Stanford PACS 2021: A Special Progress Report
As we weathered 2021 and the challenges that COVID-19 and the capitol riots posed to our personal, professional and civic lives, the Stanford PACS community maintained a unique dedication to our founding idea—assembling a diverse, dedicated community of researchers and leaders to thoughtfully probe both new and entrenched problems that threaten civil society.
We are deeply proud of the contributions of our faculty, staff, practitioner fellows, and student researchers. From very concrete human-focused work on homelessness, health, and anti-racism, to systems-focused work on the impacts of deceptive digital designs, reforming Big Tech, digital technologies’ impacts on democracy, and localized guides to improve philanthropy, our convenings, publications, and research initiatives continue to directly address the big questions and pressing needs of this moment
Stanford PACS by the Numbers
Events
Fellowships
Our fellowship programs and student grants exemplify our interdisciplinary orientation and commitment to increase interaction and collaboration among thinkers and practitioners. The recipients of our grants and fellowships in 2021 represented a diversity of experience and expertise and brought interesting new perspectives on topics in which there is active work underway at PACS, such as political polarization, threats to democracy, criminal justice reform, the intersection of digital rights and human rights, and environmental sustainability, to name a few.
22 Practitioner Fellows
The 2021 Practitioner Fellows came from the following regions:
East Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Europe
United States
The goal of our programs is to offer scholars and leaders the opportunity to think deeply about their work, invite critical feedback and attention from their peers and the broader PACS community, and test new ideas in a supportive environment.
Years of dedicated research and exploration underpin each of the highlighted accomplishments below, made possible in large part with the steady support of our incredible advisory board and growing community of donors. Taking on these complex issues requires a special kind of bold provocation and willingness to address uncomfortable questions. We are deeply grateful for the privilege of being supported by a community eager to explore the hardest questions with us—to achieve a stronger civil society and more meaningful philanthropy for all.
Advancing Ideas to Improve Society
Homelessness, a System Perspective
Homelessness is one of the toughest and most troubling societal challenges of our time. Researchers at PACS’ Global Innovation for Impact Lab concluded a case study that challenges common assumptions about the root causes of homelessness and narratives that put the blame on the victims themselves rather than reflecting more deeply about the architecture of our society that generates and perpetuates mass homelessness. The paper pushes us to adopt a system perspective rather than a simple solution perspective on this complex societal problem.
Anti-Racist Technologies for a Just Future
Rapidly developing technologies can be an unprecedented force for good, but too often codify and amplify existing forms of racial inequality, discrimination, and bias. On May 19-20, 2021, Stanford PACS co-hosted, along with the Stanford Center on Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) and Stanford HAI (Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence), a free, online conference that brought together researchers, policymakers, technologists, and advocates to address technology’s new threats to racial equity and new tools for a more just future. Panelists discussed a range of contemporary topics such as smart cities and racial justice, built-in bias in digital tools such as Blockchain and Digital ID, community organizing and accountability, and worker equity in digital food supply chains.
2021 China Social Innovation Summit
SSIR hosted its second virtual China Social Innovation Summit on November 16-17 (Pacific Time). The theme for the 2021 Summit was “New Connectivity Creating New Momentum: Three Pathways to Impact,” with the subtopics of “Making Business for Good the New Normal,” “Technology for Good,” and “New Power.” The China Summit was born out of the need for greater cross-cultural dialogue on social innovation, impact investment, philanthropy, and other related topics, and aims to connect leading US, Chinese, and other global scholars, philanthropists, funders, investors, business executives, and nonprofit leaders. This convening evolved out of the annual China Conference of Stanford PACS which was launched in 2012, and is produced in collaboration with the Beijing-based Leping Social Entrepreneur Foundation. The China Summit is designed to support and build the social impact sector in China by providing insights from global changemakers, as well as provide social innovators from around the world with diverse perspectives.
