Stanford University

Just Enough: The Politics of Accountability for Mass Atrocities

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Abstract: This project looks at the politics of accountability for mass atrocities. In it, I ask why post-atrocity governments often put in place institutions (for instance, kangaroo courts, or powerless investigative commissions) that superficially resemble accountability mechanisms but lack the capacity to deliver justice. I theorize the creation of these institutions as an example of a broader pattern in human rights behavior, which I call “quasi-compliance”. I argue that because international enforcement of human rights norms is uneven, there’s an incentive to gamble on doing just enough to escape penalty. I test this theory on an original cross-national dataset of mass atrocities committed between 1970 and 2014. I find that the characteristics of post-atrocity governments that deliver justice and those that create quasi-compliant accountability institutions are very different. While robust trials and truth commissions are only pursued when domestic politics favors it, quasi-compliant institutions are put in place to deflect international censure for failure to abide by the global accountability norm requiring criminal prosecutions for mass atrocities. I trace the mechanisms underlying quasicompliance in two qualitative case studies, drawing on several months of fieldwork in Sri Lanka and Democratic Republic of the Congo.

About the Speaker: Kate Cronin-Furman is a human rights lawyer (J.D. Columbia, 2006) and political scientist (Ph.D. Columbia, 2015). Her research focuses on the interaction between international norms and politics. Her work has appeared in the International Journal of Transitional Justice, The Washington Post's "Monkey Cage" blog, The Atlantic, The National Interest, and The New York Times.

Kate Cronin-Furman
Seminars

Can AI Make AI More Compliant (Semi-Automated Analysis - Ex Ante, In Situ, Ex Post)

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Abstract: A number of senior Intelligence Community (IC) officials describe compliance as one of the IC’s biggest problems, perhaps the biggest. The underlying legal and informational issues are bound to become more acute and complex.  How can AI help? The IC protects our nation by analyzing the relationships between people, places, and things - essentially "connecting the dots.”  Doing so while remaining compliant with policies such as Executive Order 12333[1] and Presidential Policy Directive 28[2] is a balancing act. The interpretation, implementation, and enforcement of policy vary across organizations and administrations.  This frequently leaves analysts struggling to determine what data they can and cannot look at. The Internet, mobile, and “Big Data” generally further complicate the problem. The sheer volume, velocity, and variety of data that is constantly being generated necessitate automation, and even AI, to manage.  However, the benefits of analytic automation over the data deluge will remain limited, until the IC finds a way to scale the processing of legal judgments at a comparable rate.

Before we consider the potential benefits to AI-based methodologies we need to understand two things: Data Rights and Application Uncertainty. Data rights are data attributes derived from laws and dependent institutional policies.  Data rights include but are not limited to classifications, access policies, source limitations, “privacy” constraints, etc. While such data rights are entailed in the data itself, the interpretation and application of these rights are contextual and will vary.  More specifically, application of laws on a data set may be indeterminate: they may vary by time, user, and/or geography; the Second Circuit may issue an unexpected, divergent opinion; access may occur before or after a seminal FISA decision; the Office of Legal Counsel may change its mind; the legal state of a data set at the time of collection may be indeterminate; etc. 
 
About the Speakers: As Executive Vice President at In-Q-Tel, Bob Gleichauf supports technology advancement programs. He is also Director of IQT’s Lab41 initiative, a unique Silicon Valley-based challenge lab that provides “innovation through collaboration” in the area of Big Data analytics. Gleichauf joined IQT from Cisco Systems, where he spent a decade working on the development of secure network infrastructures across a variety of the company’s products. Gleichauf, who has more than a dozen patents in network security, served as CTO for the Wireless and Security Technology Group at Cisco, and is respected globally for his work in information security. He previously served as head of product engineering for the WheelGroup prior to its acquisition by Cisco. Earlier, he was with IQ Software, a leader in the development of database report writing tools. Before making the leap into technology, Gleichauf pursued a Ph.D. in Early Human Prehistory at the University of Michigan, where he earned a fellowship and had the privilege of working in East Africa with the celebrated Leakey family.
 
