Harvard Furthers Internet Research
Berkman Center to Broaden Study Scope
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, originally established as a research center at Harvard Law School, has been elevated to a university-wide, interfaculty initiative: the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. This transition enhances the University’s capacity for interdisciplinary exploration of issues involving information technology.
“All of us at the Law School share a sense of pride in the Berkman Center's spectacular rise and the impact the center's faculty, fellows, and students have had in the field of law and technology,” said Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan.
Kagan made the announcement in her opening speech at Berkman@10, a conference held on May 15-16 at Harvard Law School examining various scenarios regarding the future of the Internet. The event was attended by numerous academics and industry personnel including John Perry Barlow, Scott Bradner, and Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.
“By becoming an interfaculty initiative at Harvard, the Berkman Center will expand its reach into other disciplines and take advantage of synergies across the University, all while retaining its home and roots at the Law School," Kagan said.
10th Anniversary Celebration
The two-day conference ended with a gala dinner in which the first-ever Berkman Awards were presented to seven people for their outstanding contributions to the Internet’s impact on society over the past decade.
The international group of winners was selected from an open nomination process and came from a range of fields including human rights and global advocacy. They included 21-year old Esra'a Al Shafei of Bahrain, who directs the student-owned website MideastYouth.com. The website hosts podcasts, social networks, and video content generated by young people in an attempt to fight for social change.
Other awardees included Richard Baraniuk, professor at Rice University, for founding a free, open-source education platform; FreeRice.com creator John Breen; Public.Resource.Org creator Carl Malamud; and Noah Samara, Ethiopian satellite expert and founder of WorldSpace.
About the Berkman Center
The Berkman Center was founded in 1997 by Harvard Law School faculty members Charles Nesson and Jonathan Zittrain, with support from Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman. The center is now home to an ever-growing community of faculty, fellows, staff, and affiliates working on projects that span the broad range of intersections between cyberspace, technology, and society.
Although it is now a university-wide initiative, the center will maintain its base of operation on the Law School campus. It will also remain home to the Cyberlaw Clinic, which provides high-quality, free legal services to appropriate individuals, small start-ups, nonprofit groups, and government entities regarding cutting-edge issues of the Internet, new technology, and intellectual property. Recently launched research initiatives include projects examining the relationships between the Internet, media and democracy, youth and technology, and behavioral, legal, and technical drivers for human cooperation.
“While the Berkman Center has always been to some extent an interdisciplinary enterprise, this institutional change will increase sharply the methodological range of our work and the diversity of the faculty, fellows, and students we enlist to do it,” said William Fisher, faculty director of the center.
