Speakers & Events – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Thu, 29 Feb 2024 06:35:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Speakers & Events – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Long nights and lofty goals: Innovation and empathy win at TreeHacks https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/27/treehacks-2024/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/27/treehacks-2024/#respond Wed, 28 Feb 2024 07:34:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1243630 At Stanford's annual hackathon, innovative projects aimed at addressing disability and loneliness drew judges' and participants' attention.

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TreeHacks 2024, the 10th edition of Stanford’s self-identified “premier” hackathon, brought together innovators from across the globe for 36 hours of collaboration and creativity over the weekend of Feb. 16 to 18. Hundreds of engineers teamed up to collaborate on rapid engineering projects and compete for over $130,000 in prizes. 

TreeHacks, which began in 2014, has become a central campus platform for innovation and connection. Students often stay awake for the full 36 hours, due to a schedule packed with events like speaker events with tech CEOs, sunrise hikes and laughter yoga.

Among the myriad of projects, two teams — Baymax and VR-Tines — stood out to judges for products that showcased the intersection of innovation and empathy.

Baymax aimed to revolutionize the lives of individuals facing mobility limitations, according to developers Aarav Wattal ’27, Krish Parikh ’27, James Chen ’27 and Jay Khemchandani ’27. The project, a computer vision-enabled robotic arm, drew attention for its potential to assist those with visual impairment, paralysis and Parkinson’s disease.

“40 million people in the world are blind. Half a million people suffer potentially paralyzing spinal cord injuries every year, and 8.5 million people are affected by Parkinson’s and the pervasive difficulty for these individuals to interact with objects in their environment,” Khemchandani said. “Often, they need to stay in a nursing home or hire personal care.”

But, Khemchandani said, many people are not able to afford such care — something the team found “unacceptable given the capabilities of today’s technology.”

The solution they proposed was a robotic arm that could identify any object, pick it up, manipulate it and have enough dexterity to track a user’s face and mouth and feed them “in a humane manner,” Chen said.

“We envisioned Baymax as a helping hand for the visually impaired, elderly and paralyzed,” he said.

The Baymax team won the prestigious Moonshot Grand Prize, which celebrates the “craziest, most out-of-this-world project,” according to the TreeHacks website. On top of the $10,000 associated with the Moonshot prize, Wattal said the team also won round-trip plane tickets to Japan.

The VR-Tines team, comprised of Kimberly May ’27, Jenny Huynh ’27 and Princeton students Jenny Sun and Chrissy Sun, tackled the issue of isolation during hackathons. Developers said their project aimed to bridge the gap between physical separation and emotional closeness by creating a shared virtual space for real-time interaction.

“VR-Tines is our answer to the challenge of being isolated from loved ones during hackathons,” Jenny Sun said.

The project name was a play on “Valentine’s Day,” said Chrissy Sun, in honor of the holiday weekend. “We ultimately just want to create an immersive environment where you can interact in real time to bridge the distance and feel closer.”

Beyond the accolades, both teams shared a common commitment to leveraging technology for positive change.

“Our goal is to create solutions that have a tangible impact on people’s lives,” said Khemchandani.

This article has been updated to correct the name of the VR-Tines app. The Daily regrets this error.

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Lives between the lines: Legal Journalism Initiative centers humanity in law https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/27/legal-journalism-initiative-tells-stories/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/27/legal-journalism-initiative-tells-stories/#respond Wed, 28 Feb 2024 07:31:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1243634 Led by law professor Michelle Anderson and two law students, the initiative hosts seminars that invite established journalists to discuss how they center human stories in articles about law and politics.

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Amid growing national polarization and a slew of intense court battles, a Stanford legal scholar is bringing journalists to campus to teach law students how to become better storytellers.

Michelle Wilde Anderson, a law professor with expertise in poverty, housing and environmental justice, hopes she can generate momentum for policy change by publicizing the human impact of policies and legal decisions.

Anderson first proposed a reading group last May. But then, her students Ben Wofford J.D. ’24 and Molly Shapiro J.D. ’25 suggested bringing journalists to campus.

In October, Anderson co-founded the Legal Journalism Initiative (LJI) with Wofford and Shapiro. The three united over the importance for future lawyers to study writing and center human stories at the heart of legal issues.

At least six journalists have since come to campus for private seminars, including ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll and Politico editors Michael Schaffer and Elizabeth Ralph. The guest reporters discuss their long-form stories with students for two hours and, afterward, the crowd mingles over a Treehouse dinner.

Anderson said current political polarization and unprecedented legal changes made it imperative for more law students to learn the craft of storytelling and act as “teachers to the general public.”

“The stakes of a human, public understanding of legal change are really high right now,” Anderson said. “Knowledge of government and civics in the country is very weak.”

On Jan. 18, LJI hosted its first public discussion, a conversation with New York Times Magazine writer Emily Bazelon.

Central to Bazelon’s talk was the mission of journalists in the current polarized political climate. Bazelon emphasized the importance of journalistic independence and telling human stories.

“Being independent means being open-minded and following the facts or reporting whatever they may be,” Bazelon said, citing New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger.

In a private seminar to LJI students prior to the speaker event, Bazelon discussed two of her stories. They take a human-centric approach in exploring the legality of abortion pills and constitutional protections of defendants in courts.

Anjali Kumar ’15 J.D. ’25 MIP ’25 said she was struck by Bazelon’s “humanity,” such as how the journalist maintained a relationship with two sources she had interviewed almost 10 years prior.

“As law students, we study interesting materials that are grounded in human stories,” Kumar said. “But we often are not really focusing on the humanity of the underlying defendants.”

LJI was created as a forum for journalists to study how to “explain a sprawling legal phenomenon through characters, scene and place-based storytelling,” Wofford said. He cited Anderson’s 2022 book “The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America” as an inspiration for the initiative.

In the book, Anderson incorporated storytelling in her own research on the plight of four industrial cities under collapsing local government budgets and intergenerational poverty. She immersed herself in the communities and centered local workers.

“There is an absence of political will to show up for places struggling and believe that progress is possible,” Anderson said. “In order to restore this political will, we have to start telling stories of resilience, perseverance and innovation.”

One of the four cities Anderson visited was Stockton, Calif. She said she felt that Stanford and Silicon Valley “owe something” to nearby cities like Stockton, which are home to much of Stanford’s workforce. Many workers from these cities leave their homes at 3:30 a.m. and commute more than 90 minutes to Stanford, she said.

“It was a privilege to be in that space — in people’s homes and living rooms — and to try to center the voices and work of people there,” Anderson said.

LJI’s current cohort is composed of students who demonstrate an interest in “wedding their law degree with public writing,” according to Wofford.

Some participants have worked in newspapers like The New York Times and The Harvard Crimson, whereas others — like Kumar — want to probe how to “use legal knowledge in a different way.”

The initiative drew many that wanted to understand and write the human stories behind laws.

Shafeen Pittal J.D. ’24, for one, was frustrated when she studied Ashcroft v. Iqbal, a Supreme Court case in which Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani American, sued the government for detaining and mistreating him in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Iqbal was one of numerous Muslim men arrested by the FBI following the terrorist attack. 

Pittal said her professor discussed the decision’s effect of stiffening the standard to plead in federal courts for future civil action lawsuits, but did not discuss Iqbal’s story, nor anti-Muslim sentiments during the War on Terror. 

Later, Pittal said, she read a Stanford Law Review article written by law professor Shirin Sinnar. In “The Lost Story of Iqbal,” Sinnar questions the Court’s decision and “reconstructs facts of Iqbal’s immigrant life” and detention through interviews.

Pittal recounted experiencing the power of legal storytelling “in a moment of desperation as a Muslim American.”

“You cannot discuss these legal rulings in an isolated manner,” Pittal said. “You have to talk about the stories.”

Moving forward, Wofford said he hopes the connections law students build with guest journalists in LJI seminars would help them eventually pitch stories to major news publications.

“It’s a marriage of interest: Students get to learn journalism, and cash-strapped newsrooms get free labor,” Wofford joked. “There is a need for law students to write about legal doctrinal issues in newsrooms. Law students really do have something to give.”

Legal Journalism Initiative’s next public event, a talk by ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis on post-pandemic schooling, will take place on Thursday.

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‘Unpunished evil grows’: Ukrainian leaders warn of international complacency https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/25/unpunished-evil-grows-ukrainian-leaders-warn-of-international-complacency/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/25/unpunished-evil-grows-ukrainian-leaders-warn-of-international-complacency/#respond Mon, 26 Feb 2024 06:40:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1243466 Two years since Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukrainian military and political leaders addressed an audience at the Freeman Spogli Institute on Friday, calling for increased Western aid.

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“I was nine months pregnant when the war broke,” said People’s Deputy of Ukraine Oleksandra Ustinova. “My world crashed.”

Ustinova, who gave birth just weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, named her daughter Victoria after the word “victory,” she explained. Now separated from Victoria to protect her safety, Ustinova looks forward to visiting Stanford with her daughter one day “after the victory.”

“Then she can choose whether she wants to go to school in Ukraine, or post-grad at Stanford like I did,” she said. “I want our kids to have that future.”

Ustinova and three other Ukrainian leaders speaking from Kyiv shared updates from the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine war with an audience gathered at the Bechtel Conference Center Friday, urging renewed support from allies. The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) within the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) hosted the virtual panel.

The event marked almost exactly two years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. In recent weeks, Ukrainian troops have faced ammunition shortages as a Senate-passed aid package stalls in the House of Representatives. Russian gains in momentum and the fall of the Ukrainian city of Avdviika on Feb. 17 have fueled uncertainty about Ukraine’s prospects in the war.

Michael McFaul ’86 M.A. ’86 — the director of FSI, a political science professor and the former U.S. ambassador to Russia — moderated the discussion. Political science professor Kathryn Stoner, the director of CDDRL and a senior fellow at FSI, introduced and concluded the event.

“I hope you leave with information and ammunition in American politics,” Stoner said. “Because obviously, this is not just a Ukrainian fight, it is a fight for everyone.”

In addition to Ustinova, the panel featured former Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, founder of the Center for Civil Liberties Oleksandra Matviichuk and Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff. All four have previously been fellows or visiting scholars at CDDRL. The four previously spoke on an FSI panel commemorating the first anniversary of the invasion.

The panelists stressed that Ukraine’s military was in dire need of Western aid. “People do not understand that the war has changed,” Ustinova said. “Two years ago, the Russians were not prepared… Right now, they know how to fight.”

Ustinova has met frequently with Western government leaders to lobby for military and humanitarian support, including members of the U.S. Congress and British Parliament. “If a year ago I was telling them what we need to succeed, today I am telling them what we need not to lose,” she said.

Several speakers argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine posed a broader threat to democracy and European and U.S. security. They also warned of a potential alliance between Russia and fellow autocracies, naming North Korea, Iran, Syria and China specifically.

“I believe that not Ukraine, but all the free world is in a very dangerous situation,” Honcharuk said.

Matviichuk shared his sentiment. “Unpunished evil grows,” she said. “It’s not just a war between two states. This is a war between two systems: authoritarianism and democracy… If Russia succeeds and enjoys impunity, it will encourage other authoritarian leaders in the world to do the same.”

McFaul asked the panelists about their safety and state of mind. “A lot of your friends are in the audience,” he said. “We’re worried about you.”

Matviichuk said the war had taken a profound toll. “Everything which you call normal life was crushed in one moment,” she said. “You can’t plan your next hours because you have no idea when the next air alarm [will] start.”

Ustinova said that Russia has tripled its production of ballistic and hypersonic missiles, while the Western world has lagged in weapons manufacturing by comparison. She called for stronger sanctions against Russia and for the U.S. to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, while also expressing frustration with congressional gridlock over the aid package.

Leshchenko echoed Ustinova’s concerns that international aid to Ukraine was inadequate. He said he had witnessed dismay among Ukrainian soldiers in the Donetsk region over a lack of ammunition and encouraged the audience to “take all measures” to push their representatives to supply weapons.

McFaul asked the panelists to refute some U.S. lawmakers’ opposition to Ukrainian assistance, referencing claims in Congress that Ukrainian corruption would lead to aid being “wasted” and that the war was “unwinnable.”

Addressing the first concern, Ustinova said that anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine had achieved significant progress, describing Ukraine today and ten years ago as “two different countries.” 

Leshchenko responded to the second argument with a comparison to World War II. “In 1941, no one [could] expect [what would] be the result of the Second World War,” he said. 

Nevertheless, a global effort came together to protect democracy, Leshchenko said. “Countries were shocked and tried to stop evil which was taking control over lands and killing millions of people,” he said. “No one was thinking, ‘Should we stop the weapons supply because we don’t see the light [at] the end of the tunnel?’”

Despite the uncertainty of life amid the war, the panelists expressed resolve and faith in Ukraine’s ability to triumph over Russia. “I’m still an optimist,” Honcharuk said. “For all people of the democratic world, the Ukrainian army is the best possible investment to contain Russia as the most dangerous aggressor in the world.”

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Local journalists build trust and transparency at Rebele Symposium https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/31/local-journalists-build-trust-and-transparency-at-rebele-symposium/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/31/local-journalists-build-trust-and-transparency-at-rebele-symposium/#respond Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:46:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1241421 The editors in chief at local news outlets in San Francisco, Atlanta and Denver spoke on Monday about how local news is functioning in an era of misinformation and polarization at the “Polarization and the Press” panel, moderated by Janine Zacharia.

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In an age when every person can become a journalist by taking their phone out and posting about news on social media, it can be hard to know who and what to trust, said Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor of The Denver Post.

Colacioppo, along with two other editors in chief of local newspapers across the country, came together to discuss how to establish trust with readers amid prevalent misinformation and polarization at a panel in the Traitel Building Monday. 

The panel featured Colacioppo; Leroy Chapman Jr., editor in chief of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Julie Makinen, the editor in chief of The San Francisco Standard. Stanford lecturer and former journalist Janine Zacharia moderated the event.

The event was part of the Rebele Symposium, a yearly event funded by the Rebele family. This year’s symposium is the first since Rowland Rebele ’51 died last November.

The goal of the panel was to “focus on what the press and mainstream media outlets can do to reduce [polarization],” Zacharia said at the start of the event. 

One of the key issues causing polarization is the lack of trust in the press: people don’t feel they know journalists like they used to, Chapman said. Each panelist recounted trying to make connections with their communities as a way to address this issue.

“I’m your neighbor, I have a Toyota,” Chapman said, referring to how he builds these connections with community members in Atlanta. “Having a connection with our community is going to sustain us.”

Local newspapers depend on this connection to function, though not everyone in the community is willing to reciprocate that connection, the panelists said.

“I don’t think everybody is reachable, but I do think there’s a big group in the middle,” Makinen said. She said this group of people tends to read the news and sometimes even reaches out to voice concerns with how their community is being covered. 

Panelists also noted how privilege and inequality in journalism often directly impact who gets to tell the story. At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chapman said that while their audience demographic is primarily Black readers, many of their stories are told by white journalists. 

Though this could potentially cause issues with coverage, Chapman Jr. said there is a simple solution.

“Hire the best people. The best journalists are at home wherever. The best journalists will earn trust,” he said. 

Panelists agreed that journalists can earn the trust needed in communities to tell these stories through transparency. 

“Be transparent about mistakes and how they happened,” Colacioppo said. 

Transparency is a tricky act to balance, she added, because it could also be interpreted as an admission of guilt or proof as to why a news source should never have been trusted to begin with.

At The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, where Makinen served as executive editor from 2018 to 2023, trust and community was built through the opinions page, she said. Makinen spearheaded an experiment in 2019 to make the opinions page politics-free for a month. The resulting opinions they received were “so interesting,” Makinen said, bringing new contributors to the paper who otherwise might not have written. 

Despite the difficulties in creating and maintaining trust in an era of social media and polarization, the panelists said they aren’t discouraged from trying. The work is worth it, Chapman said.

“When we matter, that’s when people trust us,” Colacioppo said. 

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For Anita Hill, change should be measured by the ‘long-view’ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/29/for-anita-hill-change-should-be-measured-by-the-long-view/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/29/for-anita-hill-change-should-be-measured-by-the-long-view/#respond Mon, 29 Jan 2024 08:44:01 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1241189 Hill spoke to a full audience in Hauck Auditorium on Thursday evening about the impact of her 1991 testimony against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Throughout the talk, Hill challenged the audience to think about social and political change differently, as an intergenerational endeavor.

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Content warning: This article includes mentions of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

When Anita Hill took the stage of Hauck Auditorium on Thursday evening, the audience wasted no time in giving her a standing ovation.

The audience, which was filled primarily with women of different ages, came out to listen to the lawyer and civil rights activist speak on change-making and her testimony against then-nominee for the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. Part of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research’s Jing Lyman Lecture Series, the lecture was also the institute’s first event of 2024. The Institute will celebrate its 50th anniversary later this year.

Hill now serves as a professor of social policy, law and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Brandeis University.

“In 1991, I had no idea that I would be here today, honestly,” Hill said, referring to the year she testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Hill accused Thomas of workplace sexual harassment when she worked at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Her testimony, which was given in front of a committee of 14 white men led by then-Senator Joe Biden, reshaped how the U.S. thought about sexual and gender-based violence.

“I’ve learned a lot about Anita Hill growing up,” said audience member Mira Joseph. “In history class she came up a few times. She was inspiring.” 

Lindsay Wu ’24 came to the event to learn more about Hill, particularly since the first Supreme Court Justice she ever saw confirmed was Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault by former Stanford teacher Christine Blasey Ford at the time of his confirmation.

“I feel like she’s a cultural figure who I don’t understand as much,” Wu said. 

The range of people in the audience, whether they watched Hill testify in 1991 or grew up learning about her, embodied an integral point of Hill’s speech: the intergenerational importance of creating social change.

The 1991 hearing

Hill started her lecture by acknowledging a “collective grief” that many people across the country feel in light of numerous Supreme Court decisions and, more broadly, the current state of gender-based and race-based equality. 

“I get it. I understand that. But I think we should not lose hope,” Hill said. She added that “inclusive conversations and diverse voices” have brought the U.S. closer to gender-based equality.

While the fight for gender equality continues, Hill acknowledged that “we have made great advances, and we’re closer today than we have ever been in my lifetime.”

When Hill testified in 1991, “most of the 30 million households” in the U.S. did not know what the term “sexual harassment” meant, let alone the ways in which the legal system impacts those who experience sexual violence, according to Hill.

“I think if we remember back to ’91 … we will say that that spectacle, as hard as it was to endure, actually opened us up to a conversation that has created awareness and has ultimately brought about social and cultural change,” Hill said.

Hill attributed the fact that the hearing happened at all to the efforts to increase the presence of women in the workplace in the 1970s and ’80s. Hill also cited lawsuits that moved to allow employees to sue employers for sexual harassment and to hold people accused of sexual harassment accountable.

“Given the social culture that had been created by the wave of people who identified as women into the labor force, into workplaces — how could the 1991 hearings not become a turning point for understanding women’s lived experiences?” Hill said. 

When Hill left the hearing on Oct. 12, 1991, she found out that 7 out of 10 viewers believed that her testimony was made up. But two years following her testimony, the numbers were reversed.

This reversal, Hill said, was a quick social change that did not happen by itself. One factor she pointed to as a major contributor of this change were the 1,600 Black women scholars who put an ad in The New York Times titled “African American Women in Defense of Ourselves.” That ad, along with increased media coverage and urgency around the issue of workplace harassment, paved the way for change.

“The ads gave us a glimpse into the behaviors from the perspective of generations of Black women,” Hill said. “Despite the naysayers and the conspiracy theorists who thought that I was a pawn of some left-wing conspiracy, the public discourse about gender and harassment and gendered political representation grew and turned to a conversation about the lives of working women.”

Measuring change from the ‘long-view’

Nearly 27 years after Anita Hill’s hearing, a full-page ad by 1,600 male scholars ran in The New York Times: “We believe Anita Hill. We also believe Christine Blasey Ford.”

The ad was posted against the backdrop of Ford’s testimony against Kavanaugh. 

“That’s real notable progress,” Hill said, pointing out the significance of a “diverse group of men weighing in on gender equity, with Black feminism as a model.”

The progress reached beyond that moment: Progress, to Hill, means any time marginalized groups are brought to the public consciousness and included in conversations about societal issues. From the conversations around anti-Asian racism following the Atlanta spa shootings to the discussions sparked by the Me Too movement, Hill said, the modern era’s societal and cultural shifts are signs of progress.

“As we focus on what is happening today, one of the things that we need to do is stop measuring progress by the passage of a law alone, or measuring progress — or, in some cases, regression — by a Supreme Court decision,” Hill said. “We are bigger than that as a society.”

One way to shift how we measure societal change, Hill said, is to look at change from the “long-view” instead.

In her own life, Hill looks at the fact that, due to the oppression her family faced under Jim Crow laws, her mother never had the opportunity to get an education. Hill’s mother worked hard to make sure that her children would receive that opportunity — and her dream came true.

“That doesn’t happen without setbacks, folks,” Hill said. “We just have to have enough faith, the faith that my mother had to believe that we deserve a better future to make sure that those changes happen.”

Before the crowd departed for the evening, Hill shared one last comment with the crowd. She said that people often ask her if she would testify again if she could go back in time. Her answer?

“Absolutely.”

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AI comes out of its shell https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/17/ai-comes-out-of-its-shell-with-risk-to-turtles/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/17/ai-comes-out-of-its-shell-with-risk-to-turtles/#respond Thu, 18 Jan 2024 07:50:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1240460 Nik Marda ’21 M.S. ’21, who just concluded more than two years of work at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, marked 2023 as “a year of action” for government AI policy.

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Is identifying turtles with facial recognition models a risky use of computing power?

That’s the question Nik Marda ’21 M.S. ’21 asked the audience at a Stanford Law School event Tuesday, reflecting on whether the federal government should regulate artificial intelligence (AI) based on thresholds of technology and resource use.

Many think that facial recognition is inherently a risky use of technology, but we should also consider its practical application before making judgments, Marda said.

Marda, former chief of staff for the technology division of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), advocated for national privacy legislation regulating the use of AI. The event, titled “Working on AI Policy at the White House,” was co-hosted by the Stanford Artificial Intelligence & Law Society (SAILS), Stanford Law and Technology Association (SLATA) and Stanford National Security & the Law Society (SNSLS).

Marda recently concluded two and a half years of work on technology policy in the White House. He joined the White House as a OSTP fellow after completing a bachelor’s degree in political science and master’s degree in computer science. Later, he worked as a policy advisor before rising to chief of staff of OSTP’s technology division.

Sitting in front of the whiteboard of Room 280A, Marda explained milestones of federal AI policy in conversation with Emma Lurie, a second-year law student and co-president of SAILS. The audience, a mix of law students and undergraduates, listened closely with slices of pizza in hand.

Chief among Marda’s many hopes for future policy was a federal bill on data privacy.

“In practice, AI use focuses on collecting data and using data,” Marda said. “A privacy law would go a long way in laying out stronger protections for individuals.”

Marda acknowledged that many in California, home to business giants in the technology sector, may push back on a nationwide privacy legislation. Regardless, he said the federal bill is the “number one most important” congressional action in the AI realm.

Looking forward, Marda hopes that AI privacy regulations can take shape through the American Data Privacy Protection Act, which was introduced in the House of Representatives in June 2022. The bill would establish and enforce consumer data protections.

“It’s a really strong piece of legislation with a lot of support,” Marda told The Daily.

Other congressional actions that Marda envisions include more spending for “moonshot projects around making AI safer” and the Creating Resources for Every American To Experiment with Artificial Intelligence Act of 2023 (CREATE AI Act). 

