Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

-

Image
header for Technology and Geopolitics: EU Proposals for Regulating Rights, Security and Trade

The future of technology policy in Europe will be affected by growing nationalism and protectionism, cyber and national security threats, and great power rivalries. The Program on Democracy and the Internet invites you to a technology policy discussion led by International Policy Director, Marietje SchaakeJoin us on September 16th from 9 AM - 12 PM PST (6 PM - 9 PM CET), as we dive into conversations on EU legislative packages, digital trade rules, and cybersecurity & geopolitics. We hope to develop a more precise understanding of how the EU and its allies can collaborate to create compatible technology standards, build more resilient supply chains, and address novel opportunities and risks presented by emerging technologies.This event is organized by the Program on Democracy and the Internet (part of the Cyber Policy Center and the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society) and co-sponsored by the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

Moderators: 

 

Speakers:

 

Seminars
Paragraphs

There is a popular line of reasoning in platform regulation discussions today that says, basically, “Platforms aren’t responsible for what their users say, but they are responsible for what the platforms themselves choose to amplify.” This provides a seemingly simple hook for regulating algorithmic amplification—the results for searches on a search engine like Google or within a platform like Wikipedia; the sequence of posts in the newsfeed on a platform like Twitter or Facebook; or the recommended items on a platform like YouTube or Eventbrite. There’s some utility to that framing. In particular it is useful for people who work for platforms building product features or refining algorithms.

 

Daphne Keller

Daphne Keller

Director of Program on Platform Regulation, Cyber Policy Center and Lecturer, Stanford Law School
FULL BIO
All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Subtitle
Essay published by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
Authors
Daphne Keller
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

POLITICO has announced their annual ranking of the 28 power players behind Europe’s tech revolution. In addition to an overall No. 1, the list is divided into three categories — rulemakers, rulebreakers and visionaries — each representing a different type of power. The Cyber Policy Center's Marietje Schaake is included on the list as a visionary and "voice to listen to on both sides of the Atlantic."

From the announcement:

The 42-year-old Dutch native has become a leading voice of European philosophy on how to regulate technology, especially in the U.S., where she’s been teaching at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center since leaving European politics.

Her message — that the internet’s early leaders have grown into all-too-dominant behemoths unable to subdue their own vices and are violating human rights — might have seemed out of whack in the U.S. a few years ago. But it has since become mainstream, in part thanks to Schaake’s work to reshape the American conversation on technology and inject some of Europe’s criticism on the sector.

In Europe, too, Schaake’s star keeps rising and rising. Once one of Brussels’ most visible politicians, she has now turned her attention to taming algorithms and the growing issue of cyber threats. In 2019, she launched the CyberPeace Institute in Geneva, a group focused on getting European policymakers to care about the human victims of cyberattack.

READ MORE

Marietje Schaake

Marietje Schaake

International Policy Director at the Cyber Policy Center
FULL BIO

Read More

cyber turns two graphic
News

The Cyber Policy Center Turns Two

A look back at the launch of the CPC and the work of our programs
The Cyber Policy Center Turns Two
Marietje Schaake
News

Marietje Schaake to Join Stanford Cyber Policy Center and Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence in Dual Policy Roles

Marietje Schaake to Join Stanford Cyber Policy Center and Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence in Dual Policy Roles
Hero Image
illustration of Marietje Schaake Politico
All News button
1
Subtitle

POLITICO’s annual ranking of the 28 power players behind Europe’s tech revolution includes the Cyber Policy Center's Marietje Schaake. The list is divided into three categories — rulemakers, rulebreakers and visionaries — each representing a different type of power.

Paragraphs

The first COVID-19-related death in the United States was announced on February 29, 2020, the day of the South Carolina primary. International news about the early spread of the coronavirus and the initial reaction from American public health professionals to its quick spread in this country made it clear that the presidential election was facing an existential threat. Election officials who held primaries in early- and mid-March found themselves increasingly making public health decisions to guard both their voters and their staff. The larger societal challenges quickly overwhelmed the ability of states to hold primaries at all, leading to hastily canceled and postponed elections. The one early primary that was not postponed, Wisconsin, provided cautionary tales in the form of closed polling places, poll worker shortages, and massive transitions to mail balloting.

