Noteworthy Set of Events on Campus: 

As part of TMaC’s “AI and the elections” speaker series, we hosted Emily Bell and Tim Decker for a discussion on Trust & Safety. Some 40 students showed up. Emily came well prepared with questions and Decker was his usual generous self providing job hunting tips as well as a pithy assessment of the state of Trust & Safety. Some highlights:   

"Trust and safety is like being a plumber. People only ask questions when there is a problem." 

“Understanding the abuses is relatively straightforward. Understanding HOW it's being done requires human judgment," Decker said explaining that their policy is not to look at the "source of abuse" but at the "harm" that could be caused.   

Anya asked if we will start to see a widespread use of watermarking and content provenance tools. Tim said he doesn't know but that “once the behemoths start doing these kinds of things, you will get traction.” 

Asked about job prospects in the field of Trust & Safety, Decker pointed to his own degree from LSE and said that understanding policy and context are essential. 

Photo of TMaC adjunct (and SIPA alum) Camille Francois and Nina Jankowicz at the IGP conference on women. Nina came to SIPA for our Women in the Digital World conference in spring of 2022 and we launched her book at that time too. 

Leading privacy scholar Max Schrems spoke at the law school. We hosted him (with the European Institute) about eight years ago and this time around, he gave an extremely detailed update about the state of EU law and US data sharing agreements. As a law student, he led the way with successful litigation in Europe creating a safe harbor. The Knight Center for the First Amendment held an all day event on Generative AI, Free Speech, & Public Discourse. The presentation about accuracy and content provenance by Stanford’s Tatsunori Hashimoto was the best I’ve seen.   

Journalism school colleague Alexander Stille organized a discussion about his book on the Sullivanians, a cult that existed on the Upper West Side when I was growing up. One of our childhood friends joined the panel and spoke about the harms done to children whose parents joined the group. It was emotional, frank and unforgettable.  

TMaC in the News: 

Legendary AP journalist  Larry Heinzerling taught a course for us on writing on international affairs which for many years was a flagship course, dating back to the early days when TMaC was still known as IMC (the International Media Concentration).  Heinzerling had a notable career and worked all over Europe and in South Africa before  becoming a  senior editor at the  AP. He spent years in Germany and before the pandemic, the AP asked him to write a report to evaluate their role during World War II. Larry loved that  project, dug deep and decided to turn the report into a book. I read drafts and introduced him to Phil  Leventhal, my editor at Columbia University Press. During the pandemic, Larry got pancreatic cancer and died within months before finishing his project. It was brought to the finish line by Randy Herschaft and Larry's widow, Ann Cooper, a veteran broadcast journalist, Russia specialist, former head of the Committee to Protect Journalists and former director of the broadcast program at Columbia Journalism School. Newshawks in Berlin was published on March 5th. RIP Larry. Your work lives on.  

SIPA Alum, Omoyele Sowore, founder of the Nigerian citizen journalism site Sahara Reporters, finally had the charges against him dropped. He is now allowed to leave the country and return to the US. Sowore was a good friend of ours and spoke regularly to our students. He ran for president in Nigeria, was arrested in August 2019 and was put in jail (including 143 days in solitary) after his tweets calling for a revolution infuriated former president Muhammadu Buhari. Sowore was charged with treason and money laundering so we launched a TMaC campaign gathering signatures to petition for his release and stayed in close contact with his wife, close friend and supporter, Ademola Bello. Welcome back Omoyele.  

Once again, research on deep fakes carried out by TMaC first-year Daniel Siegel was cited in the media. Here is his work referenced in an MSNBC op-ed. 

Mark your Calendars: 

April 24th from 1-2pm in room 1302 - Legendary fact-checker Laura Zommer will speak about her efforts in the US, including combatting AI and fact-checking on WhatsApp. On March 28th, our friends at IGP are planning something on AI and the elections. Stand by for details.