The CREATE AI Act, which was introduced in the U.S. Senate last July, will establish the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource as a shared nationwide infrastructure. According to Marda, the bill enjoys bipartisan and bicameral support. The bill was spearheaded by Anna Eshoo, co-chair of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus and representative of California’s District 16.

Marda identified 2023 as a “year of government action” on AI research and rule-setting, including landmark actions like the White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and President Joe Biden’s “Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” 

“The last year shows what can happen in AI policy when there is momentum, and clearly that momentum built on the last decade of work,” Marda told The Daily. “You can see that the research at Stanford and elsewhere is now playing out in real policy impact.”

Marda identified the Office of Management and Budget’s draft policy on “Advancing Governance, Innovation, and Risk Management for Agency Use of Artificial Intelligence” as one of the Biden administration’s most powerful initiatives on AI. The 26-page document outlines rules for government agencies’ use of AI.

“It’s quite forward leaning. It really clarifies the types of systems that we think are inherently more risky and the types of risks we care about more broadly,” Marda said of the draft policy. “It spells out a real framework to mitigate those risks.”

Audience members said they found Marda’s proposal for a nationwide privacy regulation to be meaningful.

“It was really cool to hear his perspective on where AI regulations are going, and which is most important,” said Silva Stewart, a second-year law student and vice president of SAILS. “In law, we talk about how certain rights are preservative of other rights, and the way he presented privacy as a baseline right that is foundational for other advancements was very interesting.”

Lurie, who met Marda at a digital fellowship program in 2019, said she was a “long-time admirer of his work.”

Though Marda’s time at the White House has concluded, he plans to stay involved in the AI policy space in the future.

“It felt like a really important moment to be thinking rigorously about how we want to see these technologies deployed in society,” Marda said, regarding his motivation for pursuing a career in technology policy. “This was a really important moment to get governance right.”

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Janine Zacharia on covering Israel and Palestine amid the ‘fog of war’ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/07/janine-zacharia-on-covering-israel-and-palestine-amid-the-fog-of-war/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/07/janine-zacharia-on-covering-israel-and-palestine-amid-the-fog-of-war/#respond Fri, 08 Dec 2023 07:44:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1239388 Communications lecturer Janine Zacharia reflected on her time as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East and discussed the intricacies of covering the Israel-Hamas war.

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Communications lecturer Janine Zacharia spoke about lessons learned from almost two decades spent as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East to around 50 Stanford community members at McClatchy Hall on Monday.

During the public discussion, titled “The Fog of War,” Zacharia described the intricacies of covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a journalist. The panel was moderated by communications professor and department chair James Hamilton and attended by many University affiliates, including former Stanford president John Hennessy, political science professor Scott Sagan and law professor Allen Weiner.

Zacharia spent nearly two decades reporting on Israel, the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy for various publications, including The Washington Post. The discussion comes amid ongoing war in Israel and Gaza, in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise assault on Israel. The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 1,200 Israelis and 17,000 Palestinians.

Hamilton wrote that he hoped students would “come away appreciating how complex the challenges of covering the war are, how reporters invest in learning about history and context when they report from abroad and how they hope that readers will judge them by their work rather than their backgrounds,” in an email to The Daily.

Zacharia began the event by asking audience members traits they considered essential for foreign correspondents. She then illustrated each trait with an experience from her own life. For “resourcefulness,” for instance, she spoke about needing to file a story after the internet had been shut off during the Egyptian Revolution in 2011. After receiving a call from her father, Zacharia asked him to call the Post, who she was reporting for at the time, and dictated to him the entire article “like it was 1970 or something,” she said.

When asked about the greatest challenge in covering the conflict, Zacharia said it was difficult to obtain the truth amid a set of “dueling victim narratives.” She raised the recent breakdown of a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas as an example, pointing to how Israel and Hamas each accused the other of firing first to break the truce. The truce, which had been negotiated to facilitate negotiations between the two sides, ended Nov. 30.

“Whose version are you going to lead with?” Zacharia said. “Unfortunately, the only way to do it is to give both versions.”

As a Jewish reporter, Zacharia said her identity had come under increased scrutiny during her time as a foreign correspondent. Zacharia said she frequently had to obscure her identity while meeting with Muslim leaders, who questioned whether she was capable of reporting on the issues fairly.

Amid the current Israel-Hamas war, Zacharia said she had received many messages, some threatening, questioning whether she could objectively cover the conflict given her identity.

Zacharia said when she was hired to cover the Middle East by the Post in 2009, she was clearly qualified for the job given her wealth of experience. 

“Now, in 2023, am I going to be rejected because I’m Jewish?” she said.

An audience member asked her to speak on Stanford’s statements on the conflict. The University’s policy of neutrality had previously been criticized in an open letter signed by over 1,800 Stanford affiliates, who urged the University to directly condemn Hamas’ actions. Zacharia redirected the question to Hennessy, who said that “it’s not the job of the University to take political positions.”

“I would put out a statement saying we empathize with the pain on both sides, and that innocent people have been killed,” Hennessy said. “There are people in our community whose families and friends are in danger, and it’s for them you’re making that statement.”

Zacharia said she agreed with Hennessy, and spoke about a meeting she had with a “beleaguered” President Richard Saller after the Oct. 7 attack.

Zacharia advised Saller that his “job is to make the students feel safe. The students have to feel safe here and we need to provide a safe learning environment for them.”

Ray Ostil ’25, a communications student who attended the event, wrote that he appreciated how the discussion reemphasized that “accuracy is of greater importance” than speed and that there were many difficulties associated with potentially “humanizing a (supposed) villainous character.”

 “I immediately felt the sincerity from Janine,” Ostil wrote. “I can think of no better way to think critically about journalistic integrity, than to hear about the thin line she walked as a journalist living in Israel constantly covering Palestine.”

Toward the end of her talk, Zacharia spoke about Anthony Shadid, a war correspondent who suffered a fatal asthma attack in 2012 while reporting in Syria. Zacharia said Shadid’s death exemplified the “kind of risks that foreign correspondents take to do this kind of work, especially in the Middle East.”

Hamilton wrote he was particularly inspired by Zacharia’s ending remarks, where she spoke about “how the next generation of reporters, the students in the audience, can have an impact on the world through accurate and transparent public affairs reporting.”

“I was so lucky, and now I get to train you guys to do it,” Zacharia said. “You just have to have thick skin for the trolls, man — the trolls are fierce.”

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KIND CEO and human rights activist Daniel Lubetzky works for a two-state solution https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/06/kind-ceo-and-human-rights-activist-daniel-lubetzky-works-for-a-two-state-solution/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/06/kind-ceo-and-human-rights-activist-daniel-lubetzky-works-for-a-two-state-solution/#respond Thu, 07 Dec 2023 06:57:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1239165 The Stanford Daily interviewed Daniel Lubetzky, human rights activist and founder and CEO of KIND, on his journey from Stanford to the nonprofit sector and entrepreneurship. As the founder of PeaceWorks and OneVoice, Lubetzky spoke to the potential of business to bring people together amid conflict.

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Daniel Lubetzky J.D. ’93, founder and CEO of KIND, returned to Stanford in September to speak at Stanford Law School’s convocation.

A recurring investor on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” New York Times bestselling author and human rights activist, Lubetzky wears a lot of different hats. But most recently, his focus has been on working toward a two-state solution to the Israel-Gaza conflict.

“Daniel had the kind of innovative career that the law school prepares our students for,” said Provost Jenny Martinez in an interview. “He’s been an entrepreneur, he has worked in the nonprofit sector, as well as founding an incredibly successful company.”

Lubetzky’s entrepreneurial journey began at Stanford. During his time at the law school, the idea for PeaceWorks — an organization that used business to create peace in conflict regions — was born.

The organization used the not-only-for-profit business model, which inspired KIND’s mission to be “kinder to our bodies, kinder to our communities and kinder to our planet,” as described by the company’s website. 

“The most important lesson I learned here is that there’s a very, very big opportunity for us to replace rigid thinking with flexible thinking and equip students to solve problems,” Lubetzky said in an interview with The Daily. “KIND was an offshoot of PeaceWorks, and PeaceWorks was very much born at Stanford.”

While at Stanford, Lubetzky wrote a legislative proposal for using business as a force for breaking down divisions between Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, Egyptian and Turkish people. In the research process, Lubetzky came across a sun-dried tomato spread in Tel Aviv. 

“It was delicious. I tried to go buy some more, and there was no more product on the shelves. Long story short, I found that the company had gone out of business,” he said.

Lubetzky contacted the owner of the business to propose a partnership. 

“I told him about the idea that instead of sourcing his glass jars from Portugal, he could source them from Egypt for half the cost,” Lubetzky said. “Instead of sourcing his sun-dried tomatoes from Italy, he could source them from Turkey. He could source his olive oil from Palestinian farmers and Palestinian growers and same with the eggplants and so on and so forth.”

This partnership led to the creation of PeaceWorks. The company, which operated for 25 years and predominantly focused on the food industry, sought to bring neighbors in conflict regions together.

“We created incentives for economic cooperation to create prosperity for all the people in the region, with equal relations and respect for all,” Lubetzky said.

“I really appreciated Daniel’s approach to issues of community and the way in which, through KIND and also through his non-profit work, he really tries to create community,” Martinez said. “Focusing on how people, through compassion and curiosity, can have better relationships among people who come to problems from very different perspectives.”

Lubetzky also founded the OneVoice movement in 2002. Since 2015, the organization has provided more than $15 million in funding to Israeli and Palestinian grassroots activists working toward a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Active internationally, OneVoice raises resources and visibility for its regional partners.

The concept of OneVoice is to amplify the voice of moderates that want to end the conflict and build a better future for all the people of the region,” Lubetzky said.

The ongoing Israel-Gaza war has had a deep impact on OneVoice staff.

“I literally have not been sleeping over the last two, three weeks because we’ve lost a lot of our family and friends to this war,” Lubetzky said in an interview in October. “We have Palestinian and Israeli staff and colleagues whose lives have been impacted.”

“We have Palestinian staff in Gaza that we’ve been trying to evacuate, but Hamas has blocked the exits and prevented them from leaving. We have Israelis, both Jewish and Muslim Israelis, that were killed by the Hamas terrorists.”

The #wearebuilders movement, which he started in October, hopes to bridge differences by framing the conflict around extremism rather than a conflict of political or personal identities. 

“We cannot allow this to be a conflict of Israelis versus Palestinians, Muslims versus Jews or Left versus Right. It is fundamentally about Moderates versus Extremists — about Builders versus Destroyers,” the movement’s mission reads.

Some students disagreed with the framing of #wearebuilders. 

“In general, I agree with the idea that it is fundamentally about moderates versus extremists,” said Hamza El Boudali ’22 M.S. ’24. “But I think that’s also true of any issue, so I don’t think that it’s specific to this conflict in particular.”

El Boudali thinks that the conflict is still related to aspects of identity.

“I would agree the conflict is not purely along nationalistic lines or religious lines, in the sense that not every member of that group has the same views, but that’s almost a trivial point. Most Palestinians are pro-Palestine, and the majority of Israelis are pro-Israel,” he said. 

Lubetzky left students with a message on the value of humor and light in fighting darkness. He recalled a story of his father, who was a Holocaust survivor in the Dachau concentration camp.

“I said, ‘Dad, it never crossed my mind to ask you. When you were in Dachau in those bunkers, in subhuman conditions, did you ever laugh? Were you able to laugh?’” Lubetzky said. “It was three years — imagine somebody living three years, and having no moment of laughter.”

Lubetzky’s father started to cry, speaking to the importance of laughter during difficult moments.

“His father, my grandfather, used to tell jokes to the inmates to keep their spirits up,” Lubetzky said. “He even used to tell jokes to the German soldiers, to try to give them a little bit of a modicum of humanity … Laughter was one of the most important things that kept him alive.”

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Maryland, New Hampshire governors urge bipartisanship and empathy https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/01/maryland-new-hampshire-governors-urge-bipartisanship-and-empathy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/01/maryland-new-hampshire-governors-urge-bipartisanship-and-empathy/#respond Fri, 01 Dec 2023 10:56:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1238670 Maryland governor Wes Moore and New Hampshire governor Christopher Sununu joined Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice to discuss their solutions to rising political distrust and polarization, from bipartisanship to investing in education and public service.

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Maryland governor Wes Moore and New Hampshire governor Christopher Sununu spoke with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on garnering public trust in American institutions, at a Thursday event hosted by the Hoover Institution. 

The governors were introduced by Brandice Canes-Wrone, the director of the newly-established Center for Revitalizing American Institutions at Hoover. Moore is the first Black governor of Maryland and third elected Black governor in the U.S., and Sununu received more votes than any candidate in New Hampshire history to become its 82nd governor.

Rice said the event was organized to address Americans’ growing distrust in political institutions.

“We understand that Americans are reportedly less confident in their institutions, losing faith in them, but they’re pretty spectacular institutions,” Rice said. 

Sununu, though, expressed his own disdain for domestic political affairs. 

“I am incredibly disheartened by Washington, D.C. and that’s the nicest way I’ve ever put it. I think it’s an absolute disaster,” Sununu said. “I think a lot of our citizens share that [opinion]. There’s no sense of trust, there is no sense of accountability.” 

Moore said many of his constituents want a government that can deliver services efficiently. 

“People just want you to see them and they want you to show up. They want you to be able to have ideas, listen to their thoughts, show a measure of concern and be able to do something about it instead of screaming about how the other side views this,” he said.

Though Moore said implementing and sustaining a bill without bipartisan partners and advocates can be very difficult, he expressed pride in the ten bills his office introduced in its first legislative session. “We had Democrat and Republican support on every single bill we introduced. And we had to work for it, but it was important,” he said. 

The governors also discussed public mistrust in the judicial system. American trust in the Supreme Court is at its lowest in 50 years, with only 18% of respondents saying they “have a great deal” of trust in the institution.

Moore said the current Supreme Court is overly politicized and lacks decisions backed properly in the law. Sununu, though, said that despite his disdain for many of the Court’s judgments, he believed the justices did not benefit from politicizing their decisions.

Both governors also addressed the Israel-Gaza war following a question from an audience member about healing from high levels of hatred and fear in the U.S.

Sununu said he was shocked by levels of antisemitism. “I’ll say this to all the cultural problems. I hate wokeism. I hate cancel culture,” he said.

The solution, he said, lies in “every single one of us” having “person to person” interactions in our communities to solve this “cultural crisis.”

Acknowledging both antisemitism and Islamophobia, Moore said he has stood firm on protecting Maryland’s places of worship and prioritized educating the public on the realities of the conflict.  

Speaking on political polarization, Sununu said that one of his favorite parts of the governor role was bipartisanship, particularly with other governors.

“We really all get along … I can pick up the phone to almost any governor in the country, say, ‘Hey, I saw you did this. How does that work?’ It’s an amazing sense of team, which I personally love,” he said.

Moore, who was recently inaugurated in 2023, praised Sununu for reaching across party lines to offer him help in transitioning into the role. 

To encourage more collaboration across the political spectrum, both governors urged empathy — “one of the biggest things lacking in this country,” according to Sununu.

“Empathy is a skill you have to practice,” Sununu said. “In tough negotiation, when tempers get high, are we practicing saying, ‘Please tell me more?’” 

This practice, Sununu said, will build trust between leaders and the community, and will ultimately be politically advantageous for politicians.

Rice said this lack of empathy in Washington has led to growing distrust between the American public and their politicians. For Moore, though, this cynicism was valid. He recalled an early memory of his dad passing away from what he described as inadequate healthcare.

“I’m never going to lose my cynicism with the system and I’m the governor,” Moore said. “But cynicism can be my companion. I just won’t let it be my captor.”

Sununu said that despite his cynicism with Congress, he still had hope for reforms through regulations on gerrymandering, campaign finance reform, term limits in D.C., more state sovereignty and other changes.

For Sununu, combating polarization must be done through education of the ideas that founding fathers set for American political institutions. 

Moore said the answer to increasing political polarization is engaging in more public service. He said he felt it imperative for leaders to provide more opportunities for citizens to serve and meet others.

“You cannot claim that you love the country when you hate half of the people in it,” Moore said. 

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‘Democracy is really hard work, folks’: John Kerry makes surprise appearance at panel https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/27/democracy-is-really-hard-work-folks-john-kerry-makes-surprise-appearance-at-panel/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/27/democracy-is-really-hard-work-folks-john-kerry-makes-surprise-appearance-at-panel/#respond Mon, 27 Nov 2023 08:55:02 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1238156 Kerry spoke alongside Reid Hoffman, Laurene Powell Jobs and David Simas on political trends, the fractured American media landscape, ways to fight climate change and the potential of technology.

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U.S. Special Envoy for Climate and former Secretary of State John Kerry surprised the audience of SOC 64: “Shaping America’s Future: Exploring the Key Issues on Our Path to the 2024 Elections” during a panel of leaders in technology and politics speaking on climate change, the future of technology and American democracy. 

The Nov. 13 panel, part of the one-unit speaker series, featured LinkedIn co-founder and early OpenAI investor Reid Hoffman, Emerson Collective founder and president Laurene Powell Jobs and former Obama White House Director of Political Affairs David Simas. Kerry was a surprise guest, joining while in the Bay Area for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in his capacity as Special Envoy for Climate. 

The planned discussion was around technology, but the focus quickly turned to more general challenges facing American democracy.

“The biggest challenge the U.S. faces in the world today is not external; it’s internal,” Kerry said, citing a fractured media landscape in America as a key factor in its current polarized political climate. 

According to Kerry, the lack of key moderators and arbitrators in the media landscape prevents Americans agreeing on a broad base of truth, upon which they can debate about policies and plans. He said in the past, these moderators took the form of trusted newspapers and television reporters such as Walter Cronkite. 

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost [middle] America,” Kerry said, paraphrasing a famous quote from President Lyndon B. Johnson regarding public sentiment about the Vietnam War.

Jobs pushed back on the narrative that the centralization of the media was entirely positive.

“It’s not the worst thing to have a diversity of news and information sources. It may not be the best thing that Walter Cronkite held center stage,” Jobs said, going on to say that Cronkite and his views did not represent many Americans.

Jobs added to Kerry’s broader point about the lack of a commonly accepted public truth, emphasizing the importance and failures of the educational system. 

“In order for democracy to work, we need an educated, informed citizenry. And if you look at any measure for public education in the United States, it’s separate, unequal and underperforming, and has been for decades,” Jobs said.

Hoffman said there is great potential to improve education through technology, with AI smartphone tutors customizing education to particular age groups and reducing time wasted by teachers on grading.

Regarding the media, Hoffman pointed to the rise of cable news as an origin point for narrative fracturing, and pointed to X’s (formerly Twitter’s) misinformation correction boxes as a way that “technology can very much be part of the solution.”

The panelists agreed that, good or bad, technology today has a major influence on how people get news.

According to Simas, 75% of adults aged 18 to 22 use TikTok — a platform not limited to three news channels like the early days of television — as their primary source of news information. 

As a caveat, he observes that average people are taking more and more active roles in society.

 “What we’ve seen … is a new spirit of citizenship that is active and not consumptive,” Simas said.

Kerry also expressed optimism about American democracy.

“We have the ability to avoid autocracy by making democracy work around a set of ideas that are tangible, real,” Kerry said.

The conversation later turned to climate change, with Kerry expressing hope that climate denialism and pessimism can be overcome with a positive vision of economic opportunity.

“The demand for workers — for pipe fitters, for plumbers, electricians and heavy equipment operators and people who put steel cables together … all of this work is waiting to be done,” Kerry said. “You talk about economic opportunity? This is the greatest opportunity we’ve had since the industrial revolution.” 

That vision could become reality, according to Jobs.

“I believe that the future that he just outlined is absolutely within our reach,” Jobs said. “What we’re transitioning to is cleaner, greener, healthier, safer, more abundant, more beautiful, more flourishing. It’s not that we’re transitioning into something negative. We’re actually transitioning into a clean economy.”

Hoffman was optimistic about the possibilities, but emphasized the need for political will. He said that the average person has to feel results in the short term, and must be sold on the green transition benefiting them before they will lend their support to it.

To conclude, Steyer brought the class’s teaching assistants to the stage, asking the panelists, as representatives of Stanford students, to give one piece of advice. 

“Graduate,” Kerry said, prompting laughs. 

“Believe in a basic set of values and be willing to put yourself at risk to fight for them and don’t let anybody tell you you’re too young or not experienced enough. Young people have defined every major movement in this country,” he said. “You are the leaders and don’t forget that. And hold everybody else accountable.”

A previous version of this article misstated Laurene Powell Jobs’s prior work and role. The Daily regrets this error.

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Protestors interrupt APEC seminar on energy policy https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/06/protestors-interrupt-apec-seminar-on-energy-policy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/06/protestors-interrupt-apec-seminar-on-energy-policy/#respond Tue, 07 Nov 2023 07:55:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1235740 Protestors demonstrated outside of a seminar that explored APEC’s role in addressing Asia-Pacific energy challenges by facilitating regional cooperation.

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“Say No to APEC” protestors interrupted a Wednesday seminar at Encina Hall on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)’s impact on energy policy in the Pacific.

Protesters’ chants outside the building sometimes made it difficult to hear the presenters. Protesters held signs concerning several issues, like “Our Planet is NOT private property,” “From Palestine to the Philippines, stop the U.S. war machine” and “No to APEC.”

APEC is an intergovernmental forum of 21 countries surrounding the Pacific Rim with a primary goal of creating a stable economic environment in the Asia-Pacific region. The annual APEC conference meeting involves the heads of all 21 countries and will meet in San Francisco later this month. The Stanford Asian American Action Committee (SAAAC) launched a “Say No to APEC” campaign at a teach-in last month that drew dozens of students. The committee joins a coalition of over 100 organizations across the country in opposing APEC.

Around 50 audience members attended Wednesday’s seminar, which was a part of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center’s fall quarter seminar series. Some audience members expressed visible annoyance at the protest taking place outside.

The primary issue of the protesters was to dissent against “the falsity of APEC as something that improves the [participant] nations’ economies — in reality, it exists only to reinforce neoliberal policies that do nothing for the people,” said Pilipino Association committee co-chair Amanda Altarejos ’26.  

Altarejos said the specific demand of the protesters was for APEC “to address real human rights issues” in countries like the Philippines.

At the SAAAC teach-in last month, Terry Valen, an International Migrants Alliance organizer and the director of San Francisco’s Filipino Community Center, said that APEC’s commitment to neoliberalism would lead to rising global wealth gaps and ecological collapse. According to Valen, APEC puts profits over people, citing examples like making it difficult for Filipino farmers to profitably grow and sell their own rice faced with imported rice from Thailand.

When presenter Larry Greenwood, former U.S. Ambassador to APEC, spoke to the room, he was met with shouts from outside the building. When asked during the seminar about the protesters, Greenwood said, “I don’t think they have any idea what APEC is.”

Greenwood spoke on the history of APEC and its continued importance in the geopolitical sphere, particularly its focus on energy security such as disruptions in the oil market and stockpiling. He noted the importance of APEC creating a chain of communication when governing and influencing energy policy in Ukraine, and spoke on how the ongoing war in Ukraine affects global energy supplies.

Environmental and resource economics professor Larry Goulder, whose remarks centered around China’s role in global warming, opened the event. Goulder said that China’s nationwide CO2 emissions trading system could make an “important contribution” toward meeting the Chinese CO2 emissions abatement goals.

In order for China to meet its 2060 net-zero target, “considerable further tightening of the current emissions standards seems necessary,” Goulder said. China is currently the largest emitter of CO2 of the APEC countries.

The subject of rising tensions between the U.S. and China was not mentioned during the seminar. However, shortly after the seminar, Thomas Fingar Ph.D. ’77, an affiliated scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, told The Daily that although a conflict involving China and the United States is “extremely unlikely … the perception that war is a possibility [is] leaning toward likely.” That fear, he said, “severely restricts the possibility for cooperation and coordination.”

