1️⃣ Our new paper “𝐁𝐨𝐬𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫-𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭” is out in 𝘔𝘰𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴! 🚀 A 2-year mixed-method study on how locative algorithms and transit systems shape how international students see and move through Istanbul. 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBQ8I... #UrbanStudies #BigData #Istanbul #Lynch #Lefebvre

We had a great discussion with @courtneyr.bsky.social on "Big Tech + Big Brother: Resisting ‘techno-fascism’ and the surveillance state" at the @globalfreemedia.bsky.social World Congress & Media Innovation Festival in Vienna on October 25. Credit © Ronja Koskinen / IPI

Institutions with #integrity face a built-in disadvantage: they hold themselves accountable. Their leaders resign when mistakes are made. Populists, who never admit errors, outlast them. That’s democracy’s dilemma: protecting integrity from shamelessness. #BBC #Accountability #Democracy #Ethics

📣 New paper! @harvard-carr-ryan.bsky.social Technology & Human Rights Fellow 2024-25 @nicoleozer.bsky.social traces California's historic legacy as a #privacy leader, as AI transforms society today: www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr... #PrivacyRights #AI #DigitalRights #California #TechPolicy

Thousands gathered in Tel Aviv last night to mark 30 years since the assassination of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin. Valerie Hamaty performed Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah in Arabic as tens of thousands listened in awe. Leaders like #Rabin are deeply missed in today’s divided world. #Peace #Gaza #Democracy

New @harvard-carr-ryan.bsky.social discussion paper: Burcu Kilic argues that dismantling #surveillance #capitalism requires structural transformation, not only of markets, but of the political, legal, and epistemic arrangements that sustain it. Read it here: www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr...

Yesterday in #Vienna's Auer Welsbach Park, an oak tree full of animals reminded me of Rumi's parable of the caged parrot. He longed for his free friends in India, imagining them able to fly to the grass or sit on the trees as they wish. That ability to #choose, for him, was #freedom.

Ahead of the 75th anniversary of its foundation, @globalfreemedia.bsky.social publishes an inspiring list of 75 books written by IPI members and press freedom heroes across the world to celebrate independent journalism: ipi.media/ipi-75-books... via @eisaklica.bsky.social

I'll be in Vienna next week for the 2025 @globalfreemedia.bsky.social World Congress & #Media #Innovation Festival. Join our panel with Courtney Radsch, "Big Tech + Big Brother: Resisting ‘techno-fascism’ and the surveillance state", on Oct. 25 at 12:00 CEST. ipi.media/ipi-world-co... #IPIWoCo25

New research is here! @harvard-carr-ryan.bsky.social 2024-2025 fellow @sebasmartl.bsky.social reviews AI legislation in Latin America, uncovering significant gaps in rights-based safeguards. Read the full publication: www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr... #AI #HumanRights #LatinAmerica #TechLaw

We were in Spain last week for the 2025 Open Government Partnership Global Summit. With Oliver Money-Kyrle and Emre Ilkan Saklica, we contributed to sessions on civic participation in line with @globalfreemedia.bsky.social 's mission to promote open, accountable governance across Europe. #OGP2025

Macron remarks are notable- some quotes: "We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies."

A great discussion paper by Montori et al. for @harvard-carr-ryan.bsky.social. They warn that surveillance capitalism is reshaping healthcare into a system focused on data rather than people, enabling Big Tech to commodify human experience and consolidate power: www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr...

CEO pay is up 1,094% since 1978, while worker pay is up just 26%. Why do we always hear "we can't afford to pay our workers more" but never "we can't afford to pay our CEO more"?

I stumbled upon this on the interwebs today:

I'm honored to share that my Ph.D. thesis, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑙𝑔𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑚𝑖𝑐 𝑉𝑒𝑖𝑙: 𝐴𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑠𝑡, 𝐴𝐼 𝐵𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑆𝑝𝑜𝑡𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝐻𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛-𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑁𝑒𝑤𝑠 𝑅𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔, has been accepted. My deepest gratitude goes to all my mentors, including my advisor Professor Kerem Rizvanoglu. I’ll share more about the findings soon.

Latest from my fellows at ‪@harvard-carr-ryan.bsky.social‬ : 🎧 ‪@lexzard.bsky.social‬ on #DMA in a podcast with Prof Mathias Risse: www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr... 📄 ‪@sebasmartl.bsky.social‬ on "Algorithmic #Discrimination in Latin American Welfare States": www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr...

📢Important read : OFE Publishes Landmark Study Calling for Funding Europe’s Open Digital Infrastructure through an EU Sovereign Tech Fund (EU-STF) 👉Read President of EOSA Daniel Stenberg's statement of support and OFE's full report here : europeanopensource.academy/news/stateme...

"One of my favorite things about America is my constitutional right to make fun of the powerful," #Colbert once proudly said in 2015 after reporting a Turkish man faced two years in jail for comparing President Erdoğan to Gollum from The Lord of the Rings: www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Sv...

"Not since a series of coups in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s have such high-profile political leaders been removed from office on the basis of as yet unpublished evidence, which suspects' lawyers dismiss as fabricated." Reuters analysis on what is happening in #Turkey: www.reuters.com/world/middle...

To paraphrase a sentiment often attributed to Max Planck (and more accurately to Thomas Kuhn): Truth never triumphs, its opponents just die out.

"I've been under arrest for three months, stripped of my freedom because, as a communications professional, I managed election campaigns. Let me be clear: Winning an election is not a crime. There is no such offense in Turkish law," says Necati Ozkan, an aide to the jailed Istanbul Mayor Imamoglu.

