of great consequence are made by leaders of operational units in the field and by government decision-makers, based on the best information and analysis available to them at the time,” Felter said. “I’ve advised senior leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan and can attest that more and better data-driven analysis is in great demand. The stakes are high; literally life and death in some cases. We hope this website and the data it makes available to the broader scholarly community can help inform important decisions and policymaking.” 

The ESOC website supports three of ESOC’s core objectives:

  • To answer key analytical questions for policymakers and those on the ground in insecure areas to help them manage conflicts and respond to security threats;

  • To harness the expertise of leading scholars and provide them with the detailed sub-national data required to provide cutting-edge analytical support to policymakers at government agencies and non-governmental organizations;

  • And to maintain a repository of quality data across multiple cases of conflict and make these data available to a broad community of scholars, policy analysts and military strategists.

"One of the critical barriers to getting more top-notch research done on policy-relevant problems in the areas of security and development is the huge investment it takes to build data on areas experiencing or emerging from conflict,” said Shapiro, a Navy veteran who teaches at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. 

“The ESOC website is designed to dramatically lower that barrier by making available a broad range of data which took our team years to develop,” he said. “In doing so, we hope to promote careful empirical work on how to reduce conflict, rebuild order, and apply scarce aid and security resources more effectively." 

The site is devoted to data on Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Pakistan, Philippines and Vietnam, with more countries to be added in coming years. There are hundreds of maps, geographical, demographic and socioeconomic data files, links to publications and university databases and other materials related to the study of conflict. 

Felter said that as a result of their research, ESOC members have uncovered significant new findings, some of which has been shared with decision-makers in the field. “In Afghanistan, for example, we were able to provide empirical evidence that conflict episodes resulting in civilian casualties led to an increase in attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan. These findings were briefed to senior leaders in the International Security and Assistance Force as well as to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” 

“I’ve advised senior leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan and can attest that more and better data-driven analysis is in great demand. The stakes are high; literally life and death in some cases." - Felter 

 They also were able to facilitate the release of data on insurgent attacks and aid spending in Iraq to test theories on what led to the dramatic reduction in violence in 2007. With aid spending, they found that the use of impromptu humanitarian relief projects could help gain popular support and cooperation, leading to a reduction in insurgent violence, but that large-scale aid projects could have the opposite effect. 

"Four years ago, practitioners would ask us how to best implement development projects in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other conflict zones. We could only shrug,” said Eli Berman, a UC San Diego economics professor, research director for international security at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and ESOC member. “Today, we can confidently give advice based on solid evidence: projects are likely to be violence-reducing if they are modest – say less than $50,000 – secure from destruction and extortion, informed by development experts and conditional on government forces controlling the territory.” 

Felter and Shapiro hope that new discoveries by ESOC researchers and by scholars working with micro-conflict data made available by ESOC can help shape American counterinsurgency doctrine as it evolves going forward.

“ESOC works collaboratively with other institutions dedicated to making data available to the scholarly community, such as West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, where ESOC researchers are engaged in a  new joint project  building data from recently released documents from the Iraqi insurgency,” Felter said.

Other ESOC members include:

  • James D. Fearon, Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University

  • David D. Laitin, the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

  • Jeremy M. Weinstein, Associate Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He serves as director of the Center for African Studies, and is an affiliated faculty member at CISAC and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law

Somali mother and child.
Photo Credit: Nicholai Lidow
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CDDRL-CISAC Special Seminar: The Logic of Violence in Drug Wars: Cartel-State Conflict in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia

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Abstract:

Why have militarized crackdowns on drug cartels had wildly divergent outcomes, sometimes exacerbating cartel-state conflict, as in Mexico and, for decades, in Brazil, but sometimes reducing violence, as with Rio de Janeiro's new 'Pacification' (UPP) strategy?  CDDRL-CISAC Post Doctoral Fellow Benjamin Lessing will distinguish key logics of violence, focusing on violent corruption--cartels' use of coercive force in the negotiation of bribes. Through this channel, crackdowns can lead to increased fighting unless the intensity of state repression is made conditional on cartels' use of violence--a key difference between Mexico and Brazil.

Speaker Bio:

Benjamin Lessing is a recent Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a joint postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center on International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and will join the Political Science faculty at University of Chicago as assistant professor in 2013.