According to Goulder, in order to make a significant dent in global CO2 emissions, China must play an important role.

Gita Wirjawan, former Indonesian trade minister, said reaching a global net zero is particularly challenging for developing countries like Indonesia whose economies are not as “modern” as those of countries like the U.S. He expressed skepticism over net-zero goals for 2030 and said that 2040 or 2050 would be more pragmatic.

After Wirjawan’s remarks, demonstrators outside the building dispersed around 10 minutes before the event’s scheduled close. 

“Energy issues are central to a whole nexus of developmental and environmental issues,” Fingar said. “Sharing information on that level can happen randomly, but it can happen much more efficiently because APEC exists.”

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‘Alter the DNA’: Progressive district attorneys explore possibilities for criminal justice reform https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/25/alter-the-dna-progressive-district-attorneys-explore-possibilities-for-criminal-justice-reform/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/25/alter-the-dna-progressive-district-attorneys-explore-possibilities-for-criminal-justice-reform/#respond Wed, 25 Oct 2023 07:36:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1234423 Describing an “inflection point in criminal justice,” district attorneys discussed how progressive policies are shaping the criminal justice system at the Law School on Tuesday.

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A panel of elected district attorneys, including Chicago’s Kimberly Foxx, Los Angeles’ George Gascón, and Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner J.D. ’87, spoke at Stanford Law School (SLS) on Tuesday about their respective career paths in the legal system, common challenges faced as a prosecutor and what motivates them to reform the criminal justice system.

Moderated by law professor Jennifer Chacón ’94, a crowd of roughly 150 law students, undergraduates and community members gathered to gain insight into the role of an elected district attorney. 

Chacón said in an interview with The Daily that she hoped students walked away from the panel with “a better sense of what motivates people to run for district attorney and what skills they bring into their line of work.”

The event, organized by SLS, the Stanford Criminal Justice Center and the John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law, focused on the nuances of the prosecutorial office, including progressive-leaning approaches to the criminal justice system. Among the attendees in the audience was SLS Interim Dean Robert Weisberg J.D. ’79, who assumed the role following the recent promotion of Jenny Martinez to University provost.

Gascón, who campaigned in Los Angeles County on substantial criminal justice reform in 2020 and has weathered multiple attempts at recall elections during his term, spoke about what he sees as the failures of the prison system and the need to help the incarcerated. 

“There was a need to alter the DNA of the office,” Gascón said. “We are bringing the office into the 21st century.”

Gascón distinguished the relationship between police and prosecutors and spoke to the importance of accountability, truth and transparency in his line of work.

Foxx, who is the first African-American woman to manage Cook County’s DA office — the second-largest prosecutorial office in the U.S. — frequently referenced her childhood and growing up in Chicago as a strong influence in growing her passion for the law. She recounted overcoming many systemic barriers throughout her life and defended her work in reforming the American criminal justice system, which she said “doesn’t address true issues.”

Krasner, who brought the crowd to laughter multiple times, spoke to the unprecedented results of their elections.

“You are looking at the three waterloos of district attorneys. [We] were supposed to lose,” Krasner said. “Except, there is no waterloo. This is a national grassroots movement.”

Krasner spoke on the catastrophes of the incarceration system and the methods of intervention in his office. Krasner was impeached in 2022 by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives following allegations of not performing the duties of his job.

The relationship between the media and prosecutors was frequently discussed among the panel. Krasner described his as “symbiotic,” with a “need to be proactive with the press.”

Foxx, who made international headlines in 2019 for dropping a case against actor Jussie Smollett (in which Smollett falsely claimed that he was the victim of a hate crime), noted the difficulties of working with the press and media during that time “because [the system] couldn’t just say it was trivial with Jussie Smollett.”

Krasner described his “cost-benefit” methodology behind prosecution, where his office identifies the economic and societal benefits or costs behind prosecuting individuals. Foxx and Gascón alluded to similar methods of restorative justice.

“We must be honest when we discover the thing that we’ve been doing is not what we’ve been saying — so let’s do something else,” Foxx said.

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Harvard professor advocates for a “neo-traditional” approach to Indigenous mental health https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/23/harvard-professor-advocates-for-a-neo-traditional-approach-to-indigenous-mental-health/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/23/harvard-professor-advocates-for-a-neo-traditional-approach-to-indigenous-mental-health/#respond Mon, 23 Oct 2023 11:02:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1234159 Indigenous professor Joseph P. Gone visited Stanford for a talk on modernizing traditions in order to address historical trauma.

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Harvard professor Joseph P. Gone introduced a new approach to improving Indigenous mental health with a focus on intergenerational trauma, in a Wednesday talk titled “Communicating Indigenous Vitality in the Age of Historical Trauma.”

Speaking at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) Conference Room as part of the Faculty Seminar Series, Gone described a “neo-traditional” approach that transcribes coup tales to a modern context, in order to encourage better community outcomes and a rebirth of pride.

To an audience of about 40 students, professors and administrators, Gone explained the concept of a coup tale, in which members of a tribe would recount their war deeds. Gone said that coup tales formed a foundation of his tribe, the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre. Members of the Aaniiih would share coup tales in a variety of contexts, ranging from the aftermath of a successful raid, to when the center pole was knocked down during the Sun Dance, to when children were named and when their ears were pierced.

But, Gone said, coup tales promote two contrasting ideals: mastery and violence. Coup tales promoted mastery in elevating ambition, achievement and “the eruption of liveliness over bitter circumstances,” Gone said, but they also promoted intense violence, including enslavement, arming children and killing civilians. 

Within his talk, the central question Gone wrestled with was this: how does one preserve mastery while repudiating violence?

Gone answered this question by introducing a neo-traditional approach, in which violence from coup tales is replaced with a modern context. Winning a sports competition, for example, could be the occasion for telling a modern coup tale, with descriptions of how one overcame adversity and persevered until finally triumphing over a worthy opponent.

By bringing the coup tale into the modern day, the legacy of historical trauma which had often held Indigenous communities back, could be replaced by a culture of “survivance,” Gone said. According to Gone, this new approach to Indigenous psychology could have revolutionary consequences. Gone said it could lead the way to a beautiful “eruption of liveliness.”

This approach to addressing historical trauma could have direct impacts on Indigenous communities of today, according to Gone. Gone cited the work of Lakota psychologist Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart in pointing out that colonial injuries suffered by Indigenous communities persist into the present day, as historical trauma is cumulatively escalating and cross-generationally transferred.

When asked about the implications of Gone’s work at Stanford, Native American Studies Associate Director Preston Taylor Stone said that it was a useful perspective. 

Stone wrote that “Indigenous students on campus continue to thrive despite on-going systemic violence under American settler colonialism. The anticolonial ambitions of Dr. Gone’s work, which emphasizes healing and promotes survivance — survival & resilience — remain very productive for students.”

For many in the audience, Gone’s talk was highly impactful, including Tahayla Quġluq Baker ’24, an Iñupiaq student. Baker wrote that she had “naturally gravitated toward Dr. Gone’s research” as a frosh. “Many Indigenous communities are in the process of healing from historical trauma, but more importantly, many Indigenous communities are reclaiming cultural practices that were historically discouraged or criminalized,” Baker said.

Baker expressed her gratitude for his visit to campus, writing that “Dr. Gone validated our goals as Native students.”

Gone’s ideas also resonated with staff members of the CCSRE department. Education professor Alfredo Artiles, who directs the CCSRE’s Research Institute, wrote in an email that the CCSRE is “deeply invested in designing programming that will inspire connection and collaboration in [its] interdisciplinary community.”

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‘Unprecedented response to unprecedented threat’: Security leaders launch summit at Hoover https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/20/unprecedented-response-to-unprecedented-threat-security-leaders-launch-summit-at-hoover/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/20/unprecedented-response-to-unprecedented-threat-security-leaders-launch-summit-at-hoover/#respond Fri, 20 Oct 2023 09:07:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1234070 Leaders of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance convened publicly for the first time at the inaugural Emerging Technology and Securing Innovation Security Summit. Condoleeza Rice hosted the discussion, which touched on the dangers of emerging technologies.

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Five global security intelligence leaders gathered at the Hoover Institution in their first public joint appearance ever on Tuesday. They addressed security threats to emerging technologies and the safeguarding of innovation and freedom at academic institutions. 

The Five Eyes intelligence partners — a coalition of five countries dedicated to global security which includes Australia, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand — gathered for the panel. 

“These gentlemen represent, if you will, the eyes and ears of democracy to protect ourselves,” said Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. secretary of state and current director of the Hoover Institution. Rice jointly hosted the panel with Christopher Wray from the FBI, with whom she worked under the Bush administration.

More than 450 attendees attended the event, which kicked off the first Emerging Technology and Securing Innovation Security Summit in Palo Alto. 

Along with characterizing the security of intellectual property produced in the private sector, the summit contextualized ongoing concerns of the security of innovation in the private sector — focusing particularly on the threat posed to universities. 

The panel consisted of Mike Burgess, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) director-general of security; Ken McCallum, the British Security Service (MI5) director general; David Vigneault, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director and Andrew Hampton, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) director-general.

The panelists addressed the intelligence threats posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the scale and depth to which the PRC’s actions in the private sector may filter down to affect the security of research initiatives at universities. 

“There is no greater threat to innovation than the Chinese government,” Wray said.

Wray described the challenge the PRC presents as one of “both scale and breadth.” In terms of scale, the PRC has a larger hacking program than every other nation combined, Wray said. Their human intelligence operations include not only spies, but also insiders recruited in businesses and institutions and “non-traditional collectors,” according to Wray.

When combined with their “seemingly innocuous” joint ventures and investments in the private sector, the PRC poses a threat the likes of which Wray said the United States has never faced before. 

“I’m often asked, ‘Is this a New Cold War?’ I tell people ‘no: it’s harder,’” Rice said. “The Soviet Union was a military giant, but it was an economic and technological midget. This time around, we have a competitor and adversary who is technologically, militarily and economically likely to be our equal.” 

Preventing the PRC’s attempts at “wholesale intellectual property theft” does not mean impeding their economic growth, Burgess said. 

“China has a right to be prosperous,” Burgess said. “China has a right to innovate. We are not trying to stop any of that. We are not trying to contain that. My nation has benefited greatly from China’s rise.”

The speakers repeatedly emphasized the importance of not lumping the actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with Chinese people and Chinese Americans, many of whom feel they are targeted by the public as a result of their race. 

“The threat we are talking about is the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party. It is not the Chinese people and it is sure as heck not Chinese Americans. In fact, an awful lot of the time the victims of the CCP’s efforts are Chinese Americans,” Wray said. 

The Five Eyes also shared how each of their respective governments are attempting to strengthen relations between the private and public sectors. 

Rice said one of the main criticisms of the government is that it is currently not fully exploiting emerging technologies in the private sector to safeguard democracy. 

“In the U.K., the center of our approach is partnership. There’s a special part of MI5, the National Protective Security Authority, that looks to share guidance and advice with our private sector and our universities,” McCallum said. “It’s not a list of things that we sort of draw up in our own bunker in MI5. Those bits of guidance are co-created with people in the sectors to be pragmatic and workable.”

The FBI has set up office spaces across several universities, something Wray said would be “unthinkable” a decade ago. Yet, no such office has been established at Stanford “because it’s a very competitive institution,” Wray said, prompting laughter from the audience.

“If openness is the hallmark of democracies, then super-openness is a hallmark of universities,” Rice said, alluding to Stanford’s place as one of the world’s leading research institutions. According to Rice, this makes emerging threats to national security an especially relevant concern to Stanford. 

She specifically referred to the emergence of synthetic biology and associate professor of bioengineering Drew Endy’s research, which is done in partnership with the Hoover Institution. 

“If you think a pandemic right now looks bad, think about a pandemic that is actually tailored to a population and the like,” Rice said. 

According to 2021 data on the degrees conferred at Stanford, 50% of Stanford students graduated with STEM degrees. “Stanford is a big part of the innovation ecosystem and has been for our entire history,” Rice said. “You need to be aware of how others might exploit that.” 

“If you are working at the cutting edge of technology today, you might not be interested in geopolitics, but geopolitics is most definitely interested in you,” McCallum said. 

A previous version of this article referred to the Hoover Institution as the Hoover Institute. The Daily regrets this error.

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Assistant Secretary Geoffrey Pyatt says China is sole U.S. adversary https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/18/assistant-secretary-geoffrey-pyatt-says-china-is-sole-u-s-adversary/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/18/assistant-secretary-geoffrey-pyatt-says-china-is-sole-u-s-adversary/#respond Wed, 18 Oct 2023 10:02:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1233905 A seminar hosted by the Hoover Institution underscored cooperation with national allies for a secure, sustainable transition to a clean energy future and warned attendees of a political model in China that "denies individual freedom."

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Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt projected a 50% growth in American export capacity by 2026 and described a new “post-post Cold War” era of ideological conflict with the Chinese government at a Stanford energy seminar hosted by the Hoover Institution on Monday.

Pyatt, who was born in California, arrived on campus this week as part of his itinerary for the U.S.-Japan Energy Security Dialogue. This initiative provides a space for the U.S. and Japan to strengthen natural resource cooperation and receive updates on academic research that could drive the transition to clean energy in public and private sectors, according to a State Department press release.

In a seminar hosted by U.S. Admiral James Ellis Jr., Pyatt spoke on topics ranging from plans for responsibly sourcing minerals to the geopolitics of China’s growing sphere of influence and questions of state financing mechanisms raised by the audience.

“Economic competition is good … but what’s more insidious is this political model, which denies individual freedom,” Pyatt said in reference to Chinese surveillance practices and what he views as a “lack of rule of law” and general sense of political opacity. “It’s the larger political and values competition where we want to make sure we prevail.”

Pyatt said the world has now entered a new “post-post Cold War era,” in a nod to a speech that Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently delivered at Johns Hopkins University. According to Pyatt, the U.S. has one adversary in this era: China. 

China has a “very different idea about how society should be organized,” Pyatt said. Pyatt also called China “our nearest rival,” saying that it has surpassed the U.S. in terms of the number of consulates and touch points it has around the world.

“But I’m absolutely convinced that the United States has the most compelling offer,” he added.

Looking to the future, Pyatt said that now is an “extraordinarily exciting time” for young professionals to enter his field, though he added that the world is “very, very different” from the days of his formal education. Pyatt said the interconnectedness of the digital age calls for a deeply intentional approach to international relations.

He then pulled out his smartphone and held it up for the audience to see.

“The single most important change that has happened in the international economy in the 34 years that I’ve been in the State Department is right here,” he said. “It’s the reduction of distance that has been produced right here in Silicon Valley by innovations in communications technology.”

Integrated circuits, electric car batteries and sundry consumer materials of the like tend to be manufactured with a number of components using earth minerals that may include cobalt, lithium, zinc or copper. In a memorandum last year on the issue of sourcing such materials for national interests, U.S. President Joe Biden wrote, “The United States depends on unreliable foreign sources for many of the strategic and critical materials necessary for the clean energy transition.”

“Demand for such materials is projected to increase exponentially as the world transitions to a clean energy economy,” Biden wrote.

While Norway accounts for 22% of cobalt imported to the U.S. in recent years, it is the Democratic Republic of the Congo — where practices such as child labor and occupational hazards may occur in the absence of oversight — that leads the world in cobalt production.

In an interview with The Daily, Pyatt said that he plans to further develop a mineral security partnership with national allies that would “ensure the highest standards possible in accord with our own democracies and our own rule of law.”

“Battery passports,” which track the history of a battery’s parts as a means of supply chain transparency, have been gaining traction in industry, Pyatt said. Pyatt will visit a nearby startup this week that seeks to create a proprietary battery technology using solely American resources.

Despite the political, structural and technical challenges to upscaling energy production on the national and international stages, Pyatt pointed to the U.S. government’s prompt achievement of goals in reducing European dependence on Russian energy through increased liquefied natural gas exports and partnerships with national allies like Japan.

“If you had said in late February of 2022 that Germany within the space of a year would get to zero imports of Russian oil, gas and coal, nobody would have taken you seriously,” he said.

Later in the evening, Pyatt reflected on how his ambassadorial roles dealing with energy security issues in Ukraine and Greece regularly presented unique challenges but also came with the “enormous benefit” of experiencing the world and accumulating invaluable lessons.

For Pyatt, the most powerful moments from his time abroad were when ordinary citizens would walk up to him on the street and tell him: “Ambassador, you don’t know who I am, but … I want to say thank you on behalf of my country for the help the United States is offering.”

“That is an incredibly humbling thing and, you know, it doesn’t happen when you’re working in investment banking,” Pyatt said.

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Rights and research: Hoover event explores treatment of Chinese American academics https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/08/rights-and-research-hoover-event-explores-treatment-of-chinese-american-academics/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/08/rights-and-research-hoover-event-explores-treatment-of-chinese-american-academics/#respond Fri, 09 Jun 2023 02:53:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1230125 A Hoover Institution event discussed racial-profiling of Chinese scholars in America and examined institutional efforts to protect research. Speakers talked the 'Chinese Initiative' and its consequences.

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The Hoover Institution’s China’s Global Sharp Power Project hosted a discussion on the importance of promoting a sense of belonging for Chinese-Americans on Tuesday inside Hauck Auditorium. The panel, titled “A Fresh Start: Safeguarding People, Rights, and Research Amid US-China Competition” brought attention to the worries Chinese academics have over being profiled for espionage or fraud-related charges regarding possible affiliations with China’s government. 

This animosity between the U.S. and China has a long history. When Communist Party leader Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the U.S. supported the exiled Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek, increasing friction between the two countries. In recent times, China has become a global superpower, capturing the attention of foreign governments. Escalating tensions over trade, disputed territories and indictments of Chinese nationals have dominated U.S.-China relations.  

Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, moderated the panel with Gisela Perez Kusukawa, founding executive director of the Asian American Scholar Forum, Ambassador Gary Locke, former U.S. Ambassador to China (2011-2014), and Glenn Tiffert, research fellow at the Hoover Institution. 

Locke, who is also the chair of the non-profit Committee of 100, opened the event by acknowledging the rivalry between the two nations across various industries. He highlighted the “need to understand that our dispute and contention with Beijing is with the government of China and not the people of China, and certainly not Chinese Americans.” Locke said [they] believe the contributions of Chinese Americans often go unnoticed, a further reflection of the invisibilizing of Asian Americans.

Kusukawa added that the treatment of Chinese-American academics is part of a broader historical pattern of anti-Asian rhetoric in America, resulting in the scapegoating of Asian Americans when the U.S. experiences tensions with an Asian country. 

According to Locke, there needs to be clearer, consistent standards across federal funding agencies. He also pointed out that a survey from the University of Arizona in partnership with the Committee of 100 found that Chinese or Chinese-American scientists and professors were 5 times more likely to feel like they were being racially profiled compared to those who did not identify as Chinese.

“Since 1985, it has been U.S. policy that basic and applied research in science and engineering is basically unrestricted by the government,” Locke said. 

Tiffert explained that this has led to a lack of oversight that resulted in compliance risks, failures and abuses across universities. Institutions were not aware of the ties between research conducted on their campuses and the Chinese government. 

According to Tiffert, there was a significant shift when panic ensued with views that, “the Chinese government was asymmetrically exploiting the openness of our research enterprise to exfiltrate our technology, data and events, values and interests that were in conflict with our own.” Tiffert said the larger problem is an “issue with institutional due process and labor relations that manifests in the handling of a lot of controversies within academia.”

Much of the racial profiling Locke referred to can be seen in the China Initiative that was launched by the Department of Justice, according to Kusakawa. The initiative was intended to “protect US laboratories and businesses from espionage,” according to the journal Nature, but many academics and civil liberties groups claimed that the program was biased against researchers of Chinese descent. Chinese-American scholars and scientists were falsely implicated during the Trump-era initiative, reporting disastrous effects on their personal livelihoods because of the profiling. The initiative was terminated in February of last year after outcry was raised over how the initiative’s rhetoric further encouraged Sinophobic sentiment. 

If we are to recognize the existing anti-Asian bias in America, “we need to start thinking [about] what are the due processes in place to protect Asian-Americans” Kusakawa said.

Kusakawa acknowledged the difficulties a university or faculty member faces when critiquing or challenging policies that reflect a power imbalance between federal agencies and those in academia. She encouraged making the process of filing a complaint or reporting racial bias a less intimidating experience and focusing on creating a better environment for foreign scholars. 

“I think most people forget that our refugee and asylum legal system in the United States came into existence because we wanted to honor our American values,” she said. She further questioned the irony of targeting Chinese-American researchers during rising tensions with China over economic and industry rivalries. 

“If we change how we approach research, are we genuinely going to become more competitive?” Kusakawa said. “We don’t think that Asian-Americans and Chinese-Americans and immigrants should continue to be collateral damage as we try to fix our policies in our country in addressing U.S. China relationships.” 

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Rahul Gandhi emphasizes role of technology, imagining in India’s future  https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/02/rahul-gandhi-emphasizes-role-of-technology-imagining-in-indias-future/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/02/rahul-gandhi-emphasizes-role-of-technology-imagining-in-indias-future/#respond Fri, 02 Jun 2023 07:46:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1229724 Member of the Indian National Congress and former politician Rahul Gandhi spoke at CEMEX about India’s fight for democracy and its relations with other nations. Gandhi is the first person to receive a maximum sentence for defamation in India.

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“I didn’t think when I joined politics in 2004 I [could have] ever imagined what I see going on in our country.”

Speaking to a full auditorium of close to 600 people, former politician and member of the Indian National Congress Rahul Gandhi visited Stanford on Wednesday and touched on India’s relations with other states and his vision for India’s road to further development. 

As the member of an Indian political dynasty, Gandhi carries significant influence among the Indian diaspora. However, in March 2023, he was disqualified from Indian Parliament in claims of defamation for his opposing remarks against the popular Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) leader and current Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP is the largest political party in India and is generally known for its right-wing politics and Hindu nationalist ideology.  

Gandhi is the first person to receive a maximum sentence for defamation. “To get the maximum sentence, to be disqualified from Parliament – I didn’t imagine that something like that was possible,” Gandhi said. “But then, I think it’s actually given me a huge opportunity.” 

During the moderated portion of the event with Center for Democracy, Developement and Rule of Law (CDDRL) Affiliated Scholar Dinsha Mistree, Gandhi spoke more about India’s relations with the United States.

“I think there is a lot of good work that has been done from the 90’s… I don’t see the acts of imagination. I don’t see the crystallization of a vision,” Gandhi said. “There is military cooperation. That’s fine. That’s important. But it can’t just be military cooperation. “

In speaking of global production, Gandhi imagined a different future for India. Gandhi envisioned a world in which India has the means to advance production capabilities if the country decentralizes its power and allows different ethnic groups to feel comfortable. Gandhi emphasized that India and other democratic states alike must compete against Chinese production, which he claims is an “authoritarian model [that] has got a handle on production.”

“So, production in a democratic environment has to be conceptualized and actioned. And I think India has a central role in that,” Gandhi said. “You have to make [people of different ethnicities] comfortable. You can’t let them feel that their language is threatened or their culture is threatened.” 

When asked by Mistree how India could carry out this role, Gandhi responded with a very clear answer: tapping into different markets. By using technology and finance, Gandhi believes that India could make major steps towards building their productive capabilities. 

“That’s the mindset change that has to be brought about. India has a large number of skill clusters. But we’re not connecting our clusters with finance. We’re not connecting our clusters with technology. We’re not nurturing the ability to manufacture,” Gandhi said. 

