Berkeley Conversation: Defending Against Disinformation
Date: Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Time: 12:00 – 1:30 PM Pacific
Location: This event will be streamed live on YouTube
Disinformation — the intentional dissemination of false information to shape political and social outcomes — is an increasingly pernicious feature of the U.S. political landscape. In just the past 18 months, disinformation has had direct, harmful effects on efforts to check the spread of COVID-19, on initiatives for racial justice, and on the 2020 election and its aftermath. Clearly, disinformation costs lives and erodes democracy. BIDS Faculty Affiliate Hany Farid and Council Member Henry Brady will take part in the next Berkeley Conversation: Defending Against Disinformation, which will convene some of UC Berkeley's most eminent scholars to explore one of the most critical questions facing U.S. democracy: How can we counter disinformation to protect our communities without compromising America’s core principles? The panelists will be:
- Geeta Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism;
- Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law and one of the nation’s leading authorities on the First Amendment;
- Hany Farid, associate dean and head of the School of Information and an expert in digital forensics, cybersecurity and human perception;
- Susan Hyde, chair of the Department of Political Science and a scholar in “democratic backsliding”; and
- john a. powell, director of the Othering & Belonging Institute and an expert in civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism and democracy.
- Moderator Henry E. Brady is former dean of Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and former president of the American Political Science Association.
The event is sponsored by the Goldman School of Public Policy, Berkeley Law and the Office of Communications and Public Affairs, with support from the Berkeley Social Science Matrix, as part of the Berkeley Conversations series.
Speaker(s)
Hany Farid
Hany Farid is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, with a joint appointment in Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and the School of Information. His research focuses on digital forensics, image analysis, and human perception. He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from the University of Rochester in 1989, his M.S. in Computer Science from SUNY Albany, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. Following a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, he joined the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1999 where he remained until 2019. He is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Henry Brady
Henry E. Brady is the Class of 1941 Monroe Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as dean of the Goldman School from 2009-2021. He received his PhD in economics and political science from MIT. He has written on electoral politics, political participation, social welfare policy, political polling, and statistical methodology. He has worked for the federal Office of Management and Budget and other organizations in Washington, DC. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2003 and as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2006. He is the co-author of The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy and Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People's Voice in the New Gilded Age, Letting the People Decide: Dynamics of a Canadian Election (1992), Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (1995), Expensive Children in Poor Families: The Intersection of Childhood Disability and Welfare (2000); and Counting All the Votes: The Performance of Voting Technology in the United States (2001).