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On Fri, May 31, 2024 at 1:15 PM Adali Frias Deniz <af3424@columbia.edu> wrote:

Dear TMaC Students:

I apologize for not writing to you in such a long time. We’ve been in constant contact over WhatsApp and, of course, by email but I’ve been at a loss for words. So much has happened on campus. The protests feel consequential. It feels that we’re living in a moment of generational and seismic change. I’ve been in listening mode, trying to navigate new realities, understand how many of you feel, talking it over with colleagues and individually with students, supporting people who need it. Words failed me for a few weeks.
Speaking to everyone has been inspiring. During the pandemic I became even closer to our students as I got a glimpse of lives that had been unknown to me before. This dramatically shifted my view of our community. This year too has been revelatory. After the Trump election, campus was raw and emotions were strong. But we were not polarized at that time. During Covid, our Chinese students stepped up to protect and warn us in a way that was inspiring and beautiful, particularly since they were facing extremely hard times themselves.

The semester is over and some of you are on to new things. Others are planning summer projects and work and job hunting. Please email us or Airin Wu or Adali Frias Deniz if you would like us to share the TMaC job hunting google doc. Don’t forget that the career office will meet with you individually and some students have found this helpful. You can reach out to them at sipa_cac@sipa.columbia.edu .

I want to thank Airin for her brilliant help this year. She’s been a phenomenal partner in many ways: efficient, responsive, bursting with good ideas and dedicated to our program. Airin is off to work at the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer. In August, she will receive her first assignment abroad at a U.S. embassy or consulate. Adali, who is currently interning at Chequeado, worked with me last Spring as my student assistant for my Policy Solutions for Dis/Misinfo Online class, and will be taking over as our new student TMaC assistant in a couple months. We’re already planning for the fall.

Our annual Saving Journalism conference will be all day on October 25th at the Forum and we received a Lee Bollinger Convening Grant to help pay for it. We will host speakers from all over the world and discuss AI, setting up independent journalism funds and collective bargaining with tech platforms. Many of you have been working with me on these topics for years.

In November we’re hosting our conference on propaganda and media literacy and looking back at Columbia University’s role as a pioneer in the 1930s and the Dies committee and suppression of dissent, which you can read more about here. This is a topic for our time and Adali and I hope to do more research over the summer.

I expect to be home for a few days in July and want to host a champagne toast for the students who graduated and we will have our welcome back Sushi Under the Stars on September 10th or 11th. We’re thinking of combining with the LID program as we expect to merge with them in 2025 as part of the new curriculum. Let me know what you think of a larger party or if you’d rather keep it just to TMaC in September.

Work on faculty committees continues, although a bit less intensively, over the summer: I serve on the curriculum review committee and AI policy committee and the journalism school’s PHD committee. Am also the faculty advisor to The Morningside Post and Journal of International Affairs. Summer is mostly a time for research, conferences, writing and syllabi and lecture updating. We academics often joke that May is our TGIF and August is our Sunday night.

TMaC in the News:

We’re continuing to publish extensively and encourage you to do the same. Please send us links to your work so we can include.
This month I had two pieces published. The first, found on Tech Policy Press, is on Tollbit, a startup that aims to help publishers collect fees from AI companies. The second was published on Poynter, and it talks about AI, licensing, and how publishers hope that data is becoming more valuable.

SIPA Alumna Aliya Bhatia co-wrote an opinion piece on CNN about how restricting and monitoring social media not only discourages young people from spaces that can be crucial for their information-seeking and learning — it doesn’t even keep them safe. Fascinating read for those interested in trust and safety.

Our new TMaC adjunct, Laura Scherling, who is teaching “Ethics in Tech Design” has just published a piece on how the Tor Project is providing access to the Internet in Turkmenistan, which you can read more about here!

Meanwhile, lecturer Peter Micek who teaches our "Internet Governance and Human Rights" course recently participated in the event “Bridging the gap: Safeguarding online freedom across the Atlantic" at the German Consulate here in NYC. You can also watch the full discussion of the event Peter moderated on Youtube. A key question that was asked and that many of you may be thinking of is how do we balance the complexities of managing what people say online with protecting their right to speak freely? I highly encourage you to watch the event.

Last but not least, I wrote a piece about a party to honor our former adjunct Larry Heinzerling who died of cancer during the Covid pandemic. His wife, renowned journalist Ann Cooper, had to finish his book for him. I still miss Larry. A legendary foreign correspondent, he was unassuming and modest, had won many awards and always came to our TMaC parties. He was devoted to teaching at SIPA as well as advising journalism school master’s theses and volunteering in Africa and Vietnam for Habitat for Humanity.

Events:

I would like to highlight our “AI + Disinformation in Elections” speaker series that happened during the spring. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to each of our guest speakers and look forward to our next series this fall, with a focus on the US presidential election.

Finally, Airin and Laura organized an intimate dinner for students at Pisticci. The Dean’s office kindly gave us extra funding after many of you said how disappointing the change to graduation plans was. I heard it was a lovely dinner and I’m so happy many of you were able to meet.

Opportunities:

Stay tuned!

All of you are part of our community. Please stay in touch and come back soon. Send ideas for job talks, adjuncts, new courses and anything else.

Have a good summer.

Warm regards,
Anya Schiffrin, Airin Wu and Adali Frias Deniz.

Technology, Media and Communication Specialization (TMaC)
School of International and Public Affairs

Email sent by Anya Schiffrin <acs76@columbia.edu> to af3424@columbia.edu
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Anya Schiffrin
Director
Technology, Media, and Communications specialization
School of International and Public Affairs
Columbia University
420 West 118th St
New York, NY 10027
Email: acs76@columbia.edu
Pandemic work/home/cell number: + 1 917 306 4700
f you want an appointment to talk to me please use this scheduling link
https://calendly.com/anyastiglitz