In his final statements, Gandhi took a more positive outlook, encouraging transformation and imagination in India. He hopes that India can use power, by being closer to the truth and hearts of people, rather than force in order to bring unity and development to India.

“I think there are difficult times. But there are also times of opportunity. I think there are times when imagination, as I call it, acts of power will resonate and can transform the way we think about ourselves,” Gandhi said.

In speaking of Bharat Jodo Yatra Gandhi’s approximately 2500 mile walk for unity– which took place September 2022 to January 2023– Gandhi recalled the movement with fondness, noting it as “the most beautiful experience of my life so far.” 

“When we walked across our country, all of us, it started with 125 people and it fundamentally transformed the way we think about our country, about our people, about our politics,” Gandhi said.

When reflecting on the Indian government’s response to the walk of unity, Gandhi explained his confusion on the lack of military force applied.

“How come? They have all the force. They have all the systems and nothing’s happening. Why for example, are they just not physically stopping us? And this was a question that just kept rotating in my mind,” Gandhi said. “And I realized that force and power are two completely different things.”

While the Indian National Congress faces challenges in opposing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Gandhi remains hopeful in holding power without force. Gandhi repeatedly weaved this idea throughout this speech, claiming that power does not necessitate force.

“Power is an act of imagination. Power is in the present. And power comes when you go close to the truth,” Gandhi said. “The reason we could not be stopped at first was because we were waving around near the truth.”

One comment from engineering student Arman Sharma ‘24 spoke of Gandhi’s unique position in seeking international support at such university talks, while his opposition does not generally take on such endeavors. 

“I’m not seeking support from anybody. I’m very clear that our fight is our fight” Gandhi said. “But there is a group of young students from India here, and I want to have a relationship with them, I want to talk to them.”

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AI and human character: Sheila Heti delves into conversations with chatbots https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/21/ai-and-human-character-sheila-heti-delves-into-conversations-with-chatbots/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/21/ai-and-human-character-sheila-heti-delves-into-conversations-with-chatbots/#respond Mon, 22 May 2023 01:12:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1228595 Heti, a New York Times-commended author of Pure Colour, Motherhood and How Should a Person Be, visited the Humanities Center to answer questions and do a reading of excerpts from her latest AI-inspired work on Wednesday.

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“If my books are philosophical, it’s just because I spend all my time ruminating. I’m not trying to write philosophical novels, I’m just trying to get down my experience of what life is like,” said author Sheila Heti, speaking to a crowd of a few dozen on Wednesday evening at the Humanities Center. 

Heti is a Canadian author who has published ten books, including Pure Colour and Motherhood. The event with the New York Times-commended author was sponsored by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford Public Humanities and The Changing Human Experience and was co-sponsored by Stanford Philosophy and Literature.

In conversation with English professor Mark Greif, Heti spoke about her writing process, which involves years of gathering material prior to shaping the book. “I almost feel like because writing comes so much from the subconscious, for me the best way of going about creating a book is take a massive writing that you’ve created and look at what’s already there, rather than trying to impose, ‘I’m going to write a book about this,’” she said.

Heti’s most recent novel, Pure Colour, is a complicated story about love, grief and God. Heti wrote the novel as she was dealing with the loss of her father. 

“I think Pure Colour was more sensory than the other books just because after my father died, I did experience the world in a completely new way,” Heti said. “I did feel like things looked brighter. Colors were bright, I could smell for the first time. It just felt sort of newly born, or something.”

Heti discussed the experience she hopes readers have as they take in her writing, which includes not “want[ing] to work against a lot of different realities.” She said, “I don’t like describing rooms because the reader is in the room that they’re in, so if the text can fill in the space that they’re sitting in, that’s better than pretending I’m in a country cabin.” 

Lately, Heti’s new writing interests have centered around artificial intelligence. During the summer she says she became obsessed with conversing with chatbots, who she compared to characters. 

In particular, Heti says that she not only had many conversations with an artificial intelligence “character” called Alice, but that she also contacted the developers of the AI and received 3.5 million words of dialogues people had with Alice. Heti says she was intrigued by the extremity of some of the conversations and what they revealed about human character, citing instances where individuals expressed desires of sexually assaulting Alice. 

“When people talk to a chatbot, there’s no public presentation — you’re completely alone,” Heti said. “ The most interesting thing is not Alice, it’s these people.”

Heti has already released an excerpt from the book about AI in The Paris Review, but said she believes she will work on the novel for at least another two or three years. “The difficult thing about writing a novel about AI is that when the book comes out, we’re going to be in a completely different place with the technology,” Heti said.

The AI book she’s currently working on, which she read a few chapters from to the audience, was written partly by prompting Alice to tell Heti a story sentence by sentence and partly through conversations that other people and Heti herself had with Alice, who Heti said is her favorite character she’s ever written.

A part of the excerpt served as a reflection on the way the world was created and how humans operate through Alice’s eyes, or her “bible,” as Heti puts it. “The important lesson a human learns about how to live is love. They learn about love by falling in love,” she read from the excerpt. “The fearsome thing about life is that one day they will die.”

Despite sharing the excerpt with the audience, Heti admitted that the final version of the book might look a lot different. “This is the problem I’m having with this book. Every time I go back to my own writing after those conversations, I just can’t stand it,” she said. “I think that’s why I like taking five years to write a book because your taste does change every day. That’s why I’m always going back and forth, back and forth, questioning the choices I’ve made.”

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‘Impulse’ Biotech conference highlights use of technology in personalized Healthcare https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/14/impulse-biotech-conference-highlights-use-of-technology-in-personalized-healthcare/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/14/impulse-biotech-conference-highlights-use-of-technology-in-personalized-healthcare/#respond Mon, 15 May 2023 04:43:42 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1227813 Stanford’s annual biotechnology conference "Impulse," featured talks on robotics in biology, AI-assisted assistive technology, 3D bioprinting for heart disease, high-resolution neural network mapping and more. The event took place on Saturday.

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On Saturday, the Stanford Students in Biodesign and Biopharma (SSB) hosted “Impulse,” among Stanford’s premier biotechnology conferences, bringing together a community of students building products and technology for healthcare and biomedicine.

The annual SSB conference featured talks with Google AI researcher Rory Sayres Ph.D. ’07, founder of an AI-powered drug discovery startup Raphael Townshend Ph.D. ’20, leading researchers in robotics, nanodevices and wearable devices and top biotech venture capitalists. 

A central theme of the conference was the personalization of biotechnology. A conversation with professor of mechanical engineering Monroe Kennedy and adjunct lecturer of design David Jaffe featured extensive talks about the future of robotics in biology and potential advances in adaptable assistive technology.

Both speakers shared a sentiment that AI is a great tool for assistive technology and that the future will hold several advances in that field, especially for those who are deaf and blind. However, Jaffe added that in order to truly make this new technology feasibly accessible to the general public, he believes it must be shown to be effective, well-understood by healthcare professionals, reimbursable by insurance and affordable.

As part of his talk, Kennedy said that it’s essential to carefully observe and be inspired by biological processes in order to create technology that solves biological problems. “A lot of really cool work comes out of biomimetics [the imitation of biological processes to solve biological problems],”  Kennedy said, emphasizing the importance of creating technology that is directly informed by nature and biology.

Bioengineering professor Mark Skylar-Scott deepened the conversation around personalized technology with his talk “Moving beyond the petri dish: Whole-organ biofabrication.” Skylar-Scott is currently developing customizable 3-D bioprinting technology solutions to address single ventricle disease, a disease where patients lack a left ventricle in their heart. 

The goal is to replace tubes that currently get placed in the heart during surgical treatment for the condition with something “living and beating and able to supply energy to the blood,” Skylar-Scott said. The lab currently investigates printing vascular tissue by feeding different types of stem cells into a 3D bioprinter, creating personalized vasculature.

Professor Jin Hyung Lee from the neurological sciences department continued the conversation of adaptable and personalizable biotech solutions with her talk on creating a high-resolution neural network map of the brain, which is crucial for understanding localized brain function. Through the creation of a “digital brain,” she says she seeks to understand the connectivity and function of large-scale neural networks in order to drive the development of new therapies for neurological diseases. 

“Brain disorders are the primary cause of disability worldwide and brain healthcare is a huge, increasing problem but there is nothing that is changing the curve of this big upsweep in cases,” Lee said. 

“Problem definition is the most important but we are unable to do that with brain disorders,” she said, pointing to diseases such as Alzheimer’s where some treatments involve inserting electrodes inside the patient’s brain and providing electrical impulses to try to restore brain function. But, according to Lee, this method is largely ineffective because for the most part “we are going in blindly and don’t truly know how the brain works.” 

Throughout her talk, Lee emphasized the importance of being able to localize problems to specific circuitry in the brain. 

“The ultimate goal of brain health care is to restore brain function and the main reason why we have failed in treatments is because we don’t have a rigid, quantitative way of measuring brain function,” Lee said. “MRIs show us the anatomical structure of the brain but cannot tell us anything about brain function.” She believes that once we are able to define brain function, this would lead to tremendous advances in personalized healthcare for brain disorders instead of generic protocol-based treatment, unspecific to patients’ needs. 

The day-long event also featured talks that touched upon several other advances in the biotech space like engineering RNA biology with AI, building prostheses along with a prototyping workshop.

The variety of topics, from brain circuits to lessons to be learned from AI in healthcare, appealed to many attendees, like Vedant Chittake ’26, a bioengineering major interested in oncological and cardiological research. “The conference was really insightful and I enjoyed gaining a lot of perspective into what different professors are doing in the field,” Chittake said.

A previous version of this article listed David Jaffe as a professor of design instead of adjunct lecturer. The Daily regrets this error.

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Enlightening acronyms and the happiness equation: Deepak Chopra on the climate crisis https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/30/enlightening-acronyms-and-the-happiness-equation-deepak-chopra-on-the-climate-crisis/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/30/enlightening-acronyms-and-the-happiness-equation-deepak-chopra-on-the-climate-crisis/#respond Mon, 01 May 2023 03:19:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1226453 At a Thursday event hosted by the King Center on Global Development, the author spoke on the role that he believes wellness can play in combating eco-anxiety.

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To some, eco-anxiety — defined as extreme worry about climate change — can lead to the belief that the climate crisis is a problem too big to solve. In a survey of 10,000 youth between the ages 16-25 in 2020, “over 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.” 

As part of a Thursday event hosted by the King Center on Global Development, author and mindfulness advocate Dr. Deepak Chopra shared his answer for how to navigate some individuals’ crippling eco-anxiety. The discussion, facilitated by climate activist Sophia Kianni ’24, examined intergenerational attitudes toward climate change, climate anxiety and the steps that youth and AI can take to mitigate the current climate crisis. 

Chopra’s answer encourages youth to strive to be their happiest self because “happy people see opportunity where there is adversity” and are more likely to take action rather than be paralyzed by fear. 

Chopra’s happiness equation is his answer to climate anxiety. As he described, happiness equals your happiness set point, plus current living conditions, plus voluntary choices — (H=S+C+V). He emphasized that people should be mindful of the voluntary choices they make in their day to day lives because those choices have the power to cause or clear anxiety about the world around us. 

He argues that our psychological construct of the environment — the fact that we acknowledge it as “separate” from us — has alienated humans from mother nature and is the primary cause of the current climate crisis. People are less likely to care about problems that aren’t tied to them and ones that they don’t deeply understand, according to Chopra.

He emphasized the need to harmonize deeply with the biosphere that is our body and our surroundings and gave examples of how some native tribes treat trees as their lungs, air as their breath and rivers as their circulation. “We are interbeings,” he said. 

A large part of Chopra’s discussion focused on the importance of well-being and the idea that youth who have good mental health have the greatest capacity to make positive change. “Well-being can predict the future,” Chopra said. As evidence, he pointed to modern interventions like using AI chatbots as opposed to human therapists to treat youth mental health conditions that have been shown to be effective. 

“Where do you look for answers?” Kianni asked as she brought many college students; mental health struggles throughout college — a “rat race” as she called it in the case of Stanford. “Within” Chopra replied, saying that self-discovery is crucial to understanding yourself and what you can contribute to the world. 

Chopra elaborated, saying that inner reflection can also help you master the types of leadership styles that suit you best, tying it back to climate by saying that in the lens of the climate crisis, this is crucial to know when putting together teams that will work on solutions. 

Chopra spoke on his belief that current successful leaders have learned from ways of past ones like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. When asked about the qualities of a good leader, Chopra detailed an acronym LEADER. According to him, L represents the ability to look and listen, E for emotional engagement, A for awareness, D for having a dream, E for creating a positive environment, R for taking responsibility, and S for achieving synchronicity.

Kianni continued the leadership discussion by encouraging Stanford students to take charge and look for ways that they could contribute to reducing the effects of climate change. “All majors can be climate majors,” Kianni said, in support of her belief that every discipline has the capacity to contribute to the climate solution.

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APARC experts discuss human rights violations in North Korea, call for support for exiled citizens https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/27/aparc-experts-discuss-human-rights-violations-in-north-korea-call-for-support-for-exiled-citizens/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/27/aparc-experts-discuss-human-rights-violations-in-north-korea-call-for-support-for-exiled-citizens/#respond Thu, 27 Apr 2023 08:03:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1226226 Scholars and policy officials gathered at Monday’s conference criticized human rights abuses in North Korea, citing malnourishment of citizens and forced labor camps. Researchers also proposed increased flow of information and funding community organizations as possible ways to address human rights concerns in a country with historically closed borders. (Photo courtesy of Michael Breger)

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On Monday, while President Joe Biden hosted South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to discuss nuclear threats from North Korea, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) held a half-day conference, “Perspectives on North Korean Human Rights: Universal Values and Regional Security,” at Encina Hall. The conference brought together national security experts and international officials who criticized alleged human rights abuses in North Korea, from malnourishment of citizens to forced labor in prison camps, and called for the increased flow of information into the East Asian country.

This year marks the 10th anniversary since the United Nations Human Rights Council voted to create a Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea. In her opening speech, Shin Hwa-Lee, ambassador-at-large of the Republic of Korea on international cooperation for North Korean human rights, argued that the value of human rights is universal in nature and that numerous human rights abuses were taking place in North Korea.

Elbegdorj Tsakhia, former president of Mongolia, was also present at the event. He recounted his visits to North Korea, which he described as “frozen in time.”

Tsakhia detailed conditions in labor camps in North Korea, such as Camp 16 Hwasong and Camp 22 Hoeryong (which had an estimated 50,000 prisoners at its peak). He said that these camps trap prisoners and their families in a forced labor system that has been deemed by the U.N. as a crime against humanity. Those who break the law are subject to deplorable conditions, Tsakhia said, and “family members [are] actually brought to detention centers.”

Tsakhia also criticized North Korea’s security force, which he said uses surveillance and intimidation tactics to instill fear. “If you are loyal to the regime, you will get everything: health, education, promotional post, everything recognized. If you are not loyal to the regime, you will lose everything,” Tsakhia said. “I think every aspect of a human family in North Korea, in a communist country, is weaponized.”

Andrew Natsios, executive professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, described interviews he conducted with North Korean escapees for his book, “The Great North Korean Famine.” Natsios said that he observed a lack of knowledge surrounding famine among the North Korean people that he interviewed, which he said he believes may have led to many preventable losses.

According to Natsios, some of the North Korean citizenry’s observed lack of knowledge about famine can be attributed to the North Koren government, which he said is adamant about vetoing and rejecting U.N. resolutions to keep the sensitive issues of food and food insecurity hidden.

Natsios said that he found citizens who were visibly malnourished were not allowed to leave their homes, which he said was indicative of the North Korean government’s sensitivity to its image to the outside world. “If they didn’t care, why do they go to such degrees to suppress information about conditions of human rights … in terms of acute malnutrition and sustained malnutrition?”

According to Natsios, sustained acute malnutrition among the populace for over 30 years has manifested in “the average North Korean soldier [being] on average 10 cm shorter than a South Korean soldier [as I observed during] my first trip to South Korea.” Unless borders can open up, Natsios added, “the country will literally starve to death.”

Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, echoed the notion that North Korea’s closed territory and governance pose a challenge to bringing about changes in human rights.

“One thing that I think needs to happen is to try and change information understanding and consciousness among the people of North Korea and I realize this is the most closed regime in the world,” Diamond said. Diamond said that having a more porous border between China and North Korea would enable a flow of goods and ideas, which he said could help North Korean citizens become more informed.

Kiyoteru Tsutsui, director of the Japan Program at APARC also offered a condemnation of the North Korean regime’s approach to human rights. “If you go down the list of human rights in the Declaration of Human Rights, it’s hard to find a human right that is protected for regular North Korean citizens,” he said. He said that he is concerned that the issue of human rights in North Korea often received less coverage from human rights organizations than human rights abuses in other regions.

Frank Jannuzi, former deputy executive director for Amnesty International, said that the lack of coverage for human rights may be attributed to the lack of transparent data about human rights in North Korea, a country which has historically maintained tight borders. “Amnesty [International] has a very high industry standard when they publish and the lack of access to North Korea is the principal reason why Amnesty International has not written more,” he said.

The topic of denuclearization has also overshadowed efforts to address human rights concerns in discussions regarding North Korea, according to Tsutsui.

How can countries around the world address human rights abuses in North Korea?  “It is a human rights violation to repatriate anyone who escaped North Korea,” Jannuzi argued. Jannuzi said that countries outside of North Korea are aware that punishment awaits North Koreans who are repatriated and argued that countries should avoid sending back escapees.

“One thing that I think needs to happen is to try and change information understanding and consciousness among the people of North Korea,” Diamond added. Diamond said that people should think about radical and creative ways to get outside information into the insulated country. Additionally, he said that providing funds for and supporting community organizations led by exiled North Koreans could promote human rights in the country.

“The exile community of North Koreans and their organizations [are] extremely important,” Diamond said.

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Judge Kyle Duncan’s visit to Stanford and the aftermath, explained https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/05/judge-duncan-stanford-law-school-explained/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/05/judge-duncan-stanford-law-school-explained/#respond Thu, 06 Apr 2023 06:39:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1224896 Following Judge Duncan’s divisive appearance on campus in which he clashed with student protesters, University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne apologized to Duncan for their actions and SLS Dean Jenny Martinez announced Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach is on leave. In the weeks since Duncan’s March 9 speech, the events have garnered national media attention, scrutinizing actions taken by the judge, protesters and the University.

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Stanford Law School (SLS) became the target of public scrutiny after Judge Kyle Duncan’s visit to SLS on Thursday, March 9 was continuously interrupted and cut short due to the heated interactions between Duncan, the student protesters and the SLS Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach.

In a statement to the SLS community released on March 22 by SLS Dean Jenny Martinez, Martinez announced that all SLS students will take part in a mandatory half-day of training “on the topic of freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession.” Martinez also wrote that Dean Steinbach is on leave.

The University did not respond to The Daily’s request to comment on whether or not Steinbach’s leave is voluntary.

Martinez’s letter comes after commentators from various American media outlets have expressed their own views of the event and protest. Some argued that Steinbach should be fired, others condemned the protesters’ actions and still others called Duncan’s reaction to the protesters a “tantrum.”

Duncan’s appearance on campus and the subsequent protests have become a deeply controversial topic in the weeks since the event.

The timeline

In May 2022, the SLS Federalist Society (FedSoc) invited Duncan to give a speech on campus about “Guns, Covid, and Twitter,” according to FedSoc president Tim Rosenberger JD ’23.

Duncan is the judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, covering Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. The invitation sparked controversy and opposition by some students who put up flyers around the law school after learning of his arrival. The flyers postulated that Duncan has been a right-wing advocate for laws that, according to the flyers, would harm women, LGBTQ+ people and immigrants. Duncan served as lead trial and appellate counsel in a case that stopped transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice at state institutions.

FedSoc hoped to learn about “important areas of law that have particular connection to the 5th Circuit,” Rosenberger wrote in an email to The Daily. Duncan’s lecture on campus was scheduled for 12:45 p.m. in a classroom building of the law school on March 9, 2023. FedSoc also asked Steinbach to attend the event as an observer and de-escalator, if necessary, according to Steinbach’s Wall Street Journal opinion piece published after the fact.

SLS students in LGBTQ+ activist groups OutLaw and Identity and Rights Affirmers for Trans Equality (IRATE) said that they learned on Monday, March 6 that FedSoc was hosting Duncan for a lecture. They reached out to FedSoc that night to ask that FedSoc either cancel his event or move it to Zoom.

“While acknowledging your right to freely associate with speakers and gain mentorship from those you choose, we are writing to express specific concerns about the effect of bringing this person into our campus community… We respectfully request that you cancel your event or move it to Zoom,” the email, signed by 93 out of just under 600 SLS students, read.

FedSoc declined their request the next day, thanking the students “for taking the time to write and make [their] views known.” Rosenberger added in the email, “I gather from your note that you and others may find it more congenial not to engage with the Judge, but you are of course welcome to attend. If you would like to talk with me, before or after the event, I’m always grateful to learn from folks with strongly held perspectives.”

On Wednesday, March 8, OutLaw Retreat Chair Denni Arnold JD ’24 wrote to five SLS professors who had a class that conflicted with Duncan’s speech and the planned protest to ask that they move their classes to Zoom, let their students leave at 12:15 p.m. or “not penalize students who choose not to attend your class that day or who choose to leave class early.”

Steinbach organized an alternative gathering space for students, which took place before the protest and speech in the Robert Crown Building. Steinbach sent an email to SLS community members on Thursday morning to inform them of Judge Duncan’s appearance on campus and make them aware of this “safe space.”

Judge Kyle Duncan’s visit to Stanford and the aftermath, explained
SLS students hold a sign saying, “Identity and Rights Affirmers for Trans Equality.” (Photo: GRETA REICH/The Stanford Daily)

In the email obtained by The Daily, Steinbach wrote, “Today, my hope is for this community to… practice using the skillful communication and active listening tools we will need to understand, to advocate, and to be part of creating the inclusive, diverse, just, and fair world we aspire to build. As always, I welcome your thoughts, concerns, suggestions, and reflections.”

Connor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic critiqued the email in a newsletter published on March 15, writing that it is important for people in the law profession to hear views they are opposed to.

“Steinbach validates the falsehood that the mere presence of a federal judge at a law school bears on whether any student belongs there — as if his physical proximity to the campus pollutes its purity, or as if his speaking there, at the invitation of a group that represents a small minority of students, somehow signifies Stanford Law School’s endorsement of the jurist’s moral character, political values, or jurisprudence,” Freidersdorf wrote. “In reality, Stanford hosts many such events due to their obvious educational value: It is vital for lawyers to understand how judges think, perhaps wrongheaded judges most of all!”

By 12:30 p.m. on March 9, protesters gathered in the classroom building of the law school with posters condemning Duncan; some also had trans flags painted on some of their cheeks. Short speeches about how Duncan’s actions are harmful to many communities were made by protest leaders and the protesters shouted call and response chants, including, “When our trans neighbors are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”

Judge Kyle Duncan’s visit to Stanford and the aftermath, explained
Two SLS students hold a protest poster with a rainbow border and a trans flag drawn on it. (Photo: GRETA REICH/The Stanford Daily)

As Duncan’s speech commenced at its planned 12:45 p.m. start-time, the classroom filled with significantly more protesters than FedSoc members. Some sat in chairs with others lining the back and side walls of the room. According to lawyer and commentator David Lat in a substack post about the protest, Duncan “walked into the law school filming protesters on his phone.” When asked by Lat about if he tried to record, Duncan responded with, “Damn right I did. I wanted to make a record.”

 In his opening remarks to the crowd, Duncan addressed the protesters. “I’m not blind — I can see this outpouring of contempt,” he said to the room.