 

Nate Persily

Nathaniel Persily

James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School | Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute | Professor, by courtesy, Political Science | Professor, by courtesy, Communication | Co-director, Cyber Policy Center
FULL BIO
All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Working Papers
Publication Date
Subtitle
A Compendium of Research from the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project
Authors
Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Today, the Healthy Elections Project, a joint effort of Stanford and MIT, released a new 800 page report based on their research and findings on the administration of the 2020 election. The Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project was developed to ensure that the 2020 election could proceed with integrity, safety, and equal access. The Project aimed to do this by bringing together academics, civic organizations, election administrators, and election administration experts to assess and promote best practices. 

The first COVID-19-related death in the United States was announced on February 29, 2020, the day of the South Carolina primary. International news about the early spread of the coronavirus and the initial reaction from American public health professionals to its quick spread in this country made it clear that the presidential election was facing an existential threat. Election officials who held primaries in early- and mid-March found themselves increasingly making public health decisions to guard both their voters and their staff. The larger societal challenges quickly overwhelmed the ability of states to hold primaries at all, leading to hastily canceled and postponed elections. The one early primary that was not postponed, Wisconsin, provided cautionary tales in the form of closed polling places, poll worker shortages, and massive transitions to mail balloting.

Nate Persily

Nathaniel Persily

James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School | Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute | Professor, by courtesy, Political Science | Professor, by courtesy, Communication | Co-director, Cyber Policy Center
FULL BIO
Hero Image
virus and the vote
All News button
1
Subtitle

A Compendium of Research from the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project

-

Image
German Consulate logo and Stanford Logo

Technological cooperation is one of the key topics of the transatlantic agenda. The capacity of nations to innovate and to regulate will define impact their future relevancy. Beyond setting incentives to enhance innovation, Regulation and setting standards is at the forefront of the geopolitical dimension of tech policy.
 
On June 24 from 12:00 to 1:00 pm Pacific Time, Germany’s Ambassador to the United States, Dr. Emily Haber, International Policy Director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, Marietje Schaake, and Chris Riley, Senior Fellow for Internet Governance at the R Street Institute, will discuss the opportunities and challenges of the digital transformation for the US and the EU with respect to strategies to strengthen democratic public spheres, restore digital trust and promote liberal liberal-democratic values through a global digital order. Nathanial Persily, co-director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, will introduce and moderate the event.
 
This event is part of the series “Meeting America,” virtual talks with the German Ambassador and American stakeholders across the United States.
 
This event is co-sponsored by the German Consulate General San Francisco and the American Council on Germany.

REGISTER

 

About the Speakers

 

Dr. Emily Margarethe Haber has been German Ambassador to the United States since June 2018.   Prior to her transfer to Washington, DC, she served in various leadership functions at the Foreign Office in Berlin. In 2009, she was appointed Political Director and, in 2011, State Secretary, the first woman to hold either post. Thereafter, she was deployed to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, serving as State Secretary in charge of homeland security and migration policy from 2014 until 2018.   Emily Haber has many years of experience with Russia and the former Soviet Union. She held various posts at the German Embassy in Moscow, including Head of the Political Department. At the Foreign Office in Berlin, she served as Head of the OSCE Division and as Deputy Director-General for the Western Balkans, among other positions.   Emily Haber holds a PhD in history and is married to former diplomat Hansjörg Haber. The couple has two sons.

Chris Riley is R Street’s senior fellow of Internet Governance. He will be leading the Knight Foundation-funded project on content moderation, running convenings of a broad range of stakeholders to develop a framework for platforms managing user-generated content. Chris will also be doing policy analysis around content regulatory issues related to that project, including work on Section 230 in the United States and the Digital Services Act in the European Union.

