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Events

Explore our upcoming events, find video and audio from our past events, and subscribe to stay updated on all of our talks, panels, and live webcasts.

Welcome to the Berkman Klein Center’s events. These get-togethers are all about having great conversations and making new connections in a friendly and inclusive space. We believe everyone has something interesting to say. Please bring your ideas, experiences, and unique perspectives. Feel free to critique ideas and speak from your own experience, all in the spirit of lively and respectful discourse.

Thanks for helping us create a great community atmosphere!

Our hybrid and virtual events are hosted on Zoom with closed-captioning. Questions can be submitted to the moderator, who will highlight popular and emerging themes and relay them to the speakers. Please note that translation services are currently unavailable.

Public event recordings will be available one week after the event. You can find them on the event page or BKC’s YouTube channel. For the latest updates, follow BKC on X or LinkedIn.

Respiratory illnesses like flu, COVID-19, and RSV affect millions annually. Protect yourself and others by wearing a high-quality face mask in crowded indoor settings and staying home if you're unwell.

Harvard University and the Berkman Klein Center welcome individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact our Event Specialist at [email protected] in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance, if possible. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.

For further questions about accessibility on Harvard's campus, we invite visitors to check out Harvard University Disability Resources page and the Digital Accessibility page.

For in-person attendees, below is a list of resources regarding parking and accessibility at HLS. Harvard is a tough area to find parking, but we do have a number of options around Lewis.

For those with accessibility needs who have handicap parking permits:

  1. Private HLS parking is available at 10 Everett St Garage (the garage recommended for events) for a moderate fee. Passes must be purchased in advance and printed ahead of time. For more info on Accessible Parking at HLS click here.
  2. Public handicap spots are spread out throughout Cambridge. Click here for a guide to public Cambridge parking, and click for campus interactive accessibility maps. The closest spots within reasonable walking distance and NO major roadways to cross are located at 2 Kirkland St, 23 Everett St, and 12 Oxford St. All 3 locations are located within 1 block of Lewis. Please note, so long as the driver has a legal handicap permit, they can park at any public, paid metered spot, or "Residents Only" spot in Cambridge, but MUST have their permit displayed at all times in their car window. If the permit is not visible, they will be ticketed and/or towed. They do NOT need to park in a handicap spot so long as their permit is visible.
  3. The most accessible streets to park on (meaning no major roadways to cross and within reasonable distance of Lewis) are Everett St, Oxford St, and Kirkland St.

For those not using handicap parking permits:

  1. Private HLS parking is available at 10 Everett St Garage, 52 Oxford St Garage, and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. These are the 3 privately owned Harvard garages recommended. Click here for daily permit purchasing information, which must be done ahead of the event. A day rate is $25. Click here for Harvard’s Parking Map.
  2. Public, metered parking spots are available. They range in maximum parking time limit from 2-4 hours for $1.50-$2.00/hour. Please note, if you pay using the mobile Passport Parking app, you will NOT be able to renew your session once it ends. You will have to feed the meter using coins as the app will not permit you to surpass the maximum parking limit. (continued below).
  3. Car-pooling and public transportation are great ways to save money and time. These methods of transportation are highly recommended to those who can do so! 

The Berkman Klein Center is located on the 4th and 5th floors of the Lewis Law Center. The street address is 1557 Massachusetts Avenue. Most events occur in the 5th floor multipurpose room. The Center is wheelchair-accessible and includes accessible restrooms. The building is key card access only. For public events, staff will be stationed at the door to allow entry.

If an event is being catered, it will be noted in the event description and you will be prompted to indicate your dietary preferences on the RSVP form. Food is always offered on a first come, first served basis. The more we know, the better we can prepare, so please always RSVP. If you were unable to RSVP, please still come but consider not taking a meal unless there is an abundance.

Using a variety of local caterers, BKC does its best to provide an assortment of clearly labeled dietary options at all catered events. We usually have vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options available.