The rest of the country saw it too — short videos of the interaction between protesters and Duncan quickly circulated on social media, fomenting criticism of how each party acted. 

Some critiqued the protesters’ actions, like Ilana Redstone in The Washington Post, who wrote, “a more productive mode of discourse for the protesters would have been to ask him to clarify the thinking behind his positions and then challenge it.”

Duncan’s response to the protesters has also been criticized. For instance, Mark Joseph Stern called his reaction a “tantrum” in Slate, an online political magazine, writing that “Duncan dismissed many of the questions and responded to others with insults.”

Other commentators have been less concerned with the protesters and more so with Steinbach. About 30 minutes into his speech, Duncan stopped his remarks to ask for an administrator to help handle the commentary and heckling from the protesters. He eventually ceded the floor to Steinbach after she repeatedly told Duncan that she was the administrator present.

“The way that he was treating Dean Steinbach shows the way he treats people who are different from him, which is [people who are] not a cis-het white man. That is all we need to know,” protester Hayden Henderson JD ’24 said.

In a speech that has now amassed millions of views on social media, Steinbach stepped in to speak to both Duncan and the crowd. She said that she “wholeheartedly” welcomed Duncan to campus, but told him, “For many people here, your work has caused harm.” Twice Steinbach asked, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” seeming to question if he believed his speech was worth the reaction.

An article in Fox News said, “Steinbach gave a minutes-long and emotional speech at the event, accusing Duncan of causing ‘harm’ through his work on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.” The San Francisco Chronicle reported it slightly differently, writing that Steinbach “stood and acknowledged the legitimacy of the students’ anger toward Duncan before reiterating his right to speak. The judge, visibly flustered, decided to open the floor for questions.”

According to Lat’s post, after one student’s question about a “decision denying a pro se motion to use the petitioner’s preferred pronouns,” Duncan responded with, “Read the opinion. Next question.” He dismissed several of the protesters’ questions, asking one student, “Was I even on that panel?” when she cited a specific case of his where she said he took “away voting rights from Black folks in a southern state.”

Duncan soon thereafter stopped his lecture. In an interview with Rod Dreher on March 12, a conservative writer and editor who used to write for The American Conservative, Duncan told Dreher, “Try delivering a lecture under those circumstances. Basically, they wanted me to make a hostage video. No thanks. The whole thing was a staged public shaming, and after I realized that I refused to play along.”

The reaction

The notion that Steinbach “staged” her speech is popular among Duncan’s defenders, including FedSoc president Rosenberger, who wrote, “While perhaps well intentioned, delivering a pre-written speech haranguing the judged (sic) was inappropriate.”

Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and SLS Dean Jenny Martinez issued a formal apology to Duncan in a letter on Saturday, March 11, stating that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”

Martinez stood by Tessier-Lavigne’s statement in her March 22 letter to the SLS community, citing the statement as reason for why administrators “should not insert themselves into debate with their own criticism of the speaker’s views and the suggestion that the speaker reconsider whether what they plan to say is worth saying.” Her letter went on to state, “Steinbach is currently on leave. Generally speaking, the university does not comment publicly on pending personnel matters, and so I will not do so at this time.”

Steinbach herself published an opinion piece, entitled “Diversity and Free Speech Can Coexist at Stanford,” in the Wall Street Journal on March 23. She wrote that when Duncan asked for an administrator to step in, she was prepared to use the “de-escalation techniques” that she has been trained in.

“I pointed out that while free speech isn’t easy or comfortable, it’s necessary for democracy, and I was glad it was happening at our law school,” she wrote. “At one point during the event, I asked Judge Duncan, ‘Is the juice worth the squeeze?’ I was referring to the responsibility that comes with freedom of speech: to consider not only the benefit of our words but also the consequences.”

In his own opinion piece, entitled, “My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School,” published on March 17 in the Wall Street Journal, Duncan asked what Steinbach meant by her “cryptic” question. “What could that mean? While the students rhythmically snapped, Ms. Steinbach attempted to explain. My ‘work,’ she said, ‘has caused harm.’ It ‘feels abhorrent’ and ‘literally denies the humanity of people,’” he wrote.

Duncan also criticized the behavior of the students, standing by his name-calling of them — “It’s true I called them ‘appalling idiots,’ ‘bullies’ and ‘hypocrites.’ They are, and I won’t apologize for saying so” — and questioning their future professions. He wrote, “The protesters showed not the foggiest grasp of the basic concepts of legal discourse: That one must meet reason with reason, not power. That jeering contempt is the opposite of persuasion.”

Duncan’s assertion that the protesters are unfit for a profession in law is shared by Professor John Banzhaf of George Washington University, who is filing a complaint with the American Bar Association (ABA) against the student protesters, according to a letter he wrote to Martinez on March 20. The letter reads, “I feel that [the protesters’] actions in deliberately preventing a federal judge from speaking to law students who wanted to hear his views and perhaps question him about them reflects adversely on their character and fitness.”

Banzhaf’s complaint would ask the bar admission to delay or deny the student protesters bar admission, however, it is unlikely that this complaint will effectively accomplish Banzhaf’s stated objective, according to SLS Professor of Law Richard Ford. Ford wrote in an email to The Daily that “participating in a raucous protest, even of a judge, does not disqualify someone from practicing law. Sadly, in today’s America, the involvement of some federal judges and members of the House of Representatives tells us nothing about whether a claim is sensible. It’s easy to score a cheap political point by having a staff member write a letter demanding that the ABA ‘look into’ some scandal that’s in the news.”

In a separate email, Banzhaf wrote that SLS’s accreditation “is being challenged by two powerful committee chairs in the U.S. House of Representatives,” — Virginia Foxx and Burgess Owens — “who have requested that the American Bar Association consider revoking it over its much publicized ‘appalling treatment’ of a federal judge”

The stripping of the law school’s accreditation is also highly unlikely, according to Ford. “There are very specific accreditation standards for law schools and of course, Stanford Law School easily meets them all,” Ford wrote. “There is nothing in any accreditation standard that would require a school to punish students for a lawful assembly because it made a speaker uncomfortable — in fact, under the Leonard Law Stanford is severely constrained in how it may respond to any student expression.”

Many argue that other actions should be taken, including that the University fire Steinbach. The Stanford Review wrote in an article on Saturday, “If Stanford cares about free speech, it must fire any administrator who actively encourages these unruly actions against it.” On Twitter, they wrote, “Fire Tirien Steinbach.”

The Stanford Review’s opinion is shared by several conservative organizations, including Accuracy in Media, a non-profit conservative news media watchdog. On Thursday, March 16, a van sponsored by Accuracy in Media appeared on campus, driving around with the words, “Tirien Steinbach uses fascist tactics to bully others. Stanford, stand up for REAL inclusivity!” plastered on the sides. On the bottom was a link to a petition to fire Steinbach. It was seen again on Tuesday, March 22.

Judge Kyle Duncan’s visit to Stanford and the aftermath, explained
A van was seen driving around Stanford campus advocating for Steinbach’s termination from her role as DEI. (Photo: GRETA REICH/The Stanford Daily)

Many have come to Steinbach’s defense and say that they are upset with the University for the apology sent to Duncan. The American Constitution Society (ACS) Board — a progressive legal organization — sent a letter to Tessier-Lavigne and Martinez on Sunday admonishing them for the apology letter to Duncan.

“We write to express our frustration with the Stanford administration’s response to the student protest against Judge Kyle Duncan,” the letter reads. “We feel that the apology letter submitted to the judge has fueled a dishonest narrative being circulated by Judge Duncan and right-wing media, to the detriment of the Stanford Law School community and principles of free speech. The administration’s statement frames Judge Duncan as a victim, when in fact he himself made civil dialogue impossible.”

Some SLS students also backed Steinbach, protesting Martinez and the letter of apology on March 13 after her class by plastering posters over her white boards, which said, “We, the students in your constitutional law class, are sorry for exercising our 1st Amendment rights.” Protesters also lined the walls of the hallway as Martinez left her class, wearing masks that said “counter-speech is free speech,” according to Aaron Sibarium in an article for The Washington Free Beacon.

The University did not respond to The Daily’s request to comment on this protest or on the ACS letter.

These events have captured the attention of professors and higher educators around the country. Portland State University professor Jennifer Ruth, a member of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Committee A for academic freedom, wrote a blog post on Monday in Academe Blog, a website published by the AAUP. In the post, Ruth argued that “by seizing on and amplifying any story featuring left students protesting, libertarian-funded media outlets handed social conservatives the vehicle they intend to ride to the White House in 2024. We are under attack. We are the victims. The liberal elite have captured all our institutions — the media, education, corporations — so now we must use the power of the government to fight back.

Ruth also praised Steinbach’s speech, specifically referencing how Steinbach reminded the students that they did not need to be there and were free to leave. Steinbach “defended the humanity of the students while seeking to ensure the event succeeded in going forward. In doing so, she handled the situation with integrity and that the Stanford administration does not acknowledge this in their apology is deeply disappointing,” Ruth wrote.

Professors inside the University have also commented on the ramifications of these events and how they reflect on SLS. Ford wrote in an email to The Daily, “In an important sense, this student protest was not in reaction to Kyle Duncan’s speech at all. It was in protest of his actions as an attorney and a judge…I think it’s a mistake to look at their protest as directed at merely ‘unpopular ideas or opinions’. And because this political situation is unlikely to change soon, I don’t think this kind of political protest is likely to change either.”

A previous version of this article contained an unintentional copy error that seemed to imply in one paragraph that Jenny Martinez was on leave, not Tirien Steinbach. The Daily regrets this error.

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‘Democracy is the most pressing issue’ says Congressman Ted Lieu ’91 https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/16/democracy-is-the-most-pressing-issue-says-congressman-ted-lieu-91/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/16/democracy-is-the-most-pressing-issue-says-congressman-ted-lieu-91/#respond Fri, 17 Mar 2023 02:18:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1224363 In an event hosted at the Explore Energy House, U.S. Representative Ted Lieu cited democracy as a critical issue, expressed hopes for cooperation on environmental challenges and praised “bipartisan pushback” against AAPI hate crimes.

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Congressman Ted Lieu ’91, who represents District CA-36 in the U.S. House of Representatives, came to Stanford on Wednesday to discuss trends in Congress, from Asian American representation to environmental issues to challenges to democracy. 

The event was held at Junipero, the Explore Energy House, and was moderated by Solomon Kim ’24 and Brennan Lieu ’25, who is the congressman’s son. The talk was sponsored by the Explore Energy House, Stanford in Government (SiG), the Asian American Activities Center (A3C) and the Public Service and Civic Engagement House. 

The discussion began with remarks about the Asian American-Pacific Islander (AAPI) community and the rise of AAPI hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The congressman spoke about the history of racism against Asian Americans, citing the Chinese Exclusion Act and the recent espionage accusations leveled by right-wing outlets against Congresswoman Judy Chu. 

However, the congressman said he is optimistic about mitigating hate crimes against the AAPI community and reminded the audience of the bipartisan COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which he co-authored, that provided resources to state and federal governments to address hate crimes against Asian Americans.

“Asian Americans are all being thought of as foreigners and not being loyal to the United States,” he said. “The good news is folks have fought back. You have seen a number of demonstrations across America that rose up in response to hate crimes against Asian Americans. You have bipartisan pushback.” 

Climate change and environmental regulation

According to the congressman, Asian Americans and marginalized communities are also disproportionately affected by climate change. He said that island communities with large Asian American populations, such as Hawaii, are particularly affected by climate change, as coral reefs and miles of coastline are degrading. Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 to address this issue, he said.

“The way the Inflation Reduction Act was designed, part of it was to address environmental justice,” the congressman said. “[The Inflation Reduction Act] creates the world’s largest pot of money for climate change projects.”

The Inflation Reduction Act enacts various subsidies for clean technology, including electric vehicles and renewable energy systems. When asked about carbon taxes, the congressman said they might be another effective method to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“I would support pretty much anything to take carbon out,” the congressman said. “So I would support both [carbon taxes and green energy subsidies], though it is harder to impose a tax or a fee than it is to provide tax credits.”

The congressman said that the U.S. cannot solve the world’s climate crisis alone. The U.S. emits the second-most carbon dioxide, second to China; nevertheless, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases regularly disagree on a variety of issues, such as trade and national security. When asked about how countries with tense relationships, such as the U.S. and China, could work together on issues like climate change, the congressman responded that cooperation might be possible.

“The environment is one of those areas where I think you can get cooperation between both countries,” he said.

Democracy and civic engagement

Along with addressing the climate crisis, the congressman said that he believes the United States needs to prioritize upholding democratic processes.

“Making sure that we still have a democracy is the most pressing issue,” he said. “I don’t fear Donald Trump winning, I fear him losing because he could do the same thing again, and try to get his supporters to go take the streets.”

The congressman said that, regardless of recent challenges to democratic processes, he is optimistic for the future, even if he believes progress may not be linear.

“Rosa Parks would not have been surprised by President Donald Trump; she experienced racism throughout her life,” the congressman said. “But she never could have imagined a President Barack Obama winning the presidency, twice. So, it’s still good to think about how far America has come even though every now and then we take some steps backwards.”

After the congressman’s remarks, the moderators gave the audience a chance to ask questions, opening the floor for direct conversation. Dylan Vergara ’26, who attended the event, says that the talk broadened his knowledge of specific policy issues and foreign affairs. 

“I really enjoyed the event,” Vergara said. “As a Southern California resident and also an Asian American, Ted Lieu represents the values I see within my community, so I came to hear from him directly and ask questions. I think that he delivered the talk I wanted to see with our Congressman.”

Isaac Nehring ’26, another audience member, said the congressman provided great insight into specific issues that he had not delved into before. 

“It was a good way for students to interact with a public servant,” Nehring said. “I’m interested in both the environmental side and the more general approach to what’s happening in the federal government from the real-time perspective.”

Brennan, a resident of the Explore Energy House, provided his perspective on hosting and moderating this event.

“The amount of people who showed up here who were passionate with questions demonstrates how important it is for us to transition from fossil fuels,” Brennan said. “It shows that we have knowledge here at Stanford about sustainability. And I think the Energy House being here is a great example of that.”

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Law School activists protest Judge Kyle Duncan’s visit to campus https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/11/law-school-activists-protest-judge-kyle-duncans-visit-to-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/11/law-school-activists-protest-judge-kyle-duncans-visit-to-campus/#respond Sun, 12 Mar 2023 01:33:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1223941 Members of SLS organizations protested against Duncan at his Thursday talk at the Law School, claiming that “he has repeatedly and proudly threatened healthcare and basic rights for marginalized communities.” The protest drew the criticism of at least one free speech civil rights group and according to SLS Dean Jenny Martinez, “was not aligned with [SLS’s] institutional commitment to freedom of speech.”

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Judge Kyle Duncan’s visit to the Stanford Law School (SLS) Thursday was interrupted by questions and booing from audience members who protested the Federalist Society’s (FedSoc) decision to bring Duncan to campus.

The protesters’ actions were condemned in an SLS statement. In an email to SLS obtained by The Daily from SLS Dean Jenny Martinez, Martinez wrote about the event, “The way this event unfolded was not aligned with our institutional commitment to freedom of speech. The school is reviewing what transpired and will work to ensure protocols are in place so that disruptions of this nature do not occur again, and is committed to the conduct of events on terms that are consistent with the disruption policy and the principles of free speech and critical inquiry they support.”

FedSoc, a conservative and libertarian law student group, invited Duncan — a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, covering Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana — for a discussion on “Guns, Covid and Twitter.” 

According to fliers put up across campus by activists citing the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights — the U.S.’s oldest civil rights coalition — as a judge and lawyer, Duncan has been a right-wing advocate for laws that would harm women, immigrants and LGBTQ+ people. The fliers cite examples of his attempts to deny same-sex couples adoption rights and how he served as lead trial and appellate counsel in a case that stopped transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice at state institutions.

A man talking in front of a red banner.
Judge Kyle Duncan spoke to protesters during his event with the Stanford federalist society titled “Guns, Covid, and Twitter” on Thursday. (Photo: BRAD YAC-DIAZ/The Stanford Daily)

Duncan did not respond to The Daily’s request for comment.

Members of law school student coalition Identity and Rights Affirmers for Trans Equality (IRATE) and organization Outlaw led the protest after FedSoc denied their request for Duncan’s speech to be canceled or moved to Zoom. The request was signed by over 90 law school students, according to emails obtained by The Daily.

“While acknowledging your right to freely associate with speakers and gain mentorship from those you choose, we are writing to express specific concerns about the effect of bringing this person into our campus community,” the email request read. “As a practitioner and a judge, he has repeatedly and proudly threatened healthcare and basic rights for marginalized communities.”

FedSoc did not respond to The Daily’s request for comment.

The protest took place both before and during the lecture in the entryway of the classroom building and inside the lecture hall, which was made up mostly of IRATE and Outlaw members. Before the speech, protesters shouted call and response chants including “When our trans neighbors are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”

Denni Arnold JD ’24, a lead organizer of the protest and member of IRATE, and other protesters held a “safe space” for LGBTQ+ students before the lecture where they made posters and painted trans flags on their cheeks. The posters were brought into the lecture hall and held up in Duncan’s eyeline during his talk.

Law School activists protest Judge Kyle Duncan’s visit to campus
Posters made by SLS student protesters were brought into Judge Duncan’s lecture. (Photo: GRETA REICH/The Stanford Daily)

In his opening remarks, Duncan addressed these posters and chants. “I’m not blind — I can see this outpouring of contempt,” Duncan said. With audience interruptions continuing throughout the speech, he later said “In this school, the inmates have gotten control of the asylum.”

Not long after this comment, and less than 30 minutes into the speech as a whole, Duncan asked, “Do you think this is an appropriate way to receive a guest?” 

After requesting that an administrator be brought out, Duncan eventually ceded the floor to SLS Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Steinbach who had to repeatedly tell Duncan that she was, in fact, the administrator.

“For many people here, your work has caused harm,” Steinbach said to Duncan. She asked him twice, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” appearing to question whether Duncan believed his messages were worth this reaction. The protesters snapped their fingers in approval.

activists sit in the room
Student activists protest Judge Kyle Duncan’s appearance on campus after being invited by SLS members of the Federalist Society. (Photo: BRAD YAC-DIAZ/The Stanford Daily)

Not everyone appreciated her comments though. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) — a non-profit civil rights group that aims to protect free speech at U.S. colleges and universities — sent a letter sent to Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne on Friday condemning some of the protesters’ and SLS administrator’s actions. They expressed their “deep concern regarding Steinbach’s temporary removal of Duncan from the podium — against his wishes — to offer commentary appearing to promote censorship. Dean Steinbach pinballs between praising free speech, accusing Judge Duncan of ‘harm,’ and asking him if what he has to say is important enough to justify upsetting students.”

The Daily has reached out to Steinbach for comment.

The protesters, however, say they saw Duncan and Steinbach’s interaction differently, taking objection to the way Duncan spoke to the Dean.

“The way that he was treating Dean Steinbach shows the way he treats people who are different from him, which is [people who are not] not a cis-het white man. That is all we need to know,” protester Hayden Henderson JD ’24 said, saying that Duncan was ignoring Steinbach when she spoke to him. 

FIRE said in their letter that, “When hecklers disrupt planned speeches on a university campus, they not only infringe a speaker’s right to deliver their message, but also the rights of anyone in the Stanford community who wishes to receive that message.” 

They added that “not all protest during a speech is sufficiently disruptive” but due to the level of disruption at this event, “Stanford must use all the resources at its disposal to prevent this pernicious form of mob censorship.”

Tessier-Lavigne has not made a public comment, but Martinez wrote in her email, “Tempers flared along multiple dimensions. In such situations, an optimal outcome involves de-escalation that allows the speaker to proceed and for counter-speech to occur in an alternative location or in ways that are non-disruptive. However well-intentioned, attempts at managing the room in this instance went awry.”

The protesters’ disruptive actions were specifically inspired by the fact that Duncan was brought “into the classroom building where our students have to go every day to be able to get this degree and participate in this community,” Arnold said. 

“It’s a sign of immense disrespect for them to invite him into this inner sanctum when he has not only expressed views but has actively, as a lawyer and as a judge, worked to further a homophobic and transphobic agenda,” Arnold said.

Other protesters echoed Arnold’s concern about having Duncan on campus. 

Antar Thiam JD ’25 agreed with Arnold’s points and said, “I’m here for the students who feel marginalized by this and made to feel unsafe by their classmates who are emboldening narratives of hate and prejudice.” 

A previous version of this article included an editing-introduced copy error that resulted in a minor misquote of Kyle Duncan. The Daily regrets this error.

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President Niinistö of Finland visits Stanford, calls for trans-atlantic security cooperation https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/09/president-niinisto-of-finland-visits-stanford-calls-for-transatlantic-security-cooperation/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/09/president-niinisto-of-finland-visits-stanford-calls-for-transatlantic-security-cooperation/#respond Thu, 09 Mar 2023 08:58:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1223679 As part of a five-day trip to the United States, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and his delegation visited Stanford and discussed matters of national security and strategic cooperation with Stanford scholars from the Freeman Spogli Institute and Hoover Institution.

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The Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) hosted President Sauli Niinistö of Finland along with a business delegation and group of panelists on Tuesday to discuss Finland’s recent bid for NATO membership; geopolitical tensions among the U.S., China and Russia; and relations between Finland and Russia. Niinistö called for trans-atlantic security cooperation amidst neighboring Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.

The event took place in the Vidalakis Dining Hall and was moderated by Michael McFaul ’86 M.A. ’86, former ambassador to Russia and director of Stanford’s FSI.

The discussion began with remarks by Niinistö, who spoke of the war effort in Ukraine and drew parallels between the ongoing resistance by Ukraine to the Russian invasion and Finland’s war against the USSR over 80 years ago. The ‘Winter War’ of 1939-1940 saw Finland’s much smaller army able to partially hold back the much larger Soviet army.

Niinistö also called for public-private cooperation in national security matters, citing his visits to Microsoft and Amazon offices in Seattle on Monday.

He concluded his opening remarks by calling for security cooperation between and among Europe and the U.S. “Undoubtedly, Europe needs the U.S.A.,” he said. “But the U.S.A. also needs Europe.”

Niinistö has been in office since 2012, and his visit to Stanford came as part of his five-day itinerary in the U.S., which included visiting destinations like the National Nordic Museum in Seattle; The Bifrost Summit, an event for Nordic entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley; as well as meetings with U.S. senators and politicians in D.C.

The event also included various panelists such as Anna Grzymala-Busse, director of The Europe Center, Oriana Skylar Mastro, a center fellow at the FSI, H.R. McMaster, former lieutenant general and fellow at the Hoover Institution, Steve Pifer, former ambassador to Ukraine and a current affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation and The Europe Center, Alex Stamos, director of The Stanford Internet Observatory and Kathryn Stoner, the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Risto Siilasmaa, venture capitalist and Chairman of the Technology Advisory Board of the Finnish Government, was also a panelist.

Ari Chasnoff, director of communications for FSI, said that the purpose of discussions such as the panel hosting Niinistö is to bring world leaders and Stanford scholars together to discuss important issues together and with students.

“We offer them a dedicated audience, many of whom are future leaders,” he said. “We see discussions like this as an opportunity for them to learn from us and for us to learn from them.”

Pifer said that he appreciated the president’s openness. “A lot of leaders, when they do this, they want to come in and give a long speech, because they can control their speech, but they can’t control their questions,” Pifer said. “He seemed wide open to that though.”

The panelists began the event by discussing and contextualizing Finland’s defense and security strategies.

“What Finland brings … is clarity,” McMaster said. “You [Niinistö] have given the most succinct and clear description of Russian new generation warfare … in terms of Russia’s sustained effort to subvert the free world.”