Proposing Interventions to Strengthen Democracy
Model Redistricting Plans to Help Redraw Congress
Draw Congress, a project developed under Stanford Law School’s Law and Policy Lab, is one of many efforts currently underway to address redistricting related issues. Sixteen law students and six Stanford undergraduate students are participating in a crash course on the difficult process of drawing congressional maps that align with the 2020 U.S. Census. The initiative is led by renowned voting expert Professor Nathaniel Persily, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford and co-director of Stanford PACS’ Program on Democracy and the Internet. The goal of this project is to educate our students and the general public about this difficult and sometimes fraught undertaking, showing how districts can be drawn in a non-partisan, legally defensible manner. We hope these maps, eventually made for all 435 U.S. House districts, will show how communities can be fairly represented and, unlike most incumbent-drawn maps, be transparent about redistricting decisions.
The Platform Transparency and Accountability Act
In December 2021, new legislation was introduced to increase transparency and give researchers access to critical data gathered by social media platforms in order to gain insight into key societal issues. The legislation was informed by the October testimony, “Social Media Platforms and the Amplification of Domestic Extremism and Other Harmful Content,” provided by Professor Nathaniel Persily, Stanford Law professor and co-director of Stanford PACS’ Program on Democracy and the Internet, and presented before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The legislation represents a critical step in holding large social media platforms accountable and allows researchers and policy makers deeper insight into challenges threatening democracy.
Developing Frameworks for Public Interest Technology
System Error:Where Big Tech Went Wrong And How We Can Reboot
Stanford PACS faculty co-director Rob Reich, along with fellow Stanford professors Jeremy Weinstein and Mehran Sahami, authored a forward-thinking manifesto that has received much attention both within and outside academia. System Error reveals how Big Tech’s obsession with optimization and efficiency has sacrificed fundamental human values and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves. The book was reviewed by leading publications including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and the authors were interviewed by NPR and featured in the New Yorker.
Expanding Resources to Improve Philanthropy
The Guide to Effective Philanthropy for Latin America
Stanford PACS’ Effective Philanthropy Learning Initiative partnered with the Center for Philanthropy and Social Investments (CEFIS) at Universidad Adolfo Ibanez to launch the Guide to Effective Philanthropy for Latin America. This initiative was supported by the Chilean Family Business Association (AEF) and Goldman Sachs and is intended to advance the ongoing work in the region to highlight the role of philanthropy and social investments in strengthening civil society.
How We Give Now
Stanford PACS Senior Research Scholar Lucy Bernholz published a new book that draws on the voices of ordinary people across the country to spotlight the everyday ways that we give to and participate in our communities. How We Give Now is a call to re-imagine what we include in what is called philanthropy, since people do a whole lot more than just give money to charity.
Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society: Blueprint 2022
Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society: Blueprint is an annual industry forecast about the ways we use private resources for public benefit in the digital age. Each year, the Blueprint provides an overview of the current landscape, points to big ideas that matter, and directs your attention to horizons where you can expect some important breakthroughs in the coming year.
Published in December 2021, the 2022 edition is organized around an appeal to the philanthropy sector on behalf of civil society to abandon existing practices that are preventing many of the changes that philanthropic organizations and individuals purport to pursue. It calls for philanthropy to examine its role in preserving the status quo rather than advancing change and offers a blueprint for reform in the sector.
Philanthropy Innovation Summit 2021
The Philanthropy Innovation Summit is a signature event of Stanford PACS, designed exclusively for individual and family philanthropists. The Summit and related convenings focus on peer learning with top leaders and experts in the field of philanthropy and social innovation and are intended to provide participants with the tools and actionable resources to create meaningful social change.
The 2021 Summit was a virtual half-day event that combined high-level plenaries with small group sessions and explored some of the most pressing issues of our time in a carefully curated, non-solicitation environment. Speakers included Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Dr. Judith Rodin, David Siegel, Darren Walker, and Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, among others, and covered a wide range of topics such as global COVID-19 response, public interest technology, climate philanthropy, and investing in mental health.