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Luncheon Series

The Berkman Klein Center Luncheon Series is a weekly forum designed to engage diverse community members—including academics, entrepreneurs, students, lawyers, fellows, architects, designers, visionaries and others—in conversations about cutting-edge Internet issues and research. It is free and open to the public.

As an established university-wide research center, the Berkman Klein Center convenes a unique mix of individuals working on cross-cutting and interdisciplinary issues applicable to the Internet, technology, and its impact and effects on society. We invite internal and external speakers to engage with a wide spectrum of Net issues, including governance, privacy, intellectual property, antitrust, content control, and electronic commerce. We aim to include leading thinkers and practitioners in the ICT space—broadly defined—to use the opportunity to advance research, share developing projects, and consider governance and policy questions.

The luncheon discussions are focused on inquiry, dialogue, and collaboration. Each session features a guest presenter who offers an issue, a provocation, or a problem as a discussion input, and who engages our community to help further research, inform policy, and/or challenge assumptions. Our hope is to facilitate conversations regarding the challenges and opportunities that technology can provide and its capacity to inform practice and theory, bridge communities and support the public interest.

Explore our past events below, and subscribe to stay updated on all of our in-person events and live webcasts.


Events 88

Mar 31, 2020 @ 1:00 PM

Virtual Event: In Principle and in Practice

VIDEO & PODCAST: Featuring Jessica Fjeld and Ryan Budish

VIDEO & PODCAST: A conversation about AI principles

Mar 17, 2020 @ 12:00 PM

[Canceled] Tech and Human Rights

A Queer Dating Apps Case Study

This event has been canceled but may be rescheduled.

Mar 3, 2020 @ 12:00 PM

All Data Are Local

VIDEO & PODCAST: Thinking Critically in a Data-Driven Society

VIDEO & PODCAST: How to analyze data settings rather than data sets, acknowledging the meaning-making power of the local.

Feb 18, 2020 @ 12:00 PM

"Everything is better with better broadband" featuring Christopher Ali

VIDEO & PODCAST: Broadband deployment in rural America

VIDEO & PODCAST: The United States spends $6billion a year on rural broadband deployment, and yet the digital divide may be growing. Where is this money going?

Event
Feb 12, 2020 @ 5:00 PM

From JD to Data Science: A Case Study in AI and Law

Co-Hosted with the Harvard Data Science Initiative

Zac Kriegman describes his path from a Harvard JD to a data science career focused on deep learning.

Feb 4, 2020 @ 12:00 PM

Advancing Racial Literacy in Tech

Featuring Dr. Howard Stevenson

Part of the BKC Luncheon Series

Event
Nov 19, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

Sharenthood: How Parents, Teachers, and Other Trusted Adults Harm Youth Privacy & Opportunity

Featuring Leah Plunkett

VIDEO & PODCAST: How and why adults should not (or should) share information about kids and teens through digital technologies

Oct 29, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

North of Havana: A Lawyer's Truth

Featuring Martin Garbus

VIDEO & PODCAST: Martin Garbus discusses his most challenging case: representing five Cuban spies marooned in the U.S. prison system.

Event
Oct 22, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

Conversion Via Twitter

FEATURING MEGAN PHELPS-ROPER AND BRITTAN HELLER

VIDEO & PODCAST: A discussion about Megan Phelps-Roper's book Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church.

Event
Sep 24, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

A New Jim Code?

Featuring Ruha Benjamin on Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life

VIDEO & PODCAST: Ruha Benjamin presents the concept of the “New Jim Code" to explore a range of discriminatory designs that encode inequity: by explicitly amplifying racial…

Event
Sep 10, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

Can Tech be Governed?

BKC Luncheon Series: Public Kickoff featuring Jonathan Zittrain

VIDEO & PODCAST: How different is this technology from what preceded it, and do we need new ways to govern it? If so, how would they come about?

Event
May 21, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

Auditing for Bias in Resume Search Engines

with Christo Wilson, Associate Professor Northeastern University

VIDEO & PODCAST: Are the algorithms that surface and rank your resume for job recruiters biased with respect to gender?