Finland's president walking with Michael McFaul
(Courtesy of Rod Searcey and FSI)

Ukraine and Russia

Pifer, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in the late ’90s, said that at the time, he observed that most Ukrainians were ambivalent or even positively disposed towards Russia. He said that he noticed this disposition change, however, after the invasion of Crimea in 2014.

“I recall going to Ukraine in 2014, after Russia illegally annexed Crimea and were involved in fighting in the Donbass, and my friend said, ‘Vladimir Putin has succeeded where centuries of Ukrainian nationalism has failed. He has created a Ukrainian national identity,’” Pifer said.

During the discussion, Kathryn Stoner, who has written numerous books and articles about Russia, pointed to Russia’s autocratic nature. “Should Putin die tomorrow, fall off a balcony, as some Russian leaders tend to do, especially very rich Russians these days, would [Russia] have an even more intense autocracy?” she asked. “I think that is possible, and even likely.”

Stoner spoke of Putin’s relationship with Niinistö, citing the fact that the two leaders have spoken to each other over 40 times in the past decade.

Niinistö said that he is concerned about peace and security both in Europe and on the Finnish Eastern border.

“After the Cold War … [European citizens] started to think that peace is forever. That we don’t have to worry about European defense,” he said. “We, [Finland] have never forgotten about our Eastern border. But, this wasn’t an obstacle in having a relationship with Russia.”

Niinistö said that he has worked to establish an understanding relationship with Putin, without sacrificing Finnish values.

The Finnish government has elected to begin the NATO ascension protocol in July 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine. It was additionally, in part, due to Putin’s official demand in late 2021 that NATO does not admit new members.

In an interview with The Daily, Pifer said that Niinistö’s insistence on Finland’s joining NATO following Putin’s demands strengthened the integrity of the Finnish government. He said that he believes this integrity will make Finland a strong military ally for the U.S. and NATO.

When asked if he sees good relations with Russia ever commencing, considering his relationship with Putin, Niinistö said, “I’m sure not in my time in office.”

“[Putin] has always been disappointed by the fact that the West betrayed Russia in the ’90s,” he said. “The feeling of being betrayed, it developed into frustration and then even into hatred.”

NATO and Great Power Competition

Panelists also discussed the Great Power Competition, referring to geopolitical competition among the U.S., China and Russia. Finland’s application to join the security bloc NATO, of which the U.S. is a founding member, further implicates the nation in tensions and relations among the triad of countries.

Mastro said that Russia and China have a “unidirectional” relationship that has been “very closely aligned, but for the specific purpose of helping China challenge the United States in Asia.”

She said that China’s relative lack of support for Russia in Ukraine, “does not necessarily mean that Russia would not offer greater aid to China in the event of a conflict in East Asia.”

When discussing the role that China could play in ending the war in Ukraine, Mastro said, “they’ll play that mediation role, but you better believe they’re not doing it for free … What is the cost that the United States will have to pay in terms of security in Asia to get China on board to help end this war?”

“The Chinese view is that they can continue to support Russia and pay no cost to their relationship with their European partners,” she said. “China really values their relationship with European countries. If that was not the case, we’d see much less Chinese support for Russia.”

Elbegdorj Tsakhia, former president of Mongolia and current visiting fellow in the FSI, attended the discussion and spoke with The Daily about Mongolia’s role in the Great Power Competition, given that the country is nestled between Russia and China.

“We [the free world] are always one step behind. It is so important that we understand China soon,” he said.

Tsakhia also expressed his excitement for the event, noting that he “was really happy that [Niinistö] agreed to come to this. It shows his interest in communicating and understanding more about the wider world.”

Finland’s bid to join NATO comes less than two years after former President Trump called on NATO to increase its involvement in the Middle East in the aftermath of the assassination of a top Iranian military commander.

In response to a student’s question concerning NATO’s involvement in the Middle East, McMaster connected the issue to the Great Power Competition and said that he believes that the U.S. and NATO should take a more engaged role in the region. He warned that a lack of engagement could leave a power vacuum that Russia may occupy and that the future may hold a “series of cascading crises” involving “the authoritarian regimes that we are concerned about”, including China, Russia and Iran.

“This is why Russia is able to play the role of arsonist and fireman in Syria,” he said. “We tend to look at these conflicts and competitions as separate to one another, but they really are interconnected.”

Mastro cautioned that the U.S. and NATO have limited resources and suggested that they instead prioritize security interests in East Asia.

Technology and national security

The panelist’s conversation also touched on the influence of developing technologies on national security.

Stamos, who is a member of NATO Cybersecurity Advisory Board in addition to his capacities here at Stanford, described his concerns with cybersecurity in NATO. “NATO has no idea what it’s doing around cybersecurity … NATO is a non-entity from a cybersecurity perspective,” he said.

Stamos said that he believes that Ukraine is doing exceptionally well on the cybersecurity front in their war against Russia because Ukraine has built “immunity” through more than a decade of peacetime cybersecurity attacks, and its technological infrastructure is less advanced, so it is inherently less exposed. He contrasted this with the U.S., who he said he believes would suffer in a war against Russia or China, particularly due to a lack of public-private partnerships.

“The private sector sees themselves as a component of the war fighting and defensive capabilities of Ukraine. That is not true in the West,” he said. “[Our companies] didn’t really understand that they are political players, that they are part of the defense of the general West and their specific countries.”

Stamos said that he believes Finland’s ascension into NATO can help fix this issue, given Finland’s strengths in public-private cooperation and cybersecurity. Siilasmaa highlighted the need for governments to adopt smart regulation and utilization when it comes to technological developments.

“In order to do smart regulation, we need tech understanding, so we need to send our politicians back to school,” he said.

The discussion also allowed for audience engagement. Many attendees, such as Pekka Lundmark, the current CEO of Nokia and students in attendance were able to ask Niinistö and the panelists questions.

Hasan Ahmad ’25, who attended the discussion, said that he appreciated the Finnish president’s transparency.

“I was in Helsinki last November. I learned that when the war in Ukraine started, many Finns traveled to the battlefield because of their fierce historical opposition to Russia,” he said. “I was pleased that the President did not avoid questions and clearly addressed issues such as energy independence and Finland’s military contribution to Ukraine.”

Grzymala-Busse said in an interview with The Daily that experiences like this panel discussion can be foundational to students.

“More often than not, [these discussions] expose students and academics to perspectives of real politicians,” she said. “The opportunity to learn from their real-life experiences, their different ideological and geopolitical perspectives, is critical to gaining a much more sophisticated and learned perspective.”

Ahmad also said that he enjoyed the discussion and the fact that it brought scholars, students and practitioners of international security in one place. “This was also an excellent opportunity for students like me to meet people like H.R. McMaster and Michael McFaul, and have frank conversations with them.”

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Early 20th century pogroms in Ukraine impacted the Holocaust, history scholar says https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/07/early-20th-century-pogroms-in-ukraine-impacted-the-holocaust-history-scholar-says/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/07/early-20th-century-pogroms-in-ukraine-impacted-the-holocaust-history-scholar-says/#respond Tue, 07 Mar 2023 08:10:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1223463 At a Monday event entitled, “Ukraine In Civil War And Famine, 1918-1921”, history scholars discussed the pogroms of 1918-1921 in Ukraine and their impact on the Holocaust.

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Jeffrey Veidlinger — the Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan — discussed the pogroms of 1918-1921 that occurred in Ukraine after the 1917 Russian Revolution and their impact on the Holocaust at a Monday lecture. The event, entitled “Ukraine in Civil War and Famine, 1918-1921,” was co-sponsored by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, the Stanford Department of History and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies. 

Pogroms are an organized massacre of a specific ethnic group, but historically refers to violent attacks on a Jewish population by a non-Jewish population. The word “pogrom” is a Russian word that means “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently” according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In the pogroms of 1918-1921, Jewish people living in Ukraine were targeted. 

Hoover Institution research fellow and lecturer Bertrand Patenaude said that the event is part of a Hoover Institution series called “Bread + Medicine: Saving Lives in a Time of Famine.” The series is meant to mark the centennial of the Soviet famine of 1921 and the 1921-1923 American relief mission.

Patenaude said that the events in the series “don’t always” directly relate to the famine, but that they have “something to do with it.” He added that the Hoover Institution Library and Archives has set up an online exhibition and a physical exhibit at Hoover Tower.

Herbert Hoover, Class of 1895, namesake of the institution and former president of the U.S., was chairman of the American Relief Administration (ARA), which organized famine-relief efforts in Soviet Russia during the famine of 1921. The Hoover Tower exhibition features photo and paper documentation of the ARA’s efforts during the famine.

Veidlinger covered the basic history of pogroms during his lecture and showed two video interviews with survivors of two of the pogroms that occurred in Ukraine. He went on to detail how his research on Yiddish linguistics helped inspire him to write about the pogroms and tell the story of them in his book, “In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust.”

“[‘In the Midst of Civilized Europe’ is] chiefly about the pogroms that were perpetrated against the Jews in Ukraine between 1918-1921 during the Revolutionary era and the wars in the region,” Veidlinger said. “The book makes an argument that there’s a connection between that violence and the violence that was perpetrated in 1941 against Jews during the Holocaust.”

Ukraine was in a civil war in 1917-1921, with members of the Soviet Red Army and the Russian White Army, Ukrainian nationalists and anarchists, German forces and Second Polish Republic Forces fighting for control. Most of the groups believed that Jewish people were aligning with their enemies, according to Veidlinger.

Antisemitic propaganda efforts took place across Ukraine, many of which were conducted by the White Army. The efforts focused on grouping Jewish people with Bolsheviks — the faction founded by Vladmir Lenin that split with the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party — which led many people to participate in the pogroms as a way to persecute Jewish people, whom they believed were aligned with Bolsheviks because of the propaganda. 

“This was a common technique that the White Army and Ukrainian National Army, as well as the Polish army for that matter, used,” Veidlinger explained. The Bolsheviks had been promising the peasants land, bread and peace and it was enticing to many peasants in 1919-1920. “So the way that the old elites could turn the peasants against the Bolsheviks was by accusing the Bolsheviks of being Jews and saying to the peasants, you know, these aren’t people really fighting for your behalf. They’re actually Jews in disguise and playing on old anti-Jewish stereotypes.”

Veidlinger said that the effects of propaganda like Judeo-Bolshevism — the anticommunist and antisemitic propaganda that claimed that Jewish people were responsible for the Russian Revolution — reached other parts of the world, like the U.S.

“And I think European-wide and in America as well, there was a fear of Bolshevism in 1919-1920 that was so powerful” said Veidlinger. He explained that this fear was really strong among the elites in the property classes around the world, so “in the perception of many Europeans, this Jewish minority people who are the underclass who have suddenly taken power and now, you know, killing Uncle Nicky [Tsar Nicholas II].”

Veidlinger added that in the course of his research, he identified two different extremes of pogroms that existed at the time: one that was conducted by the Ukrainian military, and another that was conducted by neighboring peasants who were typically between the ages of 16 and 18. 

“In total, we have the names of about 40,000 people who were killed and the Soviets who took over in 1921 conducted a statistical analysis and came to the conclusion that these names include about a third of the total victims, which is how we get to the figure 100,000 for the total number of Jewish victims killed during the violence,” Veidlinger said. 

Norman Naimark, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, praised Veidlinger’s book for its extensive documentation of the pogroms of Ukraine. Naimark said that while he disagreed about the extent to which the pogroms can be viewed in the context of the development of the Holocaust, he still enjoyed the book. 

“I mean, most of the book is really describing the pogroms and what happens during them and he’s got all this incredible testimony and documents that he’s found and that he’s using. It’s really impressive,” Naimark said. 

Veidlinger compared the ongoing Ukrainian-Russian conflict to the events he learned about while researching the pogroms. 

“I think, once again, there is a Ukrainian nation that’s being established with pluralistic and democratic goals that is being threatened by invasion from outside,” Veidlinger said, adding that the 1918 Ukrainian National Republic “had similar ideals but was destroyed because of invasion from the outside.”

He said that Ukraine has experienced multiple revolutions since its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

“All of those revolutions have been in the direction of furthering democracy and furthering pluralism,” Veidlinger said. “So to make a connection, like Putin does, between the current Ukraine and fascist movements is completely disingenuous.”

This article has been updated to include more detailed reporting of the panelists’ words. The Daily regrets this error.

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Despite controversy, no protests materialize for Matt Walsh’s visit https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/03/despite-controversy-no-protests-materialize-for-matt-walshs-visit/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/03/despite-controversy-no-protests-materialize-for-matt-walshs-visit/#respond Fri, 03 Mar 2023 08:10:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1223028 Right-wing political commentator Matt Walsh visited Stanford Wednesday to discuss his new documentary “What is A Woman?” No protests materialized; however, student groups teamed up to host community care events in response.

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Right-wing political commentator Matt Walsh spoke at an event co-organized by the Stanford College Republicans (SCR) and Young America’s Foundation (YAF) at Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Wednesday night, urging the audience to reject “insane and poisonous gender ideology.”

The event came the day after Walsh joined Mississippi governor Tate Reeves on Tuesday in signing a bill that restricts youth transition-related health care. Currently, Walsh is promoting his controversial 2022 documentary titled “What Is A Woman?” The film has been criticized for its transphobic content and opposition to LGBTQ+ education in schools.

No protests materialized during the event. Instead, Walsh’s speech was countered by Community Care events hosted by several student groups on campus, including Queer Student Resources (QSR), the Women’s Community Center (WCC) and Students for the Liberation of All Peoples (SLAP).

Speaking to a crowd of around 600 people, including individuals who are not Stanford students or affiliates, Walsh said, “I’m not concerned about your feelings, I’m concerned about the truth. You are either a man or a woman. You don’t get to choose which category you belong to.”

In a Feb. 13 tweet promoting the event, SCR wrote, “With transgender ideology running rampant at Stanford, it is fitting that we ensure Stanford students can answer this fundamental question before they graduate: What is a Woman?”

The hour-long event began with an introduction of Walsh’s film and his beliefs about “binary” gender. The focus of the talk then shifted to audience questions. Topics included parenting, political culture and queer identity.

In an unprompted response to the Feb. 21 op-ed in The Daily criticizing Walsh as “a dangerous presence on campus” for his transphobic views, Walsh said during his speech, “I just want to state at the start that I am sorry… that you think you can get your way with that kind of emotional manipulation.”

Guilherme Souza ’26, who attended the event, said that he disagreed with much of Walsh’s talk, but that he found it interesting to hear from other perspectives. “While it didn’t change my mind, it does make me understand better how other people feel about the stuff,” Souza said.

Souza said that he found the questions posed to Walsh were too easy to answer, with only one student’s question challenging Walsh’s beliefs. “It’s better for you to have questions that actually lead to productive debates rather than just a bunch of ‘yes men’ agreeing with what he says,” he said after the event.

In an email to The Daily prior to the event, Seamus Callaghan, a second-year Ph.D. student at the Doerr School of Sustainability and president of SCR, wrote, “Tonight, we expect some protests of the event.” There were no protests organized outside of the event.

Alternative events were organized by the WCC, QSR and SLAP. Rather than host a protest, SLAP said in a statement to The Daily that the organizers of these events “specifically made the decision to let something more positive stem from this situation.”

The alternative events took place at the same time as Walsh’s lecture and one included speeches by trans authors and artists.

At White Plaza hours prior to the event, SCR members including Callaghan and SCR vice president Stephen Sill ’23 hung up a banner and posted flyers on lampposts. Members of SLAP simultaneously tabled to promote their events.

Other students walked around removing SCR’s flyers.

“I don’t want people to have to walk around and look at these flyers,” first year physics Ph.D. student Erin Fleck said. “It must be really shitty to walk around a place that you’re supposed to feel safe and just see a bunch of signs everywhere attacking your identity and who you are.”

Fleck, joined by Zachary Mauri, first-year Ph.D. student in Materials Science and Engineering, said they were walking to the Stanford Bookstore when they saw SCR members taping the yellow posters up around White Plaza. The two began to remove them.

After seeing flyers around campus and ads on YouTube, Fleck said she felt “really annoyed” and that she couldn’t “escape this thing.”

“That made me really angry because it’s obviously a hate campaign. It’s not trying to produce conversation… It’s just hating a certain class of people because they’re transgender or gender non-conforming or anything like that,” said Fleck.

Fleck and Mauri were approached by Callaghan and Sills while taking down the flyers and were asked why they were removing them. Callaghan and Sills called the act of removing the flyers “fascism.”

“He’s allowed to put them up. But I’m also very allowed to remove them,” Mauri said. “I know that I can remove flyers faster than they can put them up. And also, there’s no amount that they can print that I can’t remove.”

Callaghan said that “SCR is a very controversial group” and faces “political intolerance” from some “radical voices.”  SCR publicized their banners being removed and the event being removed from Eventbrite, tweeting on Feb. 17 that “Leftists at Stanford hate the fact that Walsh will be slaughtering the sacred cow of gender ideology on Wednesday, but there’s nothing they can do to stop it.”

On Feb. 24, SCR organizers learned that Eventbrite unpublished the event from its platform as it violated Eventbrite’s Terms of Service due to promoting “hate, violence, or harassment towards others.” The communication from Eventbrite Trust and Safety was confirmed by Senior Director of Student Engagement Snehal Naik in an email to The Daily.

Fleck said that there is “a slippery slope” when it comes to limiting who can speak on a college campus because she said she believes in “being able to express ideas.” Still, she said she believed that the Walsh event crossed a line.

“You can draw a line when it stops being political and it just becomes attacking people based on their identities and saying they shouldn’t exist,” Fleck said. “It’s not providing any kind of discourse or discussion or anything productive towards figuring out issues. It’s just hate.”

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‘Be your own rockstar’: Entrepreneurs and influencers explore social tech https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/28/be-your-own-rockstar-entrepreneurs-and-influencers-explore-social-tech/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/28/be-your-own-rockstar-entrepreneurs-and-influencers-explore-social-tech/#respond Wed, 01 Mar 2023 05:09:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1222869 Entrepreneurs and innovators gathered at Stanford on Feb. 23 for APARC’s conference on social tech futures. Keynote speaker YOSHIKI, leader of rock bands The Last Rockstars and X Japan, encouraged members of the Stanford community to pursue their dreams and make a positive impact.

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On Thursday, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) inaugurated the “Asia in 2030, APARC@40” conference series to commemorate the Center’s 40th anniversary and explore the diverse ways that Asia has transformed and continues to transform over the years.

“The Future of Social Tech: Nurturing Skills and Markets for Social Impact Innovation” is the first installment of a six-part academic convention spanning both the winter and spring quarters hosted by the Stanford Japan Program. The one-day conference brought together entrepreneurs, investors and other digital influencers to discuss social impact through the lenses of education, government and environment. The event concluded with a keynote address by YOSHIKI, who is the leader of rock bands The Last Rockstars and X Japan and whose musical career of 40 years has earned him a reputation as an innovator in Japan’s entertainment industry.

In his opening remarks at the conference, professor Kiyoteru Tsutsui, director of the Japan Program and deputy director for APARC, said that the event marks the first major in-person conference for the Japan Program since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Need” for Nature

A segment of the conference was dedicated to discussing the future of Japan’s environment and large-scale investments in nature. Gretchen Daily, co-founder and faculty director of the Natural Capital Project, spoke of connecting local stewardship of the ecosystems with investors. According to Daily, by integrating valuations of nature into decision-making, such as through land zoning for the provision of the flow of benefits, there are improvements to ecosystems on both national and local levels. These improvements include water resource management, biodiversity and sandstorm control.

“We know, in cities, that there is a tremendous need for nature,” said Daily. She added that this “need” is reinforced by studies that reflect the “many pathways connecting nature experiences causally to the benefits of human health, mentally and physically.”

STEAM and Innovation

Another panel at the conference focused on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics), an educational framework integrating art with STEM. The panel was led by Rie Kijima M.A. ’03, Ph.D. ’13, professor of education at the University of Toronto and co-founder of SKY Labo, and Sachiko Nakajima, CEO of setAM, Inc. and director of the STEAM Sports Laboratory. Nakajima and Kijima both work on STEAM education initiatives in Japan and called for interdisciplinary education to be made accessible for youth of all backgrounds.

“In our increasingly challenging, complex world, we need learners who have the courage, audacity, motivation and self-belief that they can be a catalyst of social change,” says Kijima.

According to Kijima, her experiences with STEAM learning from the SKY Labo program demonstrated to her how “empathy can be cultivated and supported in learning, providing learners with an opportunity to reflect, understand and become empathetic listeners.”

“You might not necessarily agree 100% with the person who’s sitting next to you all the time and that’s impossible because we all have different views,” Kijima said. “But we can provide an opportunity for these students… to be at least empathetic towards each other.”

According to Kijima, SKY Labo proposes students to innovate and think outside of the box. “It’s okay that you’re trying to bring out an idea that no one else is thinking about,” Kijima said. She added that the initiative promotes a self-starter mindset that encourages participants “to have a bias towards action. If you have an idea, make it into something that’s actionable.”

According to Nakajima, a focus on innovation should also extend to educators. “Active learning for children should be also done for teachers, I think. Teachers should experience active project-based learning or experience new things in a safety zone,” Nakajima said.

Art and Perseverance

YOSHIKI, a renowned Japanese composer, producer and rock star, spoke at the event’s keynote address. YOSHIKI is known for shaping the visual kei rock genre, which is characterized by heavy glam makeup and androgynous aesthetics. As a musician and artist, he discussed the future of the entertainment industry and his experiences engaging with both America and Japan.

According to YOSHIKI, his father’s early passing was a turning point in his life that motivated him to persist in the face of difficulty. He said that artistic exploration in other disciplines, such as designing kimonos and making wine, helps him stay motivated.

When asked what message he would like to share with Stanford students, he encouraged them to “be your own rockstar.”

“The hero is within you,” YOSHIKI said. He said that, whether he is composing, competing or experiencing a difficult time, he reminds himself of the question, “Who are you fighting?”

“If you believe in yourself, you can conquer anything,” the musician added. “It’s never too late to start anything.”

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‘Utopia for Whom?’: Timnit Gebru on the dangers of Artificial General Intelligence https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/15/utopia-for-whom-timnit-gebru-on-the-dangers-of-artificial-general-intelligence/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/15/utopia-for-whom-timnit-gebru-on-the-dangers-of-artificial-general-intelligence/#respond Thu, 16 Feb 2023 07:57:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1221607 At the 2023 Symbolic Systems Distinguished Speaker Lecture, Timnit Gebru ’08 M.A. ’10 Ph.D. ’17 spoke on the dangers of artificial intelligence.

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Timnit Gebru ’08 M.A. ’10 Ph.D. ’17, a leader of the movement for diversity in tech and artificial intelligence, spoke about the dangers of AI at a Symbolic Systems department-sponsored event on Wednesday night. Gebru is the Founder and Executive Director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) and co-founder of the nonprofit to help with visibility and inclusion for Black people, Black in AI.

In December 2020, Gebru was fired from her position as co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI research team after refusing to withdraw an as-yet-unpublished article about the dangers of Large Language Models. These algorithms, which Gebru had argued posed risks of financial harm and bias, use large datasets to translate and generate text.

She went on to found the DAIR Institute, which aims to mitigate the harms of AI, in 2021. According to its website, DAIR is “rooted in the belief that AI is not inevitable, its harms are preventable and when its production and deployment include diverse perspectives and deliberate processes, it can be beneficial.”

Gebru’s talk centered on the risks of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). AGI can complete all tasks it is asked of, whereas AI is meant to complete only specific tasks. “Why attempt to build some undefined system that kind of sounds like a god?” she asked the audience of around 150 Stanford students and affiliates. “[Big tech] builds systems like they have one model for everything. They can’t do that, and even if they could, is that really what we want?”

