Technology, Democracy, MOOC

At the Tech4Dem conference today organized by the National Democratic Institute, exploring trajectories for democracy and how new technologies will influence it, one of the panels featured former VP Al Gore and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Both were in the cabinet during the Clinton Administration, and as they discussed US leadership, the role of technology, and its influence on democracy around the world, I had a serious flashback to the positive energy of the 1990s. There was so much hope back then -- a belief in the possibility for human betterment, and an understanding of the need for the US to lead and engage with the world.

Albright had a quote back then, calling the US "the indispensable nation" in international affairs, meaning that American leadership was critical to getting things done. This was echoed in Gore's remarks today: that no other nation is able to substitute for American leadership in matters of vital global concern, including climate change. (Whenever climate and environmental issues came up during his talk, he became much more animated -- thunderous even. Major props.)

However, as Albright noted today, "indispensable does not mean alone." The United States has a key role in marshaling the rest of the world to act in concert to address these issues, whether it's human rights or sustainable development or gender equality.

I grew up in that era, and these are the folks in government who inspired us as we became politically aware. So here's to hoping we reclaim that can-do spirit of the 1990s: technology powering possibility, guided by principle and ethical commitment; and caring for the world, including human beings and the many species that share the planet with us.

P.S. I laughed out loud during a panel on Internet technologies, when the moderator said, "The United States invented most of these technologies!" and then looked significantly at Al Gore.

P.P.S. The formal conference name is "Governing Democratically in a Tech-Empowered World"

"Con la tea en la mano"

Gabby Giffords raises her torch in The New York Times after the failure of a gun safety bill to get past the Senate. While 54 senators were in support of the legislation, it needed 60 votes to overcome the threat of a filibuster from the GOP. (Only then could the bill get to the floor of the Senate, where it would be subject to an actual vote -- and a simple majority of 51 would be sufficient to pass it.)

In response, Representative Giffords, a heroic survivor of gun violence and a symbolic leader in the campaign for gun safety, threw down the gauntlet:

"Our democracy’s history is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate — people who stood in the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of senators voted to join that list ... To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way. 

"Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s."

It brought to mind Julia de Burgos, surging at the head of a crowd:

"Cuando las multitudes corran alborotadas dejando atrás cenizas de injusticias quemadas, y cuando con la tea de las siete virtudes, tras los siete pecados, corran las multitudes, contra ti, y contra todo lo injusto y lo inhumano, yo iré en medio de ellas con la tea en la mano."

(Full text of A Julia de Burgos)

Guess the Song!

Musical quiz time! Can you guess which composers and/or what era the following songs are from?

Sample 1:


Sample 2:


Sample 3:

Avatar: The Last Dancebender

The theme for Stanford's Big Dance this year:

We are taking pre-orders for Big Dance shirts! Get Fire Nation Red or Water Bending Blue; or if you're a third-time participant in the all-night Big Dance, soar into the clouds with our Airbender "Triple Crown" shirt!

Place your pre-order HERE!

Who We Are / Who Are We?

"In Dream College Rankings, Harvard University Is Unseated" the Huffington Post reports. Myriad Facebook statuses gleefully echo this fall from grace. So Stanford is apparently a "dream" college now, topping the list.

On the surface it might seem like a point of pride, but somehow these university rankings and grandiose proclamations about Stanford's appeal worry me.  Aside from its reputation as the nebulous "best," what exactly were the qualities that once made Harvard the stuff of dreams? The intellectual rigor? The kinship among students? The inspiration of a shared vision? It ought to be those kinds of things that make a school worth aspiring to, not just the feeling that matriculating there means "being on top." Otherwise, does the appeal lie in social cachet? Is the school a name to open doors, a prop, a tool, a step on the "path to success"?

If we are indeed a "dream school," then I hope this "dream" is to contribute something to the world, not just to make money and get rich. It wouldn't burnish Stanford's reputation if prospective students simply sought entrée into wealth. (Through a distorted vision of the tech industry, for instance.)

