I’m pleased to announce that the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is launching the Institute for Rebooting Social Media, a three-year “pop-up” research initiative to address social media’s most urgent problems, including misinformation, privacy breaches, harassment, and content governance. The problems are both serious and tractable -- what’s built by people can be fixed by people. But it’s not easy, for reasons that cover the technical, the political, and the ideological. Often an approach by one person, company, or regulator depends on actions by another -- and coordination is particularly tricky.
The time-limited Institute will foster collaboration across fields to prototype interlinked policy and technical solutions; develop under-discussed ideas in current conversations around the social internet; and create accessible narratives about the realities of contemporary social media’s blessings and curses. It will build on the Center’s multi-year Assembly program, which has brought together both senior executives and early and mid career practitioners to take on difficult problems that defy disciplinary limits. You can learn more about the new Institute for Rebooting Social Media, and indicate interest in contributing, here.
We are seeking candidates for the role of Institute Director, who will join the Center’s exceptional community of scholars and practitioners, and will lead the Institute’s staff, fellows, and faculty to make a positive difference in the development of social media and online communication.
We are also looking for a leader to help the Center as a whole move forward into its next phase, seeking candidates for the role of Executive Director of the Berkman Klein Center. The Executive Director will lead and direct senior leadership, staff, and our extended community as it undertakes research, development, education, and outreach — a rare opportunity to work with and our diverse community of leaders, innovators, decision makers, students, and scholars.
We’d love for these opportunities to find their broadest audience -- please do share them with your networks. If you are interested in either role or both roles, we welcome your application. And if you have people to recommend for either role or both roles, please reach out to us.
It's been an extraordinary twenty-five year journey so far for the Berkman Klein Center. Over that time our extended community has pioneered new ideas, new institutions, and new institutional relationships, and demonstrated a capability to express those ideas in text and code, in both expert-readable and public-readable forms. We've based our multifaceted work around an ethos – a naturally evolving one, defined differently by different members of the community – of the public interest. Our work spans abstract, theoretical discussions at the cutting edge of cyber research to concrete, actionable solutions to mitigate real-life harms.
Jonathan Zittrain
Board chair, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
OPPORTUNITY: Executive Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
- Please see the announcement of the ED role here.
- To see the posting for the ED role and to apply, go here.
- Email ExecutiveDirectorRole@cyber.harvard.edu for any further questions or information or to recommend candidates.
OPPORTUNITY: Institute Director of the Institute for Rebooting Social Media at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
- Please see the announcement on the new Institute for Rebooting Social Media here.
- To see the posting for the Institute Director role and to apply, go here.
- Email InstituteDirectorRole@cyber.harvard.edu for any further questions or information or to recommend candidates.
- Fill out this form to learn about more ways to get involved.