Joshua H. Walker is an Intellectual Property (IP) partner at Greenberg Traurig, LLP, handling all aspects of IP strategy and transactions, and a legal informatics entrepreneur. Josh has built his career at the nexus of law and computer science. Historically, as an analyst, his work has included helping prosecutors convict orchestrators of the 1996 Rwandan genocide to, now, as an attorney, helping many of the largest and most dynamic technology and financial entities in the world improve IP and data rights outcomes in the M&A, licensing, strategic litigation, and network theft contexts. To help clients solve IP governance, transactional, and risk management problems, Josh cofounded the first law and computer science lab in the country (CodeX), at Stanford University, as well as the top “big data” company for IP litigation (Lex Machina; founding CEO & Chief Legal Architect). However, data wins neither cases nor negotiations. We focus on client collaborations employing engineering efficiencies, design thinking, and empirical data to enhance and advance traditional legal practice. Josh’s IP work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, The Financial Times (listed, 2014 Top Ten Legal Innovator for North America), and numerous other publications. He co-taught “IP Analytics, Strategy, and Decision-Making” at Berkeley Law School, and an advanced IP media transactions seminar at Stanford Law School (“SIPX”). He received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and an A.B. in Conflict Studies (Special Concentrations) from Harvard College, m.c.l.

 

Bob Gleichauf Chief Scientist and Director of Lab41 In-Q-Tel
Joshua H. Walker Co-founder CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics
Seminars

CANCELLED -- The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism - From al Qa'ida to ISIS

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DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, MICHAEL MORELL HAD TO CANCEL HIS VISIT. THE TALK IS BEING REPLACED WITH A PANEL DISCUSSION ON TERRORISM.

 

Due to the overwhelming response this event has received, all future RSVPs will be added to a wait list. Click here to be added to the wait list.

 

- This event is offered as a joint sponsorship with the Hoover Institution - 

About the Event: Michael Morell, Former Deputy Director and twice Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, will be interviewed by Amy Zegart, CISAC Co-director and Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Audience members will have an opportunity to ask questions after the interview. A book signing will follow. Copies of Michael Morell's book will be available for purchase in the Reuben Hills ("East") Conference Room, on the second floor of Encina Hall. 

About the Speaker: Michael Morell, the former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is one of our nation’s leading national security professionals, with extensive experience in intelligence and foreign policy.

During his 33-year career at CIA, he served as Deputy Director for over three years, a job in which he managed the Agency’s day-to-day operations, represented the Agency at the White House and Congress, and maintained the Agency’s relationships with intelligence services and foreign leaders around the world.  Michael also served twice as Acting Director, leading CIA when Leon Panetta was named Secretary of Defense and again after David Petraeus left government.

Michael’s senior assignments at CIA also included serving for two years as the Director of Intelligence, the Agency’s top analyst, and for two years as Executive Director, the CIA’s top administrator—managing human resources, the budget, security, and information technology for an agency the size of a Fortune 200 firm.

Michael retired from the CIA in September 2013.  Upon retiring, he joined the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a senior fellow.  He also became a member of the Board of Directors of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, one the of the largest tire manufacturers in the world, as well as a Senior Counselor at Beacon Global Strategies, a Washington, DC based national security consulting firm. Michael is also a commentator on national security issues for CBS News.

Seminars
Directors' Seminar Series

Crowdsourced Democracy: Algorithms, Platforms, and Mechanisms

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Abstract: While social media pervades many aspects of our lives, it has not yet proved to be an effective tool for large scale decision making: crowds of hundreds, perhaps millions, of individuals collaborating together to come to consensus on difficult societal issues. The objective of our research is to develop an algorithmic and empirical understanding of large scale decision making, and experiment with real-life deployments of our algorithms. In this talk, we will first present our platform for voting in participatory budgeting elections, which has been used in over a dozen different elections. We will then describe the related algorithmic problem of knapsack voting, where voters have to allocate a fixed amount of funds among multiple projects. We will conclude by analyzing opinion formation processes in terms of their effect on polarization, and relate this to the design of recommendation systems for friends and contents.

About the Speaker: Ashish Goel is a Professor of Management Science and Engineering and (by courtesy) Computer Science at Stanford University, and a member of Stanford's Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford in 1999, and was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California from 1999 to 2002. His research interests lie in the design, analysis, and applications of algorithms; current application areas of interest include social networks, participatory democracy, Internet commerce, and large scale data processing. Professor Goel is a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan faculty fellowship (2004-06), a Terman faculty fellowship from Stanford, an NSF Career Award (2002-07), and a Rajeev Motwani mentorship award (2010). He was a co-author on the paper that won the best paper award at WWW 2009, and an Edelman Laureate in 2014.

Professor Goel was a research fellow and technical advisor at Twitter, Inc. from July 2009 to Aug 2014.

