Symposium

2025 Speakers 

Addressing the Impact of Social Media and AI on Democracy will feature national experts in engaging, solution-focused panel discussions.

Richard Lui, a news anchor for NBC and MSNBC since 2010, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years in media, technology, and business, covering major breaking news stories. He has directed and produced documentaries for NBC Nightly News Films. He spent 5 years at CNN Worldwide, becoming the first Asian American male to anchor a daily, national cable news show. An entrepreneur, he has launched 6 brands over 3 tech cycles and patented a fintech model in 2003.

 Charles Blow is a nationally recognized columnist, news analyst, and New York Times best-selling author. He has previously served as the NYT’s award-winning Graphics Editor. He also worked as the Art Director of the National Geographic Magazine and The Detroit News. Mr. Blow won a Lambda Literary Award, among others, for his first book Fire Shut Up in My Bones. His second book, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto, calls for an end to systemic racism. Mr. Blow is a prolific commentator, often challenging those in power with clarity and candor.  

Elise Jordan, a native Mississippian, is a nationally acclaimed journalist, political analyst, and communications strategist. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, TIME, Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed, Marie Claire and the National Review. This year, Knopf will publish her history of General Dwight Eisenhower and the women who worked for him during World War II. Ms. Jordan has worked in the George W. Bush White House, including extended stints at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the Commanding General’s Strategic Advisory Group at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, Afghanistan. Born and raised in Holly Springs, MS, she graduated from Yale University. 

 Andy Kroll is a national reporter for ProPublica, a news organization that investigates abuses of power and publishes journalism in the public interest. Andy is the former Washington bureau chief for Rolling Stone. His writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Atlantic. Andy has spent much of his career writing about the nexus of politics, money, power, and democracy. His reporting has sparked federal probes, congressional investigations, and been cited in briefs submitted to the US Supreme Court. His first book is A Death on W Street: The Murder of Seth Rich and the Age of Conspiracy, about the rise of conspiracy theories in American politics, and the Rich family’s lawsuit against Fox News.

Dr. Zeynep Tufekci is an internationally renowned techno-sociologist whose work analyzes the intersections of science, technology, politics, and society. The New York Times billed her as someone who has “quietly made a habit of being right on the big things. ”She asks hard questions about challenges including AI, privacy and surveillance, social movements, and public health, and answers them in ways that defy disciplinary boundaries. Dr. Tufekci is a New York Times opinion columnist and the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.  

Steven Brill is an American lawyer, journalist, and entrepreneur who founded the magazine The American Lawyer and cable channel Court TV(now TruTV). With his fellow journalist Gordon Crovitz, Brill created the not-for-profit News Guard in 2018, which fights fake news with reliability ratings for over 7500 U.S. websites. Brill has undergraduate and law degrees from Yale College and Yale Law School, respectively. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including his most recent book The Death of Truth: How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World--And What We Can Do.

Kashmir Hill is a New York Times tech reporter who explores the unexpected and sometimes ominous ways technology is changing our lives, covering such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Tech, and privacy with her hands-on, gonzo style. Her book, Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It, is a gripping true story about the rise of Clearview AI. She has written for the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and others. Kashmir holds degrees in journalism from Duke University and NYU.

Dr. danah boyd is a technology and social media scholar and researcher who investigates the interplay between technology, society, and policy. Her work explores the impact of bias in big data and artificial intelligence, the social implications of using data in areas such as education, criminal justice, labor, and public life. She is the founder of the Data & Society Research Institute and a distinguished visiting professor at Georgetown University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of California-Berkeley School of Information.

Professor Meredith Broussard is a noted data journalist and associate professor at the Carter Journalism Institute at New York University and research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. She is the author of several books, including More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender and Ability Bias in Tech and Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Her academic research focuses on AI in investigative reporting. She appeared in the Sundance Film Festival selected documentary “Coded Bias,” nominated for an Emmy Award.

Professor Bill Adair is a Pulitzer prize-winner, the creator of PolitiFact and the Knight Professor of Journalism and Public Policy at the Sanford School for Public Policy at Duke University. At Duke, he is the director of the North Carolina Fact-Checking Project. He worked in Washington from 1997 to 2013 where he covered Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, national politics, and aviation safety. He is an author, and his latest book is Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy. 

Dana Milbank is a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist with The Washington Post and a New York Times bestselling author. His column appears in the Post and hundreds of other newspapers.  Milbank also has provided political commentary for MSNBC, CNN and various other TV and radio outlets, and he is the author of five books on politics, including  “Fools on the Hill,” “The Destructionists” and “Homo Politicus.” Before starting the column, Milbank was a White House reporter for the Post and won the White House Correspondents’ Association Beckman award for “repeated excellence in White House coverage.”  He previously worked as a political reporter in the Post’s Style section, as a senior editor of the New Republic, and as a congressional and foreign correspondent of the Wall Street Journal. He is a graduate of Yale University. 

Meetali Jain founded Tech Justice Law Project in 2023 and serves as its Executive Director. She started her career by representing detainees post-9/11 accused of terrorism and clients impacted by surveillance and racial profiling. Meetali has practiced at major law firms, litigating cases involving human rights, immigrant justice, and challenging corporate power. She has taught human rights and constitutional law in law clinics at American University, Seton Hall, and in law schools across South Africa. In 2017, Meetali began working on issues of disinformation and broader tech harms globally. In 2021, she joined Reset Tech where she focused primarily on issues of tech law and policy in the US. She is an advisor to the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy. 

Ian B. Crosby is a leading authority on the law of artificial intelligence and a partner at the international law firm of Susman Godfrey. He was the only lawyer named among “the nation’s most powerful people in artificial intelligence” in Business Insider’s 2024 AI Power List and one of Lawdragon’s Top 100 Leading AI and Tech Advisors in America. U.S. News counts Crosby more broadly as one of The Best Lawyers in America® for Intellectual Property Litigation. Crosby has tried and litigated patent, copyright, antitrust, and other complex commercial cases in federal courts throughout the country, and he is the lead attorney in the blockbuster case of New York Times vs. OpenAI, one of the most important cases relating to AI, journalism, and copyright.

Justin Hendrix has a rare combination of expertise in journalism, technology, and democracy. He is CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press, a nonprofit media venture concerned with the intersection of technology and democracy. Previously, he was Executive Director of NYC Media Lab. He spent over a decade at The Economist in roles including Vice President, Business Development & Innovation. He is an associate research scientist and adjunct professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. He holds a BA from the College of William & Mary and an MSc in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas at Austin.