This lands just as CS becomes the most popular major at Stanford, and while I think it's great that we are growing a corps of engineers in this country, I'm a little scared that, much as the East Coast universities of old served as finishing schools for those entering high society, Stanford could degenerate into a playground for the aspiring tech elite. (Thankfully, engineering isn't quite that easy, folks. You gotta work and you gotta do problem sets. =P)

At Stanford, we are open to new ideas, new ways of thinking. We strive for difference, we explore the novel, we embrace the unconventional. Innovation is in our blood, and we celebrate it -- but remember, it's not a catchphrase, and it's not a gimmick. It's innovation in service to our ideals.

In the end, we want to be the place that cares for society and seeks to make a difference -- an ethical university, not the school of tycoons.

What do they dream of us? I'm sure plenty of aspiring students do not think in such a mercenary way, and might have real reasons to regard Stanford as a "dream" school. Yet even the phrase "dream school" sounds so tawdry. It brings to mind prom queens and tiaras and pink frosting. (It also reeks of middle-class entitlement.) Celebrating the dethroning of Harvard in a competitive scramble to the top of a questionable heap reflects the kind of zero-sum thinking that motivates at least a subset of those aspirants and pretenders -- a motivation that is profoundly distasteful. It's about image rather than substance, sex appeal rather than heart.

That's why this ranking doesn't feel like a victory. It might even feel emptier than bounding up the list of "best schools" judged by supposedly objective factors. Unfortunately, these Princeton Review rankings perpetuate glib answers rather than considered statements of vision. They cede principle to the masses instead of stamping down and answering: this is what we stand for. I think that's what gets me: it's a popularity contest, but is that how we want to be defined? If we know who we are, we shouldn't care what these kids or their parents think. It's not an honor to be recognized for a flimsy, throwaway statement.

I also hate that we crow about "beating" Harvard. A constellation of many great institutions is far better for society -- and for democracy -- than one centralizing font of greatness surrounded by mediocre neighbors. As my friend Jennifer Rabedeau pointed out, competition from worthy peer institutions keeps us on our toes. This competition comes not in the form of jostling for rankings, but in the form of real-life striving, where we all seek to better ourselves -- to enact our ideals by reaching for the stars. I'm pretty sure in that ecosystem, we'd actually end up collaborating with our friends from these peer institutions, because we believe in the same things and seek to advance the same causes.

So please, dreamers, understand what it means to join the Stanford community. It's not a golden ticket to comfort or riches, though maybe that happens here and there. It's the opportunity to be trained in skills humanistic and practical; to exercise new ways of thinking; to find compatriots to join you, hand in hand, in a lifelong mission. In fact, a whole array of missions -- some of which seek changes that won't even be realized in this generation's lifetime, but are worthwhile nonetheless.

Becoming part of this place is to live and breathe and believe in an idea. If that is your dream, then welcome to Stanford.

Postscript: And damn, I recognize again and again that what "going to Stanford" means is being given the privilege -- sometimes ridiculous amounts of privilege -- to try something different in this world. For that, I am exceedingly grateful.

*Welcome to Stanford... oh this phrase. Despite my high-sounding rhetoric, I am actually quite cynical, having faced the monsters of bureaucracy and observed clear violations of the so-called sense of Stanford community. I have witnessed how laziness and moral apathy absolutely shred academic ideals, how the spirit of this place can be drowned by the weight of bureaucratic anchors. In such moments, I will tear the dream apart and point out how this institution fails in so many respects, fails on a daily basis, in ways small and large, to live up to its ethos.

The dream ... I would look for it no matter where I went; but I ultimately chose Stanford because that's where I thought it would be realized. It makes it desperately sad when this beloved place, my patria, civitas dei, city of wonder, falls short. Even today, I gag when I say the phrase "Welcome to Stanford!" because it is a beautiful, evanescent lie. Worse, it was one that I believed in so deeply, so hard, and for so long. I was devout, and sometimes I hate myself for having been that way.

But then the eternal idealist residing inside me fights back, refuses to yield, and my love for this place and what it's supposed to stand for eventually come roaring back. It's a dilemma, ain't it?

After all, alongside the failures, there are also fierce, bright flares of hope -- moments that charge me with joy and pride and belief, and renew my sense of what's possible. We run alongside the stream of ideals, dipping our hands in its cool, flowing waters; and we are lifted by freiheit, the wind of freedom, our champion and guide, an embrace that carries us home.