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.

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 a seducation, 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.