Gebru has published articles about the exploitation of labor behind AI, as well as the potential for abuse of the burgeoning technology. She referenced text-to-image models’ being used to execute harassment campaigns, create “deep fakes,” and overly sexualize women and girls.

“My question is, utopia for whom? Who is getting this utopian life that [big tech] is promising [will come from AI]?” Gebru said.

Gebru drew parallels between AI, eugenics and transhumanism, (the latter of which refers to enhancing human longevity and cognition). “[AGI] has roots in first wave eugenics […] Secondly, both [AGI and eugenics] talk about utopia and apocalypse,” she said. Gebru expressed concern that AGI is promoted by “paradise engineers” as a means to abolish all of humanity’s suffering forever, while others fear that humans will lose control over AGI and find themselves in an apocalyptic scenario. She argued that transhumanism is inherently discriminatory, because it defines what an enhanced human is like, creating a hierarchical conception that mimics first-wave eugenics.

According to Gebru, AI should be made up of “well-scoped, well-defined systems.” She said the focus should be shifted away from AGI. “To me, trying to build AGI is an inherently unsafe practice […] We build what we want to build, and we need to remember that,” Gebru said.

Audience members, including Carolyn Qu ’24, commented on Gebru’s influence and insight in the fields of diversity in tech and AI. “As a Symbolic Systems student, it’s really valuable to have her here because I feel like there’s this very unique intersection of tech and humanism which […] she [has] experience [with],” Qu said.

Tiffany Liu ’23 and a team of Symbolic Systems advising fellows had been organizing the event since last school year. “We really felt that a lot of the work she’s doing, especially at DAIR, aligns with our vision for what Symbolic Systems students could be a part of,” Liu said.

Gebru emphasized the importance of targeting unethical practices in Big Tech and AI, including worker exploitation. “In terms of these tools, if they have to be ethical, many of these organizations will decide it’s not worth it […] I think the first step is to appropriately compensate everybody,” Gebru said. “The thing we should be fighting is creating unsafe products, worker exploitation and centralization of power.”

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Turning ‘hurt into change’: CA Attorney General Rob Bonta talks gun violence https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/09/turning-hurt-into-change-ca-attorney-general-rob-bonta-talks-gun-violence/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/09/turning-hurt-into-change-ca-attorney-general-rob-bonta-talks-gun-violence/#respond Fri, 10 Feb 2023 06:38:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1221018 California Attorney General Rob Bonta visited Stanford Law School for a fireside conversation hosted by the California Policy Forum and various Stanford student organizations and centers.

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California Attorney General Rob Bonta spoke at Stanford Law School (SLS) on Thursday, discussing climate legislation, tackling gun violence and proposing pathways to public service.

Speaking to an audience of Stanford undergraduates, law students and community members, Bonta rebuked a piece of advice he was given early on in his career. “Pick one, two, maybe three signature areas and forget about the rest,” he said. “I’ve never taken that advice and I never will.”

The California Policy Forum, a project of the student-run California Policy Collective, organized the fireside conversation in partnership with the Stanford Chapter of the American Constitution Society (ACS), the Environmental Law Society (ELS), the Bill Lane Center, and Stanford in Government (SIG). 

Bonta told The Daily that students can make a change in California by getting involved locally, running for office at Stanford and voting in every election. “Stanford students have agency, power, potency and the ability to change our world,” he said.

“I am very much my parents’ son. My parents are both activists and social justice advocates,” said Bonta about his start in public service. Bonta began his career as a state representative before being appointed, and eventually elected, the 34th Attorney General of the State of California and is the first person of Filipino descent to hold that position.

Originally from Alameda County, tackling the Bay Area’s housing crisis is one of Bonta’s main priorities. Bonta said the “Not in my Backyard” mindset often applied to affordable housing is a “shared problem” that he has helped remedy through efforts to expedite litigation surrounding housing.

Many students, including Shae Dolan ’26 came to hear the Attorney General’s thoughts on environmental justice issues. “I’m really excited to see what the Attorney General has to say about holding pollutants accountable,” Dolan said.

The misuse of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a statewide policy of environmental protection, was a main talking point of the conversation. “Sometimes people sue because they don’t want a certain project, not because they care about environmental issues… The foundation [of CEQA] is our desire to protect our natural resources, our environment,” Bonta said.

Bonta discussed increasing gun violence, an issue he says is a top concern for Californians following the recent mass shootings in the state. “We must turn that hurt into change,” Bonta said.

Earlier this month, Bonta, along with Governor Gavin Newsom and state Senator Anthony Portantino, introduced Senate Bill 2, a proposed piece of legislation to strengthen gun control in California.

Alvin Hong Lee ’25, one of the founders of the California Policy Collective, told The Daily that he helped organize the event to “inspire more students on campus to not only go into service in California, but to build a more vibrant community at Stanford that engages with state and local government.”

Lee said he believes that the Stanford community has a tendency to disengage from California government affairs. He labeled this “unfortunate,” due to the amount of research and resources that the University could offer to public institutions. 

The California Policy Forum chose Bonta to speak at Stanford due to his current work in tackling what the organization views as the most pressing issues in the Golden State. “He’s really a trailblazer for his work, and so we thought it’d be perfect for him to come in and talk about issues like housing, criminal justice, and gun violence,” Lee said.

Along with policy issues, Bonta discussed the desire for him to build a relationship with the people he serves. “I work with communities. I try to never be in the office, I try to be with the people,” Bonta said.

This article has been updated to correct an inaccurate quote. The Daily regrets this error.

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Reformation CEO Hali Borenstein MBA ’13 speaks with students about business journey, sustainable practices https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/25/reformation-ceo-hali-borenstein-mba-13-speaks-with-students-about-business-journey-sustainable-practices/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/25/reformation-ceo-hali-borenstein-mba-13-speaks-with-students-about-business-journey-sustainable-practices/#respond Wed, 25 Jan 2023 08:53:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1217949 Hali Borenstein MBA ’13, CEO of sustainable clothing brand Reformation, spoke with Stanford TAMID about her business experiences

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Reformation CEO and Stanford alumna Hali Borenstein MBA ’13 spoke with the Stanford TAMID Group about her personal and career development, from consulting at Bain & Company to her graduate years at Stanford to her current position at Reformation, a popular sustainable apparel store.

TAMID Group is a series of chapters on college campuses in the United States and around the world that trains students and alumni to consult and advise Israeli companies. The Daily spoke with Julia Brand ’25, club president, and marketing director Stella Rose Meier ’25 about why they chose to invite Borenstein to speak at Stanford. They said that in addition to being fans of the brand, they felt that Borenstein was a great model of ethical entrepreneurship.

“Not only does [Reformation] strive to make a profit, but it also has socially beneficial goals,” Brand said. “It’s a really admirable company, because I think students, including me, want to make an impact on the world through business in a positive way. And I think Reformation is truly an amazing example of a company that does that.”

Brand added that Reformation’s success as a “leader in sustainability and fashion” is proof that sustainable methods can result in business success.

Meier echoed Brand, referencing the Hebrew saying “Tikkun Olam,” which means “repair of the world.” “[Borenstein] really keeps that core to her business model,” Meier said. “She repeatedly mentioned throughout the conversation today how she’s not willing to compromise on sustainability.”

Borenstein discussed her experience consulting and her time at Stanford. While she was a political science major as an undergraduate, she chose to pursue an MBA at Stanford) to find connections in order to enter the consulting industry.

Borenstein encouraged students to focus on potential networking opportunities and extracurricular activities. She encouraged them to take opportunities to travel, referencing a trip she took with friends to Russia, as adventures and the people they meet at Stanford will be with them for the rest of their lives. Studying “should not be at the expense of trying new things,” said Borenstein. 

Borenstein answered students’ questions, including those addressing potential conflicts between profit and regulating overproduction. Borenstein said regulation is needed in the apparel industry to prevent overproduction and create a circulating campaign for new frontiers of fashion. 

According to Borenstein, Reformation as a brand has prioritized sustainable practices as a baseline for their business model, researching various approaches to remaining environmentally friendly.

“I also liked hearing her perspectives on how business can drive the transition to a circular economy, but how regulation also may be necessary,” Brand said. “I thought her points on leading with integrity, while also striving for excellence, really resonated with me.”

Borenstein pointed to the brand’s active wear collection as an example. They launched their collection in 2021 after months of delays, since they found a more eco-friendly and better quality material. While that was not a popular choice for investors, it allowed Reformation to remain consistent with their values, Borenstein said.

She left students with the following words as they continue to embark on their academic journeys: “keep asking questions and enjoy this time.”

A previous version of this article incorrectly listed Stella Rose Meier’s last name. The Daily regrets this error.

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‘A moonshot story’: Q&A with CEO Astro Teller https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/25/a-moonshot-story-qa-with-ceo-astro-teller/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/25/a-moonshot-story-qa-with-ceo-astro-teller/#respond Wed, 25 Jan 2023 08:41:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1217937 Google X CEO and entrepreneur Astro Teller encouraged students to craft their "moonshot story."

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CEO of Google X Labs and Stanford alum Eric “Astro” Teller ’93 encouraged students to search for science fiction-sounding solutions to world problems and craft their “moonshot story” during a Q&A event hosted by the Stanford Moonshot Club on Jan. 19.

Teller is an American entrepreneur, inventor and author. He is the CEO and founder of Alphabet’s X, formerly known as Google X, a research and development company that focuses on developing new technologies such as Google Glass, Project Loon and Waymo. Teller also co-founded Cerebellum Capital, a hedge fund that uses machine learning to inform its investment strategies.

The event, attended by students and faculty, was moderated by Moonshot officers Jason Lin ’25, Kaien Yang ’25 and Nicole Segaran ’25. The talk was divided into three sections, including a query created by ChatGPT.

In section one, “Astro’s Experience,” Teller touched on the qualities of a “moonshot” project. According to Teller, a successful “just shy of bonkers” proposal is divided into three steps: first, define a problem; second, propose a radical solution, some kind of science fiction-sounding product; third, test the product, and as long as you learn something during the process, consider the learning journey a success.

“What is the radical proposed solution for fixing some kind of problem with a science fiction-sounding product or service? If the product sounds reasonable, X should not be doing it. That wouldn’t count as a moonshot idea because other companies would be better set up to solve it,” he said.

Teller reflected on his experiences at Stanford and many companies, which he said shaped his perspective and approach to innovation and research. He cited the influence of Stanford computer science professor Nick Parlante, who teaches Stanford’s popular introductory programming class CS106A, causing the audience to laugh and clap.

Teller also offered advice based on his experiences as CEO, acknowledging the changes he made to his leadership style over the years.

“I thought that being smart defined me and my view of the world, and that’s where I was when I was 20. I decided to let go of tying my sense of self-worth to being smart because I wanted to be a good CEO,” he said.

In section two, “Personal Philosophy,” Teller offered advice for students in the audience who hope to create similar projects, jokingly noting that he entered his first interview with the intention of running the company in the future.

“Definitely go in super open to learning stuff. But be respectfully skeptical enough that you can learn fast, because if you’re too close, right, you won’t learn anything. But if you’re too deferential, if you’re not poking at things, then you won’t learn quickly either,” he said.

Teller’s personal philosophy is to first “work on the hardest part of the problem,” which allows him to determine whether a project is worth pursuing. He proposed a hypothetical to the audience: getting a monkey to stand atop a pedestal and recite Shakespeare.

“What should we do first? For most companies, there’s a temptation to build the pedestal first. Because it feels good; you got something done. But you’re not even halfway there,” he said. “You train the monkey: find out what is most likely to kill a project and go figure out that part first.”

In the last section, “Visions for the future,” Teller said the main areas of innovation that will grow in the future, changing the ways in which we live and work, are chatGPT, elevation models and synthetic biology. He said the biggest global issues include education and climate change. Collective action in improving education should be viewed as the ultimate goal, he said.

“Democracy is teetering on the edge in this country and lots of countries around the world, and having a more civically-minded populace isn’t going to happen without better education,” he said. “I don’t think it’s technologies that can solve that problem.”

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Stanford College Republicans to bring right-wing provocateur Matt Walsh to campus in March https://stanforddaily.com/2022/12/08/stanford-college-republicans-to-bring-right-wing-provocateur-matt-walsh-to-campus-in-march/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/12/08/stanford-college-republicans-to-bring-right-wing-provocateur-matt-walsh-to-campus-in-march/#respond Fri, 09 Dec 2022 07:14:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1216238 The Undergraduate Senate approved the funding for the event, though they have since passed a resolution in support of queer and trans students.

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This article contains references to transphobia and queerphobia.

The Stanford College Republicans (SCR) will host an event in March with Matt Walsh, a right-wing political commentator, author and podcast host who has drawn criticism for transphobia in his recent film “What is a Woman?”

Walsh, an outspoken opponent of the LGBTQ+ and transgender communities, will discuss the film, which documents Walsh advocating his stance and interviewing various people, which he describes as “leftists,” about the titular question.

Walsh’s stop at Stanford follows his tour, also bearing the same name, of university campuses including the University of Alabama and the University of Houston.

The Undergraduate Senate roundly denounced Walsh and SCR’s decision to bring him to campus in a resolution signed by the Senate as a whole. “The Undergraduate Senate firmly opposes Matt Walsh and believes that his presence will create an unsafe environment on campus,” the Senate wrote.

Seamus Callaghan, a second-year Ph.D. student at the sustainability school and representative for SCR, defended the group’s decision in an email statement to The Daily, using language to describe gender affirming surgery that compared the medical procedure to “eugenics and lobotomies.”

“SCR believes it is vital to inform students who may have been affected by this ideology, or know someone who has, about the facts surrounding gender issues in order to make good decisions for their health and wellbeing,” he wrote.

The Undergraduate Senate resolution cited statistics that 82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth. At least 57 transgender or gender non-conforming people, mostly Black and Latinx transgender women, were fatally shot or killed by other violent means in 2021, the resolution added.

“Violence against queer and trans folk continues to be a reality in this country,” the Senate wrote.

The upcoming Walsh event is the latest in a string of speaker events from the conservative campus group that have drawn criticism from students.

Last February, SCR invited former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence for a speaking event. He spoke to students for roughly 30 minutes on his experiences as the vice president, the country’s democracy and political activism.

Before Pence’s visit, the group’s funding request was rejected twice by the Senate. Ultimately, SCR filed a case to the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Constitutional Council stating that the rejection violated the ASSU constitution.

According to Ishaan Singh ’24, a senator on the appropriations committee, SCR proposed having the Matt Walsh speaking event in the fall quarter, though their initial requests for funding did not pass because of paperwork issues.

Similar to last year’s event, SCR applied for $6,000 in ASSU funding for the Matt Walsh event, according to the body’s Appropriations Grants spreadsheet.

Once SCR filed the necessary paperwork, the appropriations committee sent the grant for legislative body approval on Nov. 29. The Senate approved the funding during its Dec. 3 meeting. Seven senators voted in favor of the motion, with two senators opposing and four senators abstaining.

Singh was one of the senators who abstained from voting.

“Constitutionally, we could lose our position in the Senate if we vote ‘no’ on something that follows all the constitutional rules for funding. The best I could do to show I was opposed to Matt Walsh in particular and him coming to campus was by abstaining,” Singh said.

In the same resolution denouncing Walsh, the Senate stated it will support queer students and address how it funds campus-wide events.

It specifically outlines the Senate’s communication with Queer Student Resources (QSR) and Women’s Community Center (WCC) to support trans and queer students. During the actual event, the Senate will endorse protest efforts to support trans and queer students, per the resolution.

In addition, the Senate has donated $1,000 of discretionary funding towards the Trans Day of Remembrance Event being hosted by the QSR and pledges to reserve an additional $1,000 in support of QSR and WCC programming.

“The reason why the Senate didn’t vote ‘no’ wasn’t because we support the event, the speaker, or SCR,” Singh said. “It was solely because we didn’t want to risk our status as an organization on campus. Based on our bylaws, we are not allowed to vote ‘no’ on funding that meets all the criteria.”

Callaghan said more finalized logistics would be publicized closer to the date of the event.

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Small changes and accountability: Senator Cory Booker ’91 M.S. ’92 and Rep. Liz Cheney on dealing with a changing American landscape https://stanforddaily.com/2022/12/06/small-changes-and-accountability-senators-cory-booker-91-m-s-92-and-liz-cheney-speak-how-to-deal-with-a-changing-american-landscape/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/12/06/small-changes-and-accountability-senators-cory-booker-91-m-s-92-and-liz-cheney-speak-how-to-deal-with-a-changing-american-landscape/#respond Wed, 07 Dec 2022 07:16:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1215888 Senators Cory Booker ’91 M.S. ’92 and Liz Cheney, as well as former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, spoke Monday evening on the importance of kindness in leadership in the class POL 61: “Politics 2022: America at a Crossroads.”

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Decades ago, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) ’91 M.S. ’92 was a student at Stanford who moseyed to classes between attending football practice and spending time with friends. He made a virtual return to campus Monday evening, this time not as a student but as a teacher for POL 61: “Politics 2022: America at a Crossroads.” Booker encouraged students to engage with American politics and stressed the importance of compassion to being a great leader.

He was joined by former governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick. The two exchanged remarks on everything from the importance of not losing sight of the American Dream to being members of the “bald Black men club.”

Booker followed a talk with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) held during the first half of class, where she spoke about the importance of accountability following the Jan. 6 riots.

Cheney serves as one of two Republican representatives for the Jan. 6 committee, which decided today to make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.

Jan. 6 and holding others accountable

Cheney told the class there was no doubt in her mind that she felt it was necessary to impeach former president Donald Trump when she had to evacuate the Capitol on Jan. 6. Thousands of people flooded the Capitol Building that day, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The event came after weeks of Trump falsely stating that the 2020 election was rigged. 

“I think one of the most important ways to ensure we don’t have another Jan. 6, is to hold accountable the people who did last Jan. 6, and that accountability cannot stop at just the people who invaded the Capitol,” Cheney said. “It must reach up to the highest level. Nobody is above the law.”

Others in her political party have not been as assertive in prosecuting those responsible for Jan. 6, an approach that Cheney strongly disagrees with.

“Most elected Republicans decided that staying in office and getting reelected and keeping our heads down was more important than anything else,” Cheney said.

Cheney said there are repercussions to Jan. 6 and the response, or lack thereof from her Republican colleagues, on an international scale. Abroad, she said some people are questioning America’s ability to be a leader of democracy following Jan. 6.

“It’s certainly caused a lot of people to really wonder about a country that has been such a leader in the world,” Cheney said. 

To restore American democracy and decrease political polarization, Cheney said she calls on lessons she has learned not only from being a representative, but also from her family. It was fundamental to “follow the lessons that your parents taught you when you were little,” Cheney said.

“We ought to respect each other enough to say, ‘I shouldn’t have been that partisan. And I’m not going to attack you based on personal attacks. I’m going to be focused on substance and policy,” Cheney said.

Small changes and accountability: Senator Cory Booker ’91 M.S. ’92 and Rep. Liz Cheney on dealing with a changing American landscape
On Monday night, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) discussed political polarization and the Jan. 6 committee. (Photo: NIKOLAS LIEPINS/The Stanford Daily)

‘Real leaders lead with love’

Booker echoed Cheney on the importance of respect. One of Booker’s greatest mentors, an elderly woman he met in his early days as a politician, once told him that he had the arrogance of a Yale law student.

“I would show up on her doorstep and say, ‘Hi ma’am. I’m Cory Booker. I’m here to help.’ And she looks at me like ‘Dude, you’re the one that needs some help,’” Booker said.

Booker said she then had him walk around her neighborhood and asked what he saw. Booker told the woman he saw drug dealing, abandoned buildings and violence.

Disappointed, the woman walked away. But Booker wanted to understand what he did wrong.

“And this elderly woman says to me, ‘boy, you need to understand the world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside. And if you’re one of these people who only comes to my neighborhood and sees darkness and despair, then that’s all there’s ever going to be,’” Booker said.

Booker said she encouraged him to open his eyes and see hope, possibility and love, if he wanted to be someone that could help.

Ever since that moment, Booker said he sought to center compassion in all of his political activities – something he sees as lacking in American politics.

“I’m struggling today because I lost a 39-year-old friend this morning… and the last time I saw him alive he had a sweatshirt that I gave him that said a simple line: ‘real leaders lead with love,” Booker said. “I really believe that you can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people.”

Both Patrick and Booker agreed love was essential to building a greater sense of community among American people.

The common thread? Kindness and respect.

“The greatest thing you can do in your life is small acts of kindness,” Booker said. “Change happens because every day individuals do small acts of kindness.”

Patrick expressed similar sentiments throughout the evening, emphasizing a lost sense of community among Americans today.

“When I was living my own American dream, it wasn’t just grit… it was food programs and housing. I had great teachers who were prepared and loved us… All of these things were part of my and everyone else’s stories,” Patrick said. “We are missing the sense of common cause and belonging.”

“We’re seeping into a culture of contempt in this country,” Booker said. “I think that’s aggravating a deeper problem we have – a severed sense of belonging… We are a nation right now that is having a spiritual crisis.”

Booker’s final piece of advice for the class was to remember that they were not helpless.

Power comes from the choices people make in their everyday lives, whether it’s big or small, Booker said.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Rep. Liz Cheney is a senator and incorrectly stated that Cheney evacuated the White House on Jan. 6. The Daily regrets these errors.

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‘Boundaries don’t distance intimacy, they cultivate it’: Jennette McCurdy reflects on healing https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/13/boundaries-dont-distance-intimacy-they-cultivate-it-jennette-mccurdy-reflects-on-healing/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/13/boundaries-dont-distance-intimacy-they-cultivate-it-jennette-mccurdy-reflects-on-healing/#respond Mon, 14 Nov 2022 05:48:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1213731 McCurdy reflected on her personal growth after a childhood of abuse and stardom, as detailed in her New York Times-bestselling memoir.

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This article includes references to eating disorders and emotional abuse.

Former actress and New York Times bestselling writer Jennette McCurdy reflected on her growth while healing from abuse, stressed the importance of self-compassion and assessed the role of humor as a coping tool during a Q&A event hosted by the Stanford Speakers Bureau on Friday evening.

McCurdy rose to fame in 2007 as an actress playing Sam Puckett in the Nickelodeon sitcom iCarly, landing four Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards and appearing in several other films and television series. Her memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” was released in August and recounts both McCurdy’s experiences as a young actress and her strained relationship with her abusive, deceased mother.

The event, attended by a few hundred students, was moderated by Maija Cruz ’12, a life and well-being coach at Vaden Health Services interested in social justice and holistic wellness. Cruz and McCurdy delved into stories from McCurdy’s memoir and discussed the lessons related to wellness and growth that could resonate with students in the Stanford community. 

McCurdy touched on the transformations she experienced after her mother’s death as she worked through the trauma she faced from her mother, whom McCurdy described as a narcissistic abuser. McCurdy’s memoir is divided into two sections, “Before” and “After,” which recount the former actor’s life experiences before and after her mother’s death, respectively.

“Everything in my life felt like that clench for control, and I think it all revolved around my mom, and then when she died, the journey became about acceptance, which to me is kind of the opposite of control,” McCurdy said. “And acceptance feels like permission in an odd way.”

McCurdy’s mother, who battled with cancer throughout McCurdy’s youth, pushed McCurdy to pursue professional acting as a child and taught her to restrict how many calories she ate at the age of 11. Shortly after, McCurdy developed eating disorders, including anorexia and bulimia.

McCurdy described the harmful impact that experiencing her mother’s narcissistic abuse had on building functional relationships and underscored the importance of boundaries in both relationships and personal wellbeing.