"Accumulations of wealth, talent, and influence as we find them at places like Harvard are justified only if utilized to make things better, especially for people who could never attend such places." Mathias Risse's new @harvard-carr-ryan.bsky.social commentary: www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr...

This is what happens when you put internet conspiracy theorists in charge of major government departments.

Harvard professor Laurence Tribe reacts to Trump’s latest attacks on Harvard University @lawrenceodonnell.msnbc.com is joined by Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe who sounds off on Trump’s attempts to block international students from the university. WATCH:

With nearly all of Harvard Chan School’s direct federal grants terminated, we are relying on philanthropy to power our research and support our educational programs. Every gift, regardless of size, advances our vision of health, dignity, and justice for every human. Support our work: hsph.me/whygive

Harvard Chan School students come from 74 nations. They are curious, compassionate, and driven to make a difference. To our valued community of international students, a message from Harvard President Alan Garber: www.harvard.edu/president/ne...

The results show that language models, trained mostly on WEIRD data, fail to capture cultural cognitive differences. Greater cultural diversity in training and evaluation is essential to reduce bias and improve global applicability.

New @harvard-carr-ryan.bsky.social #Commentary by Mathias Risse: The election of American-born Pope Leo XIV represents a historic convergence of Catholic social teaching, human rights advocacy, & a renewed form of American soft power on the global stage. #PopeLeoXIV #HumanRights #SoftPower

Research suggests the similarity between large language model and human responses declines for typical cognitive tasks as you move away from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. More in this 2023 paper from Harvard biologists: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

#News: Musk's #X has restricted the jailed opposition leader's account in #Turkey. Legal experts criticize the platform's dubious statement which downplayed its role that boosts #censorship. It's incompetence at best, if not malice. I wrote in more detail here: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Driving a taxi or ambulance may help ward off the most common type of dementia. It may be related to an enlarged hippocampus which manages spatial memory. However, this benefit did not seem to extend to others with jobs involving navigation, like pilots: www.health.harvard.edu/blog/two-job...

I contributed to "Trump 100 Days," a discussion paper series by the @harvard-carr-ryan.bsky.social that examines the early trajectory of his second presidency. Read the full report, with contributions from Harvard faculty, fellows, and affiliates: www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/defaul...

“It is difficult to understand what could be meant by the objective character of an #experience, apart from the particular point of view from which its subject apprehends it.” — Thomas Nagel

New York Times: Turkey’s People Are Resisting Autocracy. They Deserve More Than Silence. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/o...

On #PatriotsDay, @harvard-carr-ryan.bsky.social Director Mathias Risse draws a powerful line from resisting the King in 1775 to resisting "the king" today. The core value? Nondomination. A timely reflection on American ideals & current threats against democracy: www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr...

When I recently questioned Richard Gingras, former Global Vice President for News at Google and now Senior Advisor, about recent evidence on their algorithmic bias favoring disinformation & hate speech over independent journalism, he said he was unaware of the specific situation in Turkey. +

"Democratic solidarity around the world is now essential to building our shared future. The global wave of democratic backsliding may have begun in Turkey. I believe the pushback will begin here, too," Istanbul Mayor Imamoglu writes for the Financial Times from a prison: www.ft.com/content/4bf4...

Aaron Swartz faced prison and tragically died for trying to free academic #knowledge. Yet #BigTech like Meta, Google & OpenAI scrape copyrighted data & books for profit with near impunity today. Our #justice system protects corporate data grabs while crushing individuals who champion #OpenAccess

“No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Harvard President Garber writes, rejecting Trump's unconstitutional demands: www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

Civil resistance works. Between 1900 and 2006, major nonviolent movements succeeded 53% of the time. This is nearly twice as often as violent resistance campaigns. The data is clear: people power is a force stronger than arms. Source: direct.mit.edu/isec/article...

While President Erdogan pardoned convicted criminals, including two Hizbullah militants yesterday, more than 300 university students remain in Turkish prisons for no crime other than claiming their constitutional rights to peaceful demonstration. #FreeTurkishStudents #Turkey #Democracy

In 2023, I told @ruthmichaelson.com that Ekşi Sözlük, a key forum for free speech in Turkey, was failing to stop gov't trolls. Had its founder listened to me instead of unfollowing me, his platform might not be on many progressive people's #boycott lists today. www.theguardian.com/world/2023/m...

Here is my latest FT piece. I wanted to write this to convey the message of young people on Turkey’s streets. “Where is the EU, always preaching democracy and human rights, while our future is being stolen, and we’re being beaten for defending it?” one student protesting in Istanbul asked me ++

For the Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, I discuss how Big Tech risks becoming more than just complicit in Turkey’s deepening authoritarianism amid the current turmoil. My contribution to the 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘍𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 👇 www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr...

I told @theguardian.com's @ruthmichaelson.com that “images are powerful, and with these latest protests we’ve seen so many remarkable ones in the international media, showing that #Turkey’s #democracy is resisting with so many people in the streets again.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Police moved to disperse a pro-democracy protest in the southern Turkish city of #Antalya last night. Then this happened.

Pro-democracy youth danced in Ankara two nights ago. Yesterday, the government arrested hundreds of peaceful demonstrators. This is not a fight for life or death. This is life fighting death. "For there is a rule and an exception. The exception is the art of living. The rule seeks its death."

The iconic photo below was captured by @afpfr.bsky.social photographer Yasin Akgül. He is among at least seven journalists in Turkey who have been sent to prison for doing their job: reporting the truth. Press freedom is under a deadly attack. Journalism is not a crime.

Elon Musk's "free speech" claims falter again. X has blocked hundreds of activist & journalist accounts amid anti-government protests in Turkey, including @bianet_org (365K followers). As law professor Akdeniz notes, Bianet is a respected human rights news outlet, "silenced without explanation."