Prior to joining R Street, Chris led global public policy work for the Mozilla Corporation, managing their work on the ground in Washington, D.C., Brussels, Delhi and Nairobi from Mozilla’s San Francisco office, and worked with government policymakers, stakeholders in industry and civil society, and internal teams at Mozilla to advance their mission. Prior to that, he worked in the U.S. Department of State to help manage the Internet Freedom grants portfolio designated by Congress to support technology development, digital safety training, research and related work as a part of advancing the expression of human rights online in internet-repressive countries.

Chris received his bachelor’s in computer science from Wheeling Jesuit University, his PhD in computer science from Johns Hopkins University and his JD from Yale Law School.

Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and FSI.

Marietje Schaake is the International Policy Director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. 

 

0
marietje.schaake

Marietje Schaake is a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.


 

Non-Resident Fellow, Cyber Policy Center
Fellow, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Date Label
Emily Margarethe Haber
Chris Riley
-

With the rise of national digital identity systems (Digital ID) across the world, there is a growing need to examine their impact on human rights. While these systems offer accountability and efficiency gains, they also pose risks for surveillance, exclusion, and discrimination. In several instances, national Digital ID programmes started with a specific scope of use, but have since been deployed for different applications, and in different sectors. This raises the question of how to determine appropriate and inappropriate uses of Digital ID programs, which create an inherent power imbalance between the State and its residents given the personal data they collect.

On Wednesday, June 23rd @ 10:00 am Pacific Time, join Amber Sinha of India’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS), Anri van der Spuy of Research ICT Africa (RIA) and Dr. Tom Fischer of Privacy International in conversation with Kelly Born, Director of the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative and fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, to discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by digital identity systems, a proposed framework for assessing trade-offs and ensuring that human rights are adequately protected, and a discussion of experiences in translating and adapting new digital ID assessment framework by CIS and RIA to different contexts and geographies.

Amber Sinha 
Anri van der Spuy
Dr. Tom Fischer 
Kelly Born
0
sunny-xun-liu-headshot.jpg PhD

Sunny Xun Liu is a Senior Academic-Staff Researcher and Associate Director for Research at Stanford Social Media Lab. Liu earned her Ph.D. in Mass Communication and Media from Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the social and psychological effects of social media and AI, social media and well-being, digital literacy, how the design of social robots and AI impact psychological perceptions. Before joining Stanford, she was an Associate Professor at California State University, Stanislaus. She has won top3 faculty paper awards from ICA and AEJMC and published in communication and psychology journals. She has served on the Chinese Communication Association’s Steering Committee and the ICA and AEJMC Research Chair and a steering committee member on PRISM (Promoting Research in Social Media and Health Symposium).  Her research has been funded by NSF, Army Research Office, Google Research and Stanford HAI and has been published in multiple psychology and communication journals.

Associate Director for Research
Senior Academic-Staff Researcher
Date Label
-

Image
the trump takedown

The Facebook Oversight Board will release its decision concerning the takedown of President Donald Trump's account this Wednesday. On Thursday, May 6, from 2:00 to 3:15 PM Pacific, members of the Oversight Board will be joined by the leaders of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center to discuss the Board's decision. Two members of the Oversight Board, Michael McConnell and Julie Owono, will be joined by Nate Persily, Renee DiResta, Daphne Keller, Marietje Schaake and Alex Stamos to discuss the decision and its implications for Facebook's handling of similar controversies around the world.

Paragraphs

Image
Democracy task force paper cover

The Task Force on US Strategy to Support Democracy and Counter Authoritarianism launched in September 2020 as a joint effort of Freedom House, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the McCain Institute. It has conducted itself as a working Task Force, with the active engagement of its members. The final recommendations of this report draw on the significant experience of the Task Force members, who contributed their deep expertise to help create recommendations that are both forward-looking and practical.

Eileen Donahoe of the Stanford Cyber Policy's Global Digital Policy Incubator, was a working group lead. 

 

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
White Papers
Publication Date
Subtitle
Report of the Task Force on US Strategy to Support Democracy and Counter Authoritarianism
Authors
Subscribe to Society