 

Ashish Goel Professor of Management Science and Engineering Stanford University
Seminars

Technology Impact on Biosecurity Policy and Practice

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Abstract: The threat of biological attack on the people of the United States and the world, whether intentional, natural or accidental, is of growing concern, both in spite of and because of significant technological advances over the past four decades. As a global leader, the United States needs a comprehensive policy approach for managing future attacks, which incorporates technologic elements from rapid detection through appropriate response. American and international responses to recent infectious disease outbreaks such as anthrax (intentional, accidental), H5N1 influenza (natural) and ebola (natural) have managed to contain these events ‐ with the paradoxical effect on policy makers, both political and administrative, of relief (“missed that bullet”, “we must be doing this right”), rather than serving as wake‐up calls. A challenge in merging technological solutions into policy lies in the rapid advances across the multiple sciences. Translation of these ongoing technologic advances for policy leaders is an essential element in effective policy development. Incorporation of technologic solutions into biosecurity policy construction, combined with motivated leadership, has the potential for enhancing future national and global responses to unprecedented biological attacks.

About the Speaker: Patrick J. Scannon, M.D., Ph.D. is XOMA's Company Founder, Executive Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer and a member of its Board of Directors. Since 1980, Dr. Scannon has directed the Company's product identification, evaluation and clinical testing programs for novel therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and proteins against infectious, oncologic, metabolic and immunologic diseases. As Chief Scientific Officer, he leads evaluations for new therapeutic antibody identification and discovery programs. 

Dr. Scannon holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.D. from the Medical College of Georgia. He completed his medical internship and residency in internal medicine at the Letterman Army Medical Center in San Francisco. A board-certified internist, Dr. Scannon is also a member of the American College of Physicians. He is the inventor or co-inventor of several issued U.S. patents, and has published numerous scientific abstracts and papers.

Dr. Scannon has served as a member of the Research Committee for Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), the National Biodefense Science Board (NBSB, a federal advisory board for the Department of Health and Human Services), the chair of the Chem/Bio Warfare Defense Panel for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and a member of the Defense Sciences Research Council (DSRC, a research board for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)). He has served as a Trustee of the University of California Berkeley Foundation and as a member of the University of California Berkeley Chancellor's Community Advisory Board. Dr. Scannon is currently on the Board of Directors of Pain Therapeutics, Inc.

Technology Impact on Biosecurity Policy and Practice
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Patrick J. Scannon Founder, Executive Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer XOMA
Seminars

Nuclear command-and-control in the Millenials era

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Abstract: Peter Hayes will talk about the risk of nuclear war and complexity. In a February 2015 report (Peter Hayes, "Nuclear command-and-control in the Millenials era", NAPSNet Special Reports, February 17, 2015, http://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/nuclear-command-and…), he stated that “very few leaders or even strategic scholars pay attention to the new complexity of the operating environment in which national nuclear command-and-control systems operate, or the new characteristics of the command-and-control systems and their supporting CISR systems that may contribute to the problem of loss-of-control and rapid escalation to nuclear war.”

“Today, the underlying ground is moving beneath the feet of nuclear-armed states. The enormous flow across borders of people, containers, and information, and the growth of connectivity between cities, corporations, and communities across borders, is recasting the essential nature of security itself to a networked flux of events and circumstances that no agency or state can control. The meta-system of nuclear command-and control systems has emerged in this new post-modern human condition.” The report can be accessed here.

About the speaker: Peter Hayes is Honorary Professor, Center for International Security Studies, Sydney University, Australia and Director, Nautilus Institute in Berkeley, California. He works at the nexus of security, environment and energy policy problems. Best known for innovative cooperative engagement strategies in North Korea, he has developed techniques at Nautilus Institute for seeking near-term solutions to global security and sustainability problems and applied them in East Asia, Australia, and South Asia. Dr. Hayes has worked for many international organizations including UN Development Programme, Asian Development Bank, and Global Environment Facility. He was founding director of the Environment Liaison Centre in Kenya in 1975. He has traveled, lived, and worked in Asia, North America, Europe and Africa.

Encina Hall, 2nd floor

 

Peter Hayes Director Speaker Nautilus Institute
Seminars

The changing landscape of infectious diseases and its effects on human health

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Abstract: Concerns are mounting that changes in climate, land use, species invasions, and connectivity are changing the global landscape of infectious diseases. Ecological complexity makes these anthropogenic effects on infectious disease difficult to predict. Using data-driven mathematical models, I will show how mosquito-transmitted diseases such as malaria, dengue, and chikungunya may shift with changing climate. I will then discuss sources of uncertainty and how ecological understanding can help to mitigate future shifts in disease risk. Finally, I will introduce the new Center for Disease Ecology, Health, and Development based at Stanford University, which will work to improve human health and well-being through ecological solutions to infectious disease.

