Stanford Courses & Seminars

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to drive us towards a better future for all of humanity, but it also comes with significant risks and challenges. At its best, AI can help humans mitigate climate change, diagnose and treat diseases more effectively, enhance learning, and improve access to capital throughout...

A workshop devoted to new ways of measuring and monitoring poverty and critiquing and improving ongoing research projects at the Center on Poverty and Inequality. We discuss new inequality-reducing interventions, new ways of measuring and monitoring inequality, and new ways to evaluate inequality-reducing programs.

Social, cultural, political, economic, and international factors affecting the development and consolidation of democracy in historical and comparative perspective. Individual country experiences with democracy, democratization, and regime performance. Emphasis is on global third wave of democratization beginning in the mid-1970s, the recent global recession of democracy (including the rise of...

This course is intended for Master's-level students who seek to engage with humanity's great sustainability challenges by creating and scaling a successful organization. The course material deals with both the transformation of existing organizations to succeed by being more sustainable, and with 'ecopreneurship' - the creation of a new organization...

Deep disagreement pervades our democracy, from arguments over issues ranging from foreign policy, free speech, and reparations to college admissions policy and the professionalization of college athletics. Loud voices drown out discussion. Open-mindedness, humility, and critical thinking seem in short supply among politicians, citizens, and other residents alike. Yet constructive...

What should educational leaders do when students use divisive or even violent political rhetoric in classrooms, dorms, or public spaces? Should teachers stop assigning essays in a genAI era-and if so, what should they teach instead? This course addresses challenging ethical issues in educational policy and practice from early childhood...

This one-credit skills course supports students undertaking public policy analysis projects in the Law & Policy Lab and in other policy-based courses. The course introduces basic policy methods and approaches common to Policy Lab practicums and policy analysis in general. Students from across the university are invited to join. The...

The course will survey our planet's greatest sustainability challenges, and some of the possible ways that humankind might overcome each. The course material will include introductory-level science, social science, and business studies material, and give students a basic understanding of the global biological, cultural, social, and economic processes involved in...

Examination of recent developments in computing technology and platforms through the lenses of philosophy, public policy, social science, and engineering. Course is organized around four main units: algorithmic decision-making and bias; data privacy and civil liberties; the power of private computing platforms; and the impact of generative AI. Each unit...

This short course (five weeks) is an introduction to the field of political ecology (PE), an interdisciplinary social science that examines how political, economic, and social forces shape environmental issues and access to resources. Scholars in the field emphasize the role of power, colonial legacies, and uneven development in environmental...

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time: Renaissance-Florence, Transnational-Accra, Imperial Beijing. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect...

Education policy, politics, and development. Topics include: politics, interests, institutions, policy, and civil society; how schools and school systems operate as political systems; how policy making occurs in educational systems; and theories of development.

This lab-based course provides hands-on experience with collecting, cleaning, and analyzing cross-national education reform data using the World Education Reform Database (WERD) (See more at https://werd.stanford.edu/). It is appropriate for students of any level who want to gain experience with collaborative, team-based research about global education reform, and may be...

The regulation of artificial intelligence may present the most pressing policy issue of our time. AI represents more than just a technology or tool; it promises to revolutionize the economy and all social systems. Governments around the world are struggling to keep up with the fast pace of AI development...

Our species is facing accelerating environmental challenges, from unmitigated climate change to biodiversity loss, with consequences for human well-being. While research on these topics has traditionally emerged from siloed disciplines, there is a growing recognition that the solutions to these intersecting crises will require cross-disciplinary and multi-level perspectives that span...

This course introduces the role of institutions (e.g. legal, political, social, economic) in creating the problems and solutions of sustainability. This is the third course in the core sequence for the Environmental Behavioral Sciences track of the Environmental Social Sciences PhD program.

This course is intended to give students a basic understanding of the themes in the legal regulation of elections and politics. We will cover all the major Supreme Court cases on topics of voting rights, reapportionment/redistricting, ballot access, regulation of political parties, campaign finance, and the 2000 presidential election controversy...

The institutions and practices of mass media, including television, film, radio, and digital media, and their role in shaping culture and social life. The media's shifting relationships to politics, commerce, and identity.

Over the past several decades nonprofit organizations have become increasingly central entities in society, and with this growing status and importance their roles are increasingly complex.We consider the social, political and economic dynamics of philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, focusing mainly (but not exclusively) on the US. The class is...

This course teaches students how to pursue social change through philanthropy with a focus on sustainable development. Students learn about the approaches, history, and key debates in philanthropy, and apply their knowledge by collaboratively making a substantial class contribution to one or more select nonprofit organizations. This class responds to...