May 7, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

IGNITE Talks at BKC

Featuring members of the BKC Community

PODCAST & VIDEO: Berkman Klein community members will share their research, passions, and musings in 5 minute Ignite talks. These topics may range from misinformation online to…

Event
Apr 23, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

How to Work with Tech Companies on Human Rights

Insights from a decade of multi-stakeholder collaboration (and an argument with Steve Jobs)

PODCAST & VIDEO: In conversation with Chinmayi Arun, David Sullivan draws upon a decade of work with technology companies (and a heated argument with Steve Jobs) to offer insights…

Event
Apr 16, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

Dirty Data, Bad Predictions

How Civil Rights Violations Impact Police Data, Predictive Policing Systems and Society

PODCAST & VIDEO: An examination of the data provenance of police data commonly used in predictive policing system.

Apr 9, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

Constitutionalizing Speech Platforms

Featuring Kate Klonick and Thomas Kadri with members of the BKC community

PODCAST & VIDEO: We're never going to get a global set of norms for online speech but do the platforms pick our global values and constitutionalize them? Something to tie them to…

Event
Apr 2, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

Machines Learning to Find Injustice

Featuring HLS Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law, Ryan Copus

VIDEO & PODCAST: Can we find a responsible, ethical, and transparent way to leverage the power of predictive algorithms in our justice systems?

Event
Mar 12, 2019 @ 12:30 PM

Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics

How the Internet Era is Transforming Kenya

PODCAST & VIDEO: Join us for a conversation with author Nanjala Nyabola and 2017 Berkman Klein Fellow Grace Mutung'u about Nanjala's book, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics:…

Event
Mar 5, 2019 @ 12:15 PM

Privacy’s Blueprint

The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies

PODCAST & VIDEO: The dominant model for regulating privacy focuses on giving people control over their information and regulating data practices. This focus ignores the role that…

Event
Feb 26, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

Goodbye California?

The New Tech Worker Movement

VIDEO & PODCAST: In the past years, workers across the tech industry have engaged in an unprecedented series of actions challenging their companies. What do these actions mean-…

Event
Feb 19, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

The Smart Enough City

Putting Technology in Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future

VIDEO & PODCAST: Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity.

Event
Feb 5, 2019 @ 12:00 PM

A History of the Internet

featuring Scott Bradner

VIDEO & PODCAST: Why has the Internet had such a powerful impact? What are the challenges that may cause the Internet of tomorrow to be significantly less revolutionary than the…

Event
Dec 4, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

“My Constellation is Space”: Towards a Theory of Black Cyberculture

Featuring Dr. André L. Brock, Georgia Tech

VIDEO & PODCAST: Utilizing critical technocultural discourse analysis, Afro-optimism, and libidinal economic theory, Dr. Andre Brock employs Black Twitter as an exemplar of Black…

Event
Nov 27, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Computer Simulations to Enhance Vaccine Trials

a Digital Health @ Harvard Talk

VIDEO & PODCAST: On the ethics of vaccine trials in emergencies and epidemics, as well as work on computer simulation of vaccine trials

Event
Nov 13, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Re-Engineering Humanity

VIDEO & PODCAST: Re-Engineering Humanity brings a pragmatic if somewhat dystopic perspective to the technological phenomena of our age. Humans are learning machines and we learn…

Event
Nov 6, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

The State of Government Technology

Assessing Government Development, Deployment, and Use of Tech Tools

VIDEO & PODCAST: A close look at the inner workings of government, with a particular focus on the ways in which federal, state, and local government institutions leverage…

Event
Oct 30, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Custodians of the Internet

Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions that Shape Social Media

Event
Oct 23, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Automating Inequality

How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

Podcast & Video: In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and…

Event
Oct 16, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Determining Disability

Medicaid work requirements and what the limits of digital health mean for recipients, providers, and states

Event
Oct 9, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Open Data, Grey Data, and Stewardship

Universities at the Privacy Frontier

Video & Podcast: Universities produce and consume vast amounts of data for research, teaching, service, and operational purposes. While extremely valuable to universities and…

Oct 2, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Software for the Social Good

with the BKC Geek Team & friends

VIDEO & PODCAST: Learn how the Berkman Klein Center's geek team builds the amazing tools that help us study the Internet and advance the public interest.

Event
Sep 25, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

"Click Here to Kill Everybody"

A BKC Book Talk

VIDEO & PODCAST: Bruce Schneier on his new book "Click Here to Kill Everybody"

Sep 18, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Platforms, Politics, and Power

Understanding and Shaping the Internet in 2018

VIDEO & PODCAST: Jonathan Zittrain on platforms and society

Sep 11, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Antisocial Media

How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy

Siva Vaidhyanathan discusses his new book

Event
May 22, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Art that Imitates Art

Computational Creativity and Creative Contracting

Copyright in AI-generated works, the need for a shared understanding of what is and isn’t up for grabs in a license, and how forward-thinking contracts can prevent AI developers…

May 15, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Shaping Consumption

How Social Network Manipulation Tactics Are Impacting Amazon and Influencing Consumers

Narrative manipulation issues are increasingly well-documented problems affecting the entire social ecosystem.