For all event related needs or concerns, please contact someone on our Events Team at [email protected] or call our Event Specialist at 617-384-0596. Thank you.

Past Events

Mar 22, 2011 @ 12:30 PM

decolonizing copyright: Jamaican street dances and globally networked technology

Larisa Mann of Berkeley Law School / Boalt Hall

Larisa Mann of Berkeley Law School / Boalt Hall will present on how street dances, Jamaica's explosive creative engine, challenge the colonial dimensions of globalized law and…

Mar 21, 2011 @ 11:30 AM

CRCS Seminar: An Optimization-Based Framework for Automated Market-Making

Yiling Chen, SEAS, Harvard

While computers have automated the operation of most financial markets, the underlying mechanism was designed for people to operate it. It is simple, not necessarily efficient,…

Mar 8, 2011 @ 12:00 PM

Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies

Susan Landau, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University & CRCS

Building surveillance into communications infrastructures? Law enforcement claims it needs wiretaps in order to secure us, but the biggest long-term national-security threat is…

Mar 7, 2011 @ 11:30 AM

CRCS Seminar: Computer-Assisted Clustering and Conceptualization from Unstructured Text

Gary King, Department of Government, Harvard University

Gary King, Department of Government, Harvard will discuss Computer-Assisted Clustering and Conceptualization from Unstructured Text

Mar 1, 2011 @ 12:30 PM

Transmedia Mobilization

Sasha Costanza-Chock, Berkman Fellow

Media scholar/activist Sasha Costanza-Chock will discuss Transmedia Mobilization: "Don't ask 'is teh internets + or - for social movements?', look @ what movements r doing 2…

Feb 25, 2011 @ 12:00 PM

The Googlization of Everything

Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Googlization of Everything & Professor at the University of Virginia

Siva Vaidhyanathan questions whether Google's dominance is the best situation for the future of our information ecosystem.

Feb 22, 2011 @ 12:30 PM

The Internet, Young Adults and Political Participation around the 2008 Presidential Elections

Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw, Berkman Fellows

Based on unique survey data of a diverse group or young adults with unusually high representation of racial and ethnic minorities from Spring 2009, Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw…

Feb 19, 2011 @ 9:00 AM

Students for Free Culture Conference

The annual Students for Free Culture conference brings student leaders into conversation with each other as well as creators, entrepreneurs, policymakers, scholars, and educators…

Feb 16, 2011 @ 6:00 PM

Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group

at MIT

The "Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group" is a forum for fellows and affiliates of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, Yale Law School Information Society…

Feb 15, 2011 @ 12:30 PM

Whose choice? ICTs for “development” and the lives people value

Dorothea Kleine, Lecturer at the UNESCO Chair/Centre in ICT4D, Royal Holloway, University of London

Recognising that ICTs are powerful tools shaping people’s everyday lives, practitioners, policy-makers and academics in the ICT for development (ICT4D) field engage with these…

Feb 8, 2011 @ 12:30 PM

Millions, Billions, Zillions: Why (In)numeracy Matters

Brian Kernighan, Berkman Fellow & Department of Computer Science, Princeton University

Berkman Fellow Brian Kernighan offers an illustrated short course in numeric self defense.

Feb 7, 2011 @ 11:30 AM

CRCS Seminar: Cybersecurity Challenge

Steven Bellovin, Columbia University

Steven Bellovi will outline a fundamentally different approach to security, called resilient system design.

Feb 1, 2011 @ 7:00 PM

Common as Air

Lewis Hyde, Berkman Center Faculty Associate & Professor at Kenyon College

Lewis Hyde, Berkman Center Faculty Associate & Professor at Kenyon College, will discuss his new book, "Common as Air."

Feb 1, 2011 @ 12:30 PM

What would make cloud computing truly free and open?

Andy Oram, O'Reilly Media

What would make cloud computing truly free