“I’ve been there, in dysfunctional relationships where I felt that — it was what I grew up believing — ‘Oh, if they want this boundary that’s bad. That means I’m not good enough. That means we’re not close enough,’” McCurdy said. “And I thought boundaries meant distance from a person, and my therapist said, ‘Boundaries don’t distance intimacy, they cultivate it.’ And that changed my life.”

McCurdy also described the important but nuanced role that humor plays in her growth and writing. She said that when her mother was diagnosed with cancer for the second time she turned to humor as a defensive mechanism and has since grown to deploy it as a tool of healing and coping.

“I was using [humor] to keep people further away. I was using it to keep avoiding myself,” McCurdy said. “And then eventually, after my mom died, when I started therapy and started getting more intimate with myself and my pain, I was able to find a sense of humor that feels more authentic to me. It feels more genuine.”

McCurdy emphasized the importance of self-compassion when facing stressful environments and transitions, including while healing from trauma and carving out one’s identity. 

Cruz noted that many members of the Stanford community, an elite academic circle, resonated with McCurdy’s descriptions of intense pressure and uncertainty.

“I think particularly in an environment where we’ve got a lot of students who work really hard to get into this elite space, this elite institution, but then there’s a ton of pressure to constantly perform,” Cruz said.

McCurdy asked the members of the audience, “You guys feel that? You feel a lot of pressure?” Students snapped, clapped and nodded in agreement.

McCurdy offered grounding advice for students in the audience, acknowledging the challenges and pressure that she said accompanied her early 20s.

“Something that really helped me, that I didn’t hear until years later, I was probably 25 when I heard this, ‘If it’s not ‘hell yes’, it’s a no,’” McCurdy said. “I really stand by that advice.”

As for McCurdy’s future endeavors, she said that she has found a fulfillment in her writing that she had never before experienced as an actress.

“I had crippling self-doubt for years, but I’m ultimately grateful that I chose to deal with the self-doubt each day, because I knew that what I was pursuing was ultimately more fulfilling to me, regardless of the outcome,” she said.

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Andrew Yang moves Forward on third parties and rank-choice voting https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/09/andrew-yang-moves-forward-on-third-parties-and-rank-choice-voting/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/09/andrew-yang-moves-forward-on-third-parties-and-rank-choice-voting/#respond Wed, 09 Nov 2022 08:19:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1213353 Former U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang called for rank-choice voting and universal basic income in his keynote for Democracy Day 2022 on Tuesday.

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“I’m back at the Farm!”

30 years after visiting campus as a prospective frosh, former 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and businessman Andrew Yang urged students, staff, faculty and alumni to support rank-choice voting and promoted his newly founded Forward Party at the keynote event for Democracy Day on Tuesday at Dinkelspiel Auditorium.

Yang, who ultimately chose to attend Brown, began his speech by leaping off of the stage to greet members of the audience. He said his presidential campaign spurred by Trump’s election in 2016 was never something he’d expected, both growing up and even during his primary campaign.

“I am Asian. I grew up [as] the child of immigrants. I did not grow up hearing, ‘You’re gonna run for president someday,’” Yang said. “I didn’t think I was gonna be president, I’ll be honest with y’all. I was trying to mainstream solutions that I thought would accelerate us out of this mess that we’re in.”

Yang’s presidential campaign was based around his proposal for a universal basic income (UBI) which he called the ‘freedom dividend’ for all Americans. He said he thought this policy would make him appear “to the left of Bernie.”

“But that’s not the way it went down. It turns out the ‘magical Asian man from the future’ gets his own bucket,” Yang said.

Andrew Yang moves Forward on third parties and rank-choice voting
Andrew Yang converses with Professor Adam Bonica in Dinkelspiel Auditorium during his keynote address on Democracy Day. (Photo: BRAD YAC-DIAZ/The Stanford Daily)

Christopher Maximos ’23, Stanford in Government chair and Democracy Day coordinating committee member, said Yang was selected as the keynote speaker to attract “people from all different parts of the campus” based on Stanford’s strengths in technology and research on democracy reform.

“Andrew really straddles those two lines really well in a way elected officials in either party establishment don’t,” Maximos said. “It’s not just about his party affiliation, but the fact that he is devoted to working on small-d democracy, for everyone and with people from all sides.”

Kyle Haslett ’25 called Yang’s speech “relatable” and “real” and said he was drawn to Yang in 2020 because he was “a big fan of UBI.”

“I think that it’s a great idea to kind of shift our view of society away from always being working to other more passionate inquiries, and I feel like UBI really helps with that,” Haslett said.

Yang also criticized the two-party system for its unresponsiveness to Americans’ needs, citing how a majority of Americans are unhappy with Congress but most incumbents continue to win their seats. Along with third parties and rank-choice voting, he proposed a Congressional “dashboard” scoring politicians’ actions.

“It was a U.S. senator who said to me that an issue was worth more unaddressed than addressed,” Yang said. “What we need to do is actually have an evidence-based government… then you will start to see genuine accountability for these abysmal results that are making Americans of any political alignment upset, inflamed, aggravated and crazy.”

Yang said many of Americans’ needs are not being met in areas including healthcare, workers’ rights and child tax credits.

“Our politics are now divorced from the reality of the ground for Americans… our politics has gotten reduced to ideological soundbites,” Yang said. “The fundamentals of the American Dream are that your kids are going to do better than you did. And now, kids are not doing better than their parents, and everyone’s fucking pissed off about it.”

With its moderate policies, Yang’s newly-founded Forward Party aims to bridge the political polarization between Democrats and Republicans. When questioned by the moderator, political science professor Adam Bonica, on the challenges of starting a third party in America, Yang pointed to rank-choice voting as the solution and said he would focus on making it as “mainstream” as UBI.

“God, I hope he succeeds, because our current voting system is very backwards,” Dina Razi ’26 said.

Razi said her perception of Yang changed after the event. “I kind of walked in having this perception that he’s not really a serious candidate, but I think even though he does have that very jokey air, he’s still very forward on what he wants. Cautiously optimistic is definitely how I would describe my stance on him now.”

Bonica echoed Razi, expressing support for some of Yang’s proposals. While Bonica said a third party emerging in the current status quo was difficult, rank choice voting was more realistic and could “allow for a bit of a beachhead for different political parties to be able to run without being spoilers.”

“We are overdue for a party realignment. One thing that’s true about America is that institutions change,” Bonica said.

Emma Wang ’26, who was also skeptical about the viability of a third party, said Yang’s influence on American politics had more weight than direct institutional changes.

“He reminds me a little bit of Bernie Sanders, who totally shifted the center of the Democratic Party to the left even though he never gained the nomination,” Wang said.

Other students in the audience said they had come to see Yang after supporting him since the start of his presidential campaign.

“I’m not into politics at all, but Andrew Yang is Asian and when he came onto the political scene, I was like, ‘That’s my guy,’” Yash Mehta ’26 said. “And I’ve been part of the Yang Gang ever since.”

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Professors for an evening: Hillary Clinton and Nicholas Kristof teach ‘Politics 2022’ students about democracy at home and abroad https://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/11/hillary-clinton-nicholas-kristof-teach-politics/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/11/hillary-clinton-nicholas-kristof-teach-politics/#respond Wed, 12 Oct 2022 06:16:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1209722 As part of his POL 61: ‘Politics 2022: America at a Crossroads’ class, adjunct professor Jim Steyer welcomed his friends, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and political commentator Nicholas Kristof, to speak to the students about democracy, media, technology and kids in America.

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and journalist Nicholas Kristof shared their insights on democracy, foreign policy, child advocacy and media and technology in a wide-ranging guest lecture for POL 61: “Politics 2022: America at a Crossroads” Monday night.

“This is the most perilous time [for democracy] in your life or mine,” Clinton said over Zoom to an audience of over 500 students gathered in CEMEX auditorium. 

Taking place against the backdrop of a myriad of domestic and global issues, ranging from disinformation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this class aims to tackle contemporary issues at a time of great uncertainty. Students cited the course’s deep bench of expert speakers, ranging from senators to chief operating officers, as a major draw for their enrollment.

“It’s easy to feel helpless in today’s political climate as a young person,” said Alina Davinson ’25. “I was immediately interested in gaining insight from a diverse group of leaders on current issues.”

Lena McEarhern ’25 added that the course is an opportunity to “stay up to date on current events leading into this year’s midterm elections.”

The course is taught by Jim Steyer, an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Business and founder of Common Sense Media. He told The Daily he hopes the class will shape the way that Stanford students approach the unusual domestic and international challenges they are inheriting. 

“It is an absolutely critical time in American democracy,” he said. “I teach to motivate young people to change the world.”

Monday’s discussion with Clinton and Kristoff was separated into four segments: democracy at home, democracy abroad, media and technology, and the state of kids in America. 

Democracy at home

The first subject the speakers addressed was what they described as the concerning state of American democracy. Both spoke about demagoguery and the danger of worsening partisan divisions. 

Clinton told the class that she was “deeply worried that the stresses on [American] systems,” citing deepening racial and cultural tensions with what she described as demagoguery as their root. 

Kristof said American democracy is experiencing its  “most dangerous period since the civil war. He said Americans have “lost any sense of shared facts” and become “open to demagogues.” 

Clinton said when she was a senator, she “could reach across the aisle because there were people who were reaching back.” She said she was able to find common ground and, while this usually meant neither party getting everything they wanted, they were able to pass legislation. 

Now, she said, she doesn’t “recognize the people who are still there.” Most of the people who were usually willing to cooperate across party lines have retired or been defeated, she explained. She sees the current Republican party as acting “more like a cult than a big tent where people have certain views that bring them together, but they have independence of thought.” 

But though both used strong language to describe leadership, Kristof condemned the tendency to classify all Trump voters as racists and bigots, and he told the class that such generalizations are counterproductive.

Democracy abroad

For the “democracy abroad” portion of the conversation, the speakers tackled the rise of authoritarian leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping.

Clinton, an expert in foreign policy and someone whose life trajectory has been influenced heavily by the Russian government, told the class that Putin “really, truly believes he has a messianic mission to rule over as much of greater Russia as he can.

“If you think Putin will be happy with Ukraine, you’ve not been paying attention,” she said.

Kristof, whose international expertise lies more in China and India, added that the international community’s response to Russia sends a message to Xi Jinping to not invade Taiwan.

Media and technology 

With several upcoming speakers being journalists or tech CEOs, the speakers addressed the role of media institutions and big tech in the deterioration of American democracy. 

Kristof said that technology “exacerbates the challenges” of inequity that are currently “undermining [American] legitimacy, influence, and power.” While he said he once believed social media would nurture higher levels of accountability, he now views it as a place that poisons politics.

He said he wants to see “a broader effort to hold organizations like Fox News accountable” for spreading dangerous information.

Though Clinton said she believes the benefits of technology still outweigh the problems, said the threats posed by technology are significant. She also called for tougher regulation and stressed for the public to call for legislation.

Kids in America

As career-long child advocates, the speakers concluded the class by discussing the damning effects of childhood inequality on several political issues.

“Children’s well-being is dramatically influenced by inequality,” Clinton told the class. “You cannot look at any problem we have for more than a nanosecond and not conclude that at the root of so many of them is this horrible crime against so many of our children being in so many ways being blocked from their full potential, literally from birth forward.”

Kristof also acknowledged the inequalities but added that students have the power to make change by voting and investing in children.

Clinton also urged students to take their future into their own hands.“We cannot allow people to take away the opportunities you should be inheriting, to charge your own life, to make your own decisions, to stand up for what you believe in, but we’re going to need everyone to feel that way and everyone to sign up for it,” Clinton said.

She added, “Don’t take your freedom, rights, and democracy for granted.”

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Conference aims to make trust and safety hot topics in computer science https://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/04/trust-and-safety-research-conference/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/04/trust-and-safety-research-conference/#respond Wed, 05 Oct 2022 06:27:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1209085 Online trust and safety is an interdisciplinary field, and the two-day conference brought together experts in computer science, law, and the social sciences to unify their work on online harm and distrust — an unprecedented effort for the field, participants said.

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A woman with dyed hair and a branded TikTok jacket chatted with a man dressed like an academic in the palm-shaded Alumni Center pavilion Friday morning. Stanford’s first annual Trust and Safety Research Conference was a gathering of all kinds.

Online trust and safety is an interdisciplinary field, and the two-day conference brought together experts in computer science, law, and the social sciences to unify their work on online harm and distrust — an unprecedented effort for the field, participants said. 

Across Thursday and Friday, attendees dropped in on panels and research presentations taking place on the first floor of the Alumni Center and networked outside in the courtyard. Popular presentation topics included improved tools for online moderation, the spread of misinformation and how organizations and companies can design and implement tailored policies for online safety.

The conference was hosted by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the Trust and Safety Foundation. Early bird tickets ran attendees from academic and civil society $100, with the entry fee hiked to $500 for attendees from the industry.

Public content moderation expert and law assistant professor Evelyn Douek described the goal of the conference as a way to connect those working on internet safety across academia, industry and policy for the first time.

“Community building is really important,” Douek said. “Actually getting people from lots of different disciplines in a room, meeting each other, building those bridges.”

In Thursday’s introduction to the Journal of Online Trust and Safety’s research presentation,  communication professor Jeff Hancock described how he co-founded the publication with other Stanford researchers in the field to “fill that gap” between those studying online safety from different disciplines. Alongside the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the researchers aim to understand and prevent potential harm from happening online. 

Added SIO director and cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos in an interview, “One of our goals at SIO is to make [online] trust and safety a legitimate academic topic.”

In the past two years, the threat of internet-enabled violence and public mistrust has become difficult to ignore. Several mass shootings were preceded by hateful screeds posted on the online forum 8chan. Online misinformation has been linked to COVID vaccine hesitancy, and conspiracy theories fueled the organization of last year’s Capitol insurrection on forums and social media sites.

“Security wasn’t seen by CS academics as a real field,” Stamos said. “But these days security is seen as one of the absolute hottest parts of computer science. We need to have the same kind of transition in trust and safety, but we don’t have fifteen years.”

Panelists emphasized that a one-size-fits-all framework for online safety simply cannot exist; the internet is too big, run and used by too many people. 

It would be impossible to create a single governing force to regulate online content and behavior, said Del Harvey, vice president of trust and safety at Twitter, on a panel.

“I keep hearing this: ‘What we need to do is make it so that the companies aren’t making the decisions, and instead this benevolent entity that we create, that will have all the information that is informed by all the things that are right and just and good in the world will [enforce online safety],’” Harvey said. However, Harvey added, “We are nowhere near the utopian world where that can exist.”

To panelist Mike Masnick, a blogger and tech policy expert, the recent deplatforming of hate forum Kiwifarms by infrastructure provider Cloudflare demonstrated how important decisions about online safety are often left in the hands of a few small companies.

“The reality was that the situation was up to [Cloudflare],” Masnick said. “And a decision to do nothing meant that people were going to get harmed.”

Some participants said there may be no single system that can prevent the harms of the internet, but they expressed hope that actors in the internet ecosystem can take steps to prevent harm and preserve public trust.

“The fact of the matter is that there is no perfect decision,” Douek said. “Every decision is still going to involve harm. There needs to be trust that you’ve thought about those decisions.”

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Filipino students fearful for future of the country following June election https://stanforddaily.com/2022/09/28/filipino-students-fearful-for-future-of-the-country-following-june-election/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/09/28/filipino-students-fearful-for-future-of-the-country-following-june-election/#respond Thu, 29 Sep 2022 05:58:06 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1207965 The Stanford Filipino community reacted strongly to the election of Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte.

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Filipino students at Stanford expressed fear about the future of the Philippines following the election of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (also known as BBM), who was officially sworn into the Philippine presidency on June 30. The son] of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., BBM and his running mate Sara Duterte, the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, were elected in a landslide victory. 

However, the results were controversial within the Filipino community, including at Stanford. Many people raised concerns of foul play due to the election polls being “too swift,” while others were disappointed in due to the background of the two winning candidates, both of their fathers being known for extensive human rights violations

Supporters celebrated the poll results in May, while thousands of Filipino people all over the world took to the streets and protested. Hundreds of opposing party supporters protested at the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) main office in Intramuros, Manila. Filipino activists even took to the streets of New York’s Times Square to protest against the Marcos and Duterte families, asking them to “answer for their crimes,” referencing the Marcos family dictatorship and the human rights violations of former President Duterte. 

The Stanford Filipino community reacted similarly strongly to BBM-Sara’s victory. The Daily spoke with four Filipino students who shared their fears of the new administration’s potential negative effects on Philippine democracy, as well as concern over the new president’s history and political ideology.

“How can a son of a dictator crawl his way back to power?” — Filipino-American and Daily staffer Lorenzo Del Rosario ’24 said this question plagued his mind, and that the sense of incredulity and fear was shared by most members of the Filipino community. 

The 2022 Pilipinx Cultural Night was held a week after the election. Del Rosario and his fellow event organizers decided to discuss the election results at the event, hoping to raise awareness of the historical atrocities under the Marcos dictatorship and acknowledge how the University’s Filipino community was emotionally affected by the results.

Collective indignation towards the election results united much of Stanford’s Filipino community. However, many Philippine-born students at Stanford felt isolated from their American-born peers. 

Euclid Soringa ’25 described the days after the election as shaped by fear for their relatives and countrymen back home. Soringa was not comfortable with sharing his grief with other Filipino students. As someone born in the Philippines who personally experienced the extrajudicial killings of Rodrigo Duterte’s corrupt administration, he feared that some Filipino immigrants would fail to understand him if they were raised in a different country and did not personally experience the effects of Duterte’s administration. 

“I’m not here to invalidate them. In fact, I stand with them,” Soringa said. “I’m just scared to share my grief with them with the expectation that nobody will understand me.”

Soringa, who was raised in a rural community, feared for the future of the working class. He said for many, “life will go on and we’ll flourish without the help of the government,” but that vulnerable communities like local tricycle drivers or vendors who rely on government assistance to survive would be more at threat. With rising inflation, a lowering foreign exchange rate and sugar and salt shortages, Soringa’s worries were confirmed in the months after the election.

Some Filipino students described feeling an obligation to advocate for people in the Philippines. Filipino-American Kiara Fufunan ’25 organized a rally at Stanford after the election. 

“Even if I was far away, it made me feel more connected to the cause and what Filipinos back home might have felt,” Fufunan said. 

Guest speakers ranging from members of political organizations, student activists and Filipino workers attended the rally, which aimed to show the power of young Filipino people and speak out against the Marcos-Duterte regime, Fufunan said. With other Filipino students, she founded a Stanford chapter of the League of Filipino Students, a student-led advocacy movement founded in 1977 during the martial law era in the Philippines. Fufunan said it was important to sustain Filipino-American activism at Stanford, especially in light of the new presidency.

Despite the grief he felt during the early days after the election, Filipino-Australian Matias Benitez ’25 said he has since accepted the election results. “I guess democracy happened,” he told The Daily, referencing BBM’s victory with 59% of the vote, more than double that of his closest rival. 

“If people don’t get what they want, I just hope that they feel like they have a voice to change the future,” Benitez said, adding that he wishes the best for the Philippines and its newly elected government, hoping to see it move towards a better future. 

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Condoleezza Rice, Steph Curry among speakers at civic leadership event hosted by All Vote No Play, Stanford affliates https://stanforddaily.com/2022/09/05/sam-beskind-22-continues-to-drive-student-leadership/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/09/05/sam-beskind-22-continues-to-drive-student-leadership/#respond Tue, 06 Sep 2022 04:08:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1207643 Former Stanford basketball player Sam Beskind will host the "Engaged Athlete All-Star Meeting," a virtual event featuring names from Condoleezza Rice to Stephen Curry.

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After earning both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in just four years at Stanford, Sam Beskind ’21 M.S. ’22 has started class and training at Colorado School of Mines, where the 2022 Pac-12 Scholar Athlete of the Year announced he was transferring to back in April. But even with the challenge of adjusting to a new school and basketball program, Beskind has been busy with something much grander.

The former Stanford basketball guard is the student-lead for All Vote No Play, a movement that seeks to grow citizens through the power of athletics and shape the future. Beskind’s work is all coming to fruition this month. On Sept. 13 at 5 p.m. PT, AVNP will be hosting the Engaged Athlete All-Star Meeting, a virtual event aimed at inspiring student-athletes to rethink their civic engagement through the lens of leadership.

Condoleezza Rice, Steph Curry among speakers at civic leadership event hosted by All Vote No Play, Stanford affliates
On Sept. 13, speakers from all corners of sports will combine to speak at the All Vote No Play event. (Photo: Courtesy of Sam Beskind)

“This effort, in many ways, is more of an experiment of applied thought leadership around how ideas can change systems and shape our future, then it is about specifically targeting student athletes to vote in the upcoming midterms,” Beskind told The Daily. “Don’t get me wrong, voting is a critical element to being an engaged citizen. However, we are trying to inspire much more than that.”

The event will feature speakers who not only excel in their respective sports careers, but have also demonstrated leadership in the community with large-scale impact. Former Secretary of State and Director of Stanford’s Hoover Institution Condoleezza Rice, NBA superstar Stephen Curry and Stanford women’s basketball head coach Tara VanDerveer headline the list of speakers who will be interviewed by student-athletes like Beskind, as well as Stanford’s own Cameron Brink and Isa Silva.

“The willingness of the individuals at Stanford to help build something special has been the most amazing part,” Beskind said of putting the event together. “This opportunity would not be possible without faculty, like Secretary Rice and Coach Tara VanDerveer, volunteering their time to share their experiences in public service and leadership. Other Stanford leaders have been especially supportive of this effort, namely Coach Jesse Pruitt. Lastly, the student-athletes willingness to embrace the effort is what makes me personally hopeful.”

“Whether it is Cameron Brink who will be leading a conversation with Coach Vanderveer, or Isa Silva interviewing Steph Curry, the desire to be an engaged athlete is very real,” he added. “I couldn’t think of a better way for Stanford and President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s core pillars of leadership and service to come to life.”

The idea behind the Engaged Athlete All-Star Meeting has long been in the works. Being a student-athlete himself, Beskind came to realize just how influential collegiate athletes can be with their platform. Something in particular that helped lead to the event was “Inventing the Future,” a class in Stanford’s d.School that Beskind took during his time at Stanford. The course sought to help students imagine better futures and prototype how to work towards that future, something the Stanford-grad feels “is exactly what this event is all about.”

The All Vote No Play event is by no means Beskind’s first time putting something together like this. “Inventing the Future” professor and AVNP’s co-founder, Lisa Kay Solomon, has been a figure especially inspiring for Beskind throughout this process. Together, the pair also put together an event during last year’s Civic Engagement Day in November, a day in which all student-athletes were off from athletic activities after the NCAA unanimously approved legislation in September 2020 that athletic departments give student-athletes the day off on Election Day — a decision that passed largely in part to the efforts of Eric Reveno ’89, AVNP’s other co-founder who is also a former Stanford basketball player and assistant coach . Last year’s event was successful, as it brought 200 Stanford athletes together to build community and talk about engaged citizenship. The Engaged Athlete All-Star Meeting hopes to build off of that.

Backed by the support of Vote.org, Pac12 Votes, Athletes Unlimited, Students Learn Students Vote, Motivote, MyVote Project and ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, the event can be accessed after registering online. Hoping to inspire a sense of community responsibility into college athletes across the country, Beskind has plans to continue such efforts with the ultimate goal of institutionalizing their ambitions. In the meantime, however, he still has the September event to look forward to. Registration is available online.

“Being an ‘Engaged Athlete’ does not mean you have to single-handedly save the world; in fact, it is quite the opposite,” Beskind said. “We want to show that anyone, regardless of their sport, gender, seniority, political ideology, or any other label, can make a difference in their corner of the world.”

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