CLAS Events > Upcoming Events

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Tuesday, September 23, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

STEVE HABER, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

“Do Natural Resources Fuel Authoritarianism: A Reappraisal of the Resource Curse”

This paper, coauthored with Victor Menaldo (Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford Dept of Political Science), develops unique time series datasets to address a question that has long interested political economists: whether, and to what extent, economic dependence on oil and minerals has a causal relationship to authoritarian government.

Steve Haber's research focuses on the relationship between political organization and economic growth, primarily in Latin America, and in particular in Mexico and Brazil. Haber is the A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Science and the director of the Social Science History Institute at Stanford University. He is also the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Research Economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, as well as a senior fellow at both the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Center for International Development.

Friday, September 26, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
12:00 PM

Dr. SIMON SCHWARTZMAN, President, Instituto de Estudos do Trabalho e Sociedade, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“Brazilian Education at the Crossroads”

Brazilian education expanded in the 1990s, and today most children are able to get to school and remain there for several years. Illiteracy is falling and is mostly restricted now to the poorer and older population. However, a large number of youngsters leave school at ages 13-15, secondary education has stagnated, and the quality of basic education, as measured by national and international assessments such as PISA, is very low, and many students remain functionally illiterate in spite of years of schooling. Several policies have been tried in the last several years to deal with this situation, but none seems to be working. In the presentation, some of these policies will be discussed, and some better approaches will be suggested.

Simon Schwartzman, born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, is a researcher for and the current President of the Instituto de Estudos do Trabalho e Sociedade in Rio de Janeiro. He previously served as President of the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE, 1994-98) and as Director for Brasil of the American Institutes for Research (1999-2002). Having studied sociology, political science, and public administration at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (1961); Schwartzman then earned a masters degree in Sociology from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Santiago, Chile (1963) and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley (1973). Dr. Schwartzman has been a professor of Political Science at the Universidade de São Paulo and at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. He has also held posts as a visiting professor or scholar at numerous institutions, including École Pratique des Autes Études in Paris (1982-83), University of California, Berkeley (1985), Columbia University (1986), St. Anthony's College, Oxford (1994), Stanford University (2001), and Harvard University (2004). In 1996, he was awarded the Great Cross of the Brazilian National Order of Scientific Merit.

Tuesday, September 30, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

STEVE REIFENBERG, Program Director, Chile Regional Office, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies

“Santiago's Children: What I Learned about Life at an Orphanage in Chile”

The presentation will be based on Mr. Reifenberg's book with the same title, published by the University of Texas Press in April 2008. While tracking the lives of several children with whom Mr. Reifenberg lived at an orphanage in Santiago, Chile in the early 1980s, the book also explores the broader political and economic conditions of the time. For more information, visit www.santiagoschildren.com.

Steve Reifenberg is Program Director of the Chile Regional Office of Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. He was DRCLAS's Executive Director from 1996 - 2002. Reifenberg is the former Program Director for Latin America of the Conflict Management Group (CMG), an international non-profit organization created from the Harvard Negotiation Project at the Harvard Law School. He has also served as the Director of the Edward S. Mason Program in Public Policy and Management, jointly administered by the Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Institute for International Development. Reifenberg holds graduate degrees in Public Policy (Harvard) and in Print Journalism (Boston University).

Tuesday, October 21, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

ANNETTE HESTER

“Energy Policy in Brazil”

Annette Hester is an independent scholar, economist, and writer specializing in Canadian foreign trade policy, Latin American economics and politics, and hemispheric integration, particularly regarding the energy sector. She was the founding Director of the Latin American Research Centre (LARC) at the University of Calgary, and she currently works in association with a number of research institutions including the the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. and the Centre d'études interaméricaines at Université Laval. Ms. Hester writes for a variety of academic, trade, and news publications, and she has provided consulting services to governmental agencies and energy companies throughout the Americas.

Tuesday, October 28, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

RICHARD BOLY, National Security Affairs Fellow, Hoover Institution

“Promoting Entrepreneurial Economies in Latin America”

Richard Boly has been an American diplomat since 1994. He is a recipient of the Cobb Award for commercial diplomacy, and he has served in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Paraguay, Italy, and Washington, D.C., where he worked on US-EU economic issues. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Richard started a shrimp hatchery in Ecuador, worked as a consultant with the Inter-American Development Bank, and raised money for charities in Silicon Valley and New York City. He holds a BA from Stanford University and a Masters from the University of California, San Diego.

Tuesday, November 4, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

Dr. ALFONSO VALENZUELA-AGUILERA,

“The Electronic Eyes of Justice: Surveillance, Territory and the Rule of
Law in Mexico City”

Professor Valenzuela-Aguilera will address the role in which legal
frameworks and perceived norms shape the social control of space in Mexico
City. He will examine the classic prevention/intervention/suppression
model that has framed our thinking on crime as well as the role that
mainstream surveillance policies are having within the urban realm.

Alfonso Valenzuela-Aguilera is Professor of Urban Planning at the
Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos and UNAM and a Visiting Scholar
at the Institute for Urban and Regional Development at UC Berkeley. He was
awarded the 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship for Latin America and the
Caribbean.

Tuesday, November 11, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

Dr. NICOLE VON GERMETEN, Assistant Professor of History, Oregon State University

“Prostitution and the Captain's Wife: A Public and Notorious Scandal in Eighteenth-Century Cartagena de Indias ”

While the city of Cartagena de Indias was threatened by England’s expanding power in the Caribbean, it also experienced the dishonor and shame of a sex scandal, at the center of which was a heroic veteran of the English invasion of Cartagena in 1741. This presentation draws from a work in progress that explores how colonial ideologies were in constant negotiation with local interests in Cartagena de Indias. Analysis of a wide range of archival documents will bring to life the many voices that contributed to a distinct imagined vision of the city.

Nicole von Germeten holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Oregon State University. She has published two books: Black Blood Brothers: Confraternities and Social Mobility for Afromexicans, and an annotated translation of Alonso de Sandoval’s 1627 De Instauranda Aethiopum Salute, the earliest known book-length study of African slavery in the Americas.

Tuesday, December 2, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

Dr. MAURO GALETTI, Tinker Visiting Profesor in Latin American Studies, Stanford University

“Living in an Empty Forest: Hunting and Fragmentation as the Major Drivers for Mammal Extinction in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil”

Mauro Galetti received his Bachelors degree in Biology (1990) and his Masters degree in Ecology (1992) at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). After receiving his Ph.D. from Cambridge University (1996), he moved to Indonesia to study seed dispersal by hornbills and mammals. In 1997, he returned to Brazil and founded the Plant Phenology and Seed Dispersal Research Group at Universidade Estadual Paulista at Rio Claro in São Paulo State. Since 2002, Dr. Galetti has been a Visiting Scientist at Integrative Ecology Group at Consejo de Investigaciones Cientificas in Seville, Spain. In 2006, he, along with other colleagues, received the Zayed International Prize for Scientific Achievements in the Environment for the Millenium Assessment book. Dr. Galetti’s research strives to understand complex interactions between fruit-eating animals (frugivores) and plants and the impact of human activities, including forest fragmentation, poaching, and more recently global warming, on biodiversity loss. His major study sites are in the Pantanal and in the Atlantic rain forest.