About the Speaker: Erin Mordecai has been an Assistant Professor in Biology at Stanford University since January 2015. Her research focuses on the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases in humans and natural systems, and in particular how infectious diseases respond to global change. She graduated from the University of Georgia in 2007 and received her PhD at the University of California Santa Barbara in 2012. She then completed an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. 

Encina Hall

616 Serra Street

Stanford University

Erin Mordecai Assistant Professor in Biology Stanford University
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CISAC Honors Students Prize-Winning Presentations—Patrick Cirenza , Taylor Grossman , Teo Lamiot

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CISAC Honors Students Prize-Winning Presentations

Encina Hall, 2nd floor

616 Serra Street

Stanford University

Patrick Cirenza CISAC Honors Student Speaker CISAC Honors Program in International Security Studies
Taylor Grossman CISAC Honors Student Speaker CISAC Honors Program in International Security Studies
Teo Lamiot CISAC Honors Student Speaker CISAC Honors Program in International Security Studies
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Directors' Seminar Series
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Rethinking the Nuclear Age: The View from Africa and Its Implications for Policy

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Abstract: Today’s international relations are plagued by anxieties about the nuclear state and the state of being nuclear. But exactly what does it mean for a nation, a technology, a substance, or a workplace to be “nuclear”? How, and to whom, does the designation “nuclear” matter? Considering these questions from African vantage points shifts our paradigm for understanding the global nuclear order. In any given year of the Cold War, African mines supplied 20%–50% of the Western world’s uranium ore. As both political object and material substance, African ore shaped global conceptions and meanings of the “nuclear,” with enduring consequences for the legal and illegal circulation of radioactive materials, the global institutions and treaties governing nuclear weapons and atomic energy, and the lives and health of workers. This talk explores those consequences, drawing on historical and contemporary examples from Niger and South Africa. The view from Africa offers scholars and policymakers fresh perspectives on issues including global nuclear governance, export controls, pricing mechanisms, and occupational health regulation

About the Speaker: Gabrielle Hecht is professor of history at the University of Michigan, where she also directs the Program in Science, Technology, and Society. Her publications include two books on history and policy in the nuclear age. Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (MIT Press, 2012) offers new perspectives on the global nuclear order. The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity (MIT Press, 1998, 2nd edition, 2009) explores how the French embedded nuclear policy in reactor technology. It received awards from the American Historical Association and the Society for the History of Technology. Hecht was appointed by ministerial decree to the scientific advisory board for France’s national radioactive waste management agency, ANDRA. She also serves on the advisory board for AGORAS, an interdisciplinary collaboration between academic and industry researchers to improve safety governance in French nuclear installations. She recently advised the U.S. Senate Committee on Investigations on the history of the uranium market, for its report on Wall Street Bank Involvement with Physical Commodities. Hecht’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the South African and Dutch national research foundations, among others. Hecht holds a Ph.D. in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Gabrielle Hecht Professor of History Speaker University of Michigan
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Directors' Seminar Series

“No room for make-believe”: Making sense of US nuclear war plans during the Cold War

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Abstract: Scholars know quite a lot about U.S. nuclear war planning from the end of World War II to the end of the Cold War. We know a great deal about how nuclear deterrence was and is supposed to work. We know much less about how officers and others understood the circumstances and consequences if deterrence had failed and these plans had been used in war. What was it like to make very specific and workable plans for a war that, in President Ronald Reagan’s words, “cannot be won and must never be fought”—but nonetheless—might have been fought? This is a problem of understanding how organizations build complex technical and logistical routines, and how people in these organizations understood and made sense of the possibility that in some circumstances, nuclear weapons would be used. How did war planners imagine the circumstances? The scenarios of what might ensue? The consequences? It is one thing to say the whole situation was a paradox, or a conundrum; it is another to understand the many meanings of this situation for those involved. Explanation hinges on how people in organizations make plans, develop scenarios, and tell stories.

About the Speaker: Lynn Eden is Associate Director for Research at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.

In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.

Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Lynn Eden

Not in residence

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rsd15_078_0365a.jpg PhD

Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.

In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.

CV
Lynn Eden Associate Director for Research at CISAC; Senior Research Scholar Speaker Stanford University
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