Event
May 8, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Governance and Regulation in the land of Crypto-Securities (as told by CryptoKitties)

featuring founding members, Dieter Shirley and Alex Shih

Join founding members of the CryptoKitties team, Dieter Shirley and Alex Shih, as they discuss the unique governance, legal, and regulatory challenges of putting cats on the…

Event
Apr 23, 2018 @ 4:00 PM

Blockchain and the Law

The Rule of Code

Blockchain technology is ultimately a dual-edge technology that can be used to either support or supplant the law. This talk looks at the impact of blockchain technology of a…

Event
Apr 17, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Honoring All Expertise: Social Responsibility and Ethics in Tech

featuring Kathy Pham & Friends from the Berkman Klein Community

Learn more about social responsibility and ethics in tech from cross functional perspectives featuring social scientists, computer scientists, historians, lawyers, political…

Apr 10, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Tales from the Public Domain

James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins discuss "Theft! A History of Music"

Event
Apr 9, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Remedies for Cyber Defamation

Criminal Libel, Anti-Speech Injunctions, Forgeries, Frauds, and More

“Cheap speech” has massively increased ordinary people’s access to mass communications -- both for good and for ill. How has the system of remedies for defamatory, privacy…

Event
Apr 3, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

The Right of Publicity

Privacy Reimagined for a Public World

Jennifer E. Rothman discusses her book, The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World (Harvard University Press 2018). She challenges the conventional story of the…

Event
Mar 27, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Dividing Lines

Why Is Internet Access Still Considered a Luxury in America?

Internet access is a major social and economic justice issue of our time. Dividing Lines, a four-part documentary video series, sheds a light on who is being left behind as big…

Event
Mar 6, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

The Accuracy, Fairness, and Limits of Predicting Recidivism

featuring Julia Dressel

COMPAS is a software used across the country to predict who will commit future crimes. It doesn’t perform any better than untrained people who responded to an online survey.

Event
Feb 27, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

The Global Lives Project and Platforms for Building Empathy & Connection

featuring founder and Executive Director, David Harris

How can a multimedia project build empathy and connect the experiences of humanity around the globe?

Event
Feb 13, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Media Migration, Signage, and Smoked Fish

the Library Consortium as Studio, Platform, and Metacommunity

In this talk, Nate will give an overview of the programs at METRO/599, talk about the challenges associated with this organizational recalibration, seek input and ideas from the…

Event
Feb 6, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Health Care Costs and Transparency

featuring John Freedman, President & CEO of Freedman HealthCare

Health spending continues to outpace wages and GDP, while some new insurance designs transfer greater shares of that to patients’ own out of pocket costs. What is driving health…

Event
Jan 30, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

The “Monkey Selfie” Case: Can Non-Humans Hold Copyrights?

featuring a panel of experts on copyright, cyber law, and intermediary liability issues

Can non-human animals own copyrights? Can artificial intelligence machines? Join the Berkman Klein Center, the Harvard Law School Animal Law & Policy Program, and the HLS Student…

Event
Jan 23, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

The Dark Side of the Networked Public Sphere

featuring Jonas Kaiser, Berkman Klein Affiliate

In this talk, Berkman Klein affiliate Jonas Kaiser will share some of his research on the networked public sphere. "The right-wing is rising. Not only in the United States but…

Event
Jan 16, 2018 @ 12:00 PM

Who Owns Your Ideas and How Does Creativity Happen?

