Cross-posted from The Amani Institute Blog.

If you’ve been reading the news much in America this past year (or talking to me at all), you’ve likely heard about the current crisis in higher education. And the doomsayers are no light-weights. They include The Economist wondering if American universities will become like its car companies,  …

Editor’s note: Dr. Matthew Levinger is a guest author and as such his views do not necessarily reflect the institutional or personal views of TechChange or its staff. His course is not directly associated with TechChange in any way and is being offered in as part of the US Institute of Peace training  academy.

The advance of information and communication technologies over the past decade …

The story that follows is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM), whose working conclusion is that the riots that occurred on September 11th and 12th, 2011, taking  seven lives and causing 65 injuries on the small island of Ambon, Indonesia, may have been intentionally provoked by certain parties through text message rumors.

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Mini Biography

Adam Papendieck has an MPH from Tulane University and a technical background in GIS, Statistics and Information Systems.  He is currently the Sr. Program Manager for Technology at the Payson Center for International Development at Tulane University, where his role is to leverage appropriate and innovative information technologies in support of research projects, funded Public Health capacity-building projects in East Africa, and crisis informatics activities with the  …

After 40 years of rule, Colonel Gaddafi is gone.  Reports say he was killed today in a military offensive in Sirte, Libya after a protracted insurgency that was backed by NATO forces.  While there is room for a conversation about NATO’s actions, whether they’re an example of Responsibility to Protect doctrine, and normative questions of supporting violence.  In the immediate though, history tells us that the …

The end of September 2011 witnessed scattered renewed protests in Sudan against the hike in prices of food and other basic necessities. There is hope that these “food protests” can be a game changer for Sudan’s citizens if we take the time to learn from recent mistakes and from the successes of others.

Cross-posted from The Stanford Social Innovation Review by Roshan Paul and Alexa Clay

This is the second in a series of interviews where we speak with leading innovators who are appropriating lessons from open source thinking—once purely the domain of the software engineer—for social change.

Stephen Friend is an Ashoka Fellow in the United States working to …