Lessing studies 'criminal conflict'—organized armed violence involving non-state actors who, unlike revolutionary insurgents, are not trying to topple the state. His doctoral dissertation examines armed conflict between drug trafficking organizations and the state in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. Additionally, he has studied prison gangs’ pernicious effect on state authority, and the effect of paramilitary groups’ territorial control on electoral outcomes. 

Prior to his graduate work, he conducted field research on the licit and illicit small arms trade in Latin America and the Caribbean for international organizations like Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the Small Arms Survey, as well as Viva Rio, Brazil’s largest NGO, and was a Fulbright Student Grantee in Argentina and Uruguay.

 

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CISAC Conference Room

Benjamin Lessing Post-doctoral Fellow Speaker CDDRL and CISAC

Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
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Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
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Beatriz Magaloni Associate Professor of Political Science Commentator Stanford
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How to Engage Iran: Abe Sofaer in conversation with Allen Weiner on Diplomacy and the Iranian Nuclear Crisis

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About the Speakers: Abraham Sofaer was appointed the first George P. Shultz Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution in 1994. Sofaer's work focuses on the power over war within the US government and on issues related to international law, terrorism, diplomacy, and national security. His most recent books are The Best Defense?: Legitimacy and Preventive Force and Taking On Iran: Strength, Diplomacy and the Iranian Threat. From 1985 to 1990, he served as a legal adviser to the US Department of State. He received the Distinguished Service Award in 1989, the highest state department award given to a non–civil servant.

Allen Weiner is senior lecturer in law and co-director of the Stanford Program in International Law at Stanford Law School. He is also the co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. For more than a decade, he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State, serving as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser and as legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. Weiner is the author of "The Torture Memos and Accountability" in the American Society of International Law Insight and co-author of International Law. Other publications include "Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is It War?" in Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture: Contemporary Challenges to Just War Theory.

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Abraham Sofaer George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and National Security Affairs, Hoover Institution, Stanford Speaker

Allen S. Weiner

Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Neukom Faculty Office Building, Room N238
Stanford, CA 94305-8610

(650) 724-5892 (650) 725-2592
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Senior Lecturer in Law
Director, Stanford Program in International Law
Co-Director, Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation
CISAC Core Faculty Member
Europe Center Affiliated Faculty
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Allen S. Weiner is senior lecturer in law and director of the Stanford Program in International Law at Stanford Law School. He is also the co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. He is an international legal scholar with expertise in such wide-ranging fields as international and national security law, the law of war, international conflict resolution, and international criminal law (including transitional justice). His scholarship focuses on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and situations of widespread humanitarian atrocities. He also explores the relationship between international and domestic law in the context of asymmetric armed conflicts between the United States and nonstate groups and the response to terrorism. In the realm of international conflict resolution, his highly multidisciplinary work analyzes the barriers to resolving violent political conflicts, with a particular focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Weiner’s scholarship is deeply informed by experience; for more than a decade he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State, serving as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser and as legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. In those capacities, he advised government policy-makers, negotiated international agreements, and represented the United States in litigation before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Court of Justice. He teaches courses in public international law, international conflict resolution, and international security matters at Stanford Law School.

Weiner is the author of "Constitutions as Peace Treaties: A Cautionary Tale for the Arab Spring” in the Stanford Law Review Online (2011) and co-author (with Barry E. Carter) of International Law (6th ed. 2011). Other publications include “The Torture Memos and Accountability" in the American Society of International Law Insight (2009), "Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is It War?", in Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture: Contemporary Challenges to Just War Theory (Steven P. Lee, ed.) (2007), ”Enhancing Implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540: Report of the Center on International Security and Cooperation” (with Chaim Braun, Michael May & Roger Speed) (September 2007), and "The Use of Force and Contemporary Security Threats: Old Medicine for New Ills?", Stanford Law Review (2006).

Weiner has worked on several Supreme Court amicus briefs concerning national security and international law issues, including cases brought involving "war on terror" detainees.  He has also submitted petitions before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of Vietnamese social and political activists detained by their governing for the exercise of free speech rights.

Weiner earned a BA from Harvard College and a JD from Stanford Law School.

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Allen Weiner Senior Lecturer in Law; Co-Director, Stanford Program in International Law; Co-Director, Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation; CDDRL and CISAC Affiliated Faculty Member; Europe Center Research Affiliate Host
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Windows of Volatility?: Unpacking the Relationship Between Nuclear Proliferation and Time

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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Vipin Narang Stanton Nuclear Security Jr. Faculty Fellow Speaker CISAC

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Scott D. Sagan Senior Fellow Commentator CISAC
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