A Conversation with Professor Orly Lobel

Who owns your ideas? How are cultural icons created and who gets to control their image and message? Orly Lobel’s new book You Don’t Own Me is about how intellectual property both…

Event
Dec 12, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

A Pessimist’s Guide to the Future of Technology

featuring Dr. Ian Bogost, Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Two decades of technological optimism in computing have proven foolhardy. Let’s talk about new ways to anticipate what might go right and wrong, using a technology that has not…

Event
Dec 5, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Black Users, Enclaving, and Methodological Challenges in a Shifting Digital Landscape

featuring Sarah Florini, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, Department of English Arizona State University

Researchers often consider the technological practices of Black Americans for insight into race and cultural production. But, Black users are regularly at the digital vanguard,…

Event
Nov 28, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation

featuring Dennis Tenen, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University

Computers—from electronic books to smart phones—play an active role in our social lives. Our technological choices thus entail theoretical and political commitments. Dennis Tenen…

Event
Nov 21, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Badges of Oppression, Positions of Strength

Digital Black Feminist Discourse and the Legacy of Black Women’s Technology Use

The use of online technology by black feminist thinkers has changed the principles, praxis, and product of black feminist writing and simultaneously has changed the technologies…

Nov 14, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Digital Justice: Technology and the Internet of Disputes

featuring author Ethan Katsh

Our society is blessed with new technologies yet also burdened with numerous and novel disputes as they are used. In his new book Digital Justice: Technology and the Internet of…

Event
Nov 7, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Study Card to Playlist: the Social Life of the Course Catalog

Curricle with Professor Jeffrey Schnapp, metaLAB Harvard

Visualized, annotated, connected: what should the course catalog look like in the 21st century? In this ​participatory lunch talk, members of metaLAB's Curricle team will share…

Event
Oct 31, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

The March for Science: How a viral moment starts a movement

with public health researcher and educator Caroline Weinberg, MD, MPH

The March for Science went viral when it was nothing more than a name -- the very idea of a movement in defense of science in policy was enough to ignite the passion of more than…

Event
Oct 24, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

How the Networked Age is Changing Humanitarian Disasters

How is technology changing humanitarian crises? Is information humanitarian aid? Do we need a new Geneva Convention for cyberwarfare?

Oct 17, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Will Wikipedia exist in 20 years?

Featuring Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, in conversation with Harvard Law School Professor Yochai Benkler

Join us for a stimulating conversation highlighting different perspectives of the question, "Will Wikipedia exist in 20 years?"

Event
Oct 10, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

HUBweek 2017: Programming the Future of AI

Ethics, Governance, and Justice

How do we prepare court systems, judges, lawyers, and defendants to interact with autonomous systems? What are the potential societal costs to human autonomy, dignity, and due…

Event
Sep 19, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

The Line Between Hate and Debate

featuring Monika Bickert, Facebook’s Head of Global Policy Management in conversation with Professor Jonathan Zittrain

As society figures out what is acceptable and what is harmful, can technology play a role in improving online debate?

Event
Sep 12, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Technology for the Social Good

featuring Jonathan Zittrain

If you’re interested in connecting with the Berkman Klein Center's research, community, and events, or are just generally interested in digital technologies and their impact on…

Event
May 23, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Can We Talk?

An Open Forum on Disability, Technology, and Inclusion

This event was co-hosted by the Berkman Klein Center…

Event
May 16, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

How to regulate the future of finance?

featuring John Schindler from the Federal Reserve, Jeff Bandman from the CFTC, and Valerie Szczepanik from the SEC

Event Description US market regulators offer…

Event
May 9, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Twitter and Tear Gas with Zeynep Tufekci

The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest

Join us for this firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements’ greatest strengths and frequent challenges.

Event
May 2, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

The Quantified Worker

with Berkman Klein Fellow, Ifeoma Ajunwa

To apply to Futurecorp, please submit your resume, list of references, and a genetic profile. Once hired, we'll make an appointment for you to receive a sub-dermal tracking…

Event
Apr 25, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Digital Expungement

Rehabilitation in the Digital Age

Can digital technology lead to the extinction of criminal rehabilitation? How should policymakers strike a balance between protecting civil rights and public safety while ensuring…

Event
Apr 18, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Internet Access as a Basic Service

Inspiration from our Canadian Neighbors

Join the Berkman Klein Center and the HLS Canadian Law Student Association as Mr. Blais speaks about broadband, internet, and the future of connectivity in Canada and around the…

Event
Apr 11, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

AI & Society

featuring Joi Ito and Iyad Rahwan of the MIT Media Lab

ISIS. Trump. Uber. The 1%. What if all these phenomena reflect the same forces? What if you could understand those forces?

Event
Apr 4, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Algorithmic Consumers

with Professors Michal Gal, University of Haifa, and Niva Elkin-Koren, Visting Professor of Law at HLS

Hate shopping? The next generation of e-commerce will be conducted by digital agents, based on algorithms that will not only make purchase recommendations, but will also predict…

Event
Mar 28, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Virtual Competition

The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy

The changing market reality is already shifting power into the hands of the few. Join us to explore the resulting risks to competition, our democratic ideals, and our economic and…

Mar 21, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

The Things of the Internet

with Berkman Klein Fellow, An Xiao” Mina

What sorts of objects do new forms of hardware culture enable, and what role does the internet now play in all steps along the way, from ideation to sales to manufacturing to…

Event
Mar 14, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

An Introduction to Media Cloud

Mapping the attention and influence of news

The recent US election, and related conversations about misinformation, have brought questions about media influence to the forefront of internet research and communications…

Event
Mar 7, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Embedded Dangers

Revisiting the Year 2000 Problem and the Politics of Technological Repair

What really happened in the Y2K crisis and did it matter? With a growing consensus that the United States is in a state of infrastructural crisis, the Y2K bug and its aftermath…

Event
Feb 28, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Five Global Challenges and the Role of University

Berkman Faculty Associate, Juan Carlos De Martin with Berkman Klein founder, Charlie Nesson

Five global, complex, interrelated and to some extent unprecedented challenges: in the coming years what can universities do to support society in addressing them?

Event
Feb 21, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Internet Designers as Policy-Makers

Sandra Braman, Abbott Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University

Those responsible for technical design of the Internet are…

Event
Feb 14, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Hyperloop Law: Autonomy, Infrastructure, and Transportation Startups

featuring General Counsel of Hyperloop One, Marvin Ammori

The future of transportation may include Google's autonomous vehicles, Uber's flying cars, and Amazon's delivery drones--all bound together by a high-speed hyperloop backbone. You…

Event
Feb 7, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Bottom-up Constitutionalism: The Case of Net Neutrality

with Christoph Graber, Berkman Klein Faculty Associate

Can we observe the emergence of a new fundamental right that is protecting the Internet? Can such a constitutionalisation process originate from civil society?

Jan 31, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Not Bugs, But Features

Hopeful Institutions and Technologies of Inequality

How did we learn that we need to learn to code—or else? This talk draws on an ethnography of a library system amidst a massive digital transition, tracing how strained public…

Event
Jan 10, 2017 @ 12:00 PM

Examining Black Feminism in the Digital Era

with Berkman Klein Fellow, Kishonna L. Gray

Using Black women’s innovative use of digital technologies via the hashtag, via reappropriating imagery, via facebook pages and gaming, Kishonna L. Gray highlights examples…

Dec 2, 2016 @ 9:00 AM

Algorithms, Law and Society: Building Rights for a Digital Era

December 2, 2016, 9:00 am - 12:00 pm Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Harvard Law…

Nov 29, 2016 @ 12:00 PM

Technology, Disruption, and the Practice of Law: Will the Profession Survive?

with special guests, Raj Goyle and Ari Shahdadi

Join us with special guests, Raj Goyle and Ari Shahadi

Oct 25, 2016 @ 12:00 PM

Tim Wu - The Battle for Our Attention

Shorenstein Center Speaker Series

Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate, and professor at Columbia Law School, and director of the Poliak Center for the study of First Amendment Issues at Columbia Journalism School…

Sep 7, 2010 @ 6:00 PM

Berkman Center Fall 2010 Open House

Come to our Open House to meet Berkman faculty, fellows, and staff and to learn about the Center's current activities and ways you can get involved...

Apr 14, 2009 @ 12:30 PM

The Internet Governance Model as Seen from an Eastern European Perspective

Veni Markovski

Veni Markovski presents at the Berkman Center Luncheon Series.

Mar 17, 2009 @ 12:30 PM

The role of non-monetary incentives in crowdsourcing and social production projects

Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine

Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine will present at the Berkman Luncheon Series on non-monetary incentives in crowdsourcing and social production projects.

Nov 27, 2007 @ 12:30 PM

When the Decentralized and Democratized Internet Meets China

Michael Anti, New York Times Beijing Bureau and Nieman Fellow

Michael Anti of the New York Times Beijing Bureau and a Nieman Fellow, led a discussion on free speech and the Internet in China.

Oct 1, 2003 @ 12:30 PM

The Oxford Internet Institute Experience

Karen Coppock, Urs Gasser and Nimrod Kozlovski

Berkman Luncheon Series: 10/1/03 Karen Coppock, Urs Gasser and Nimrod Kozlovski on the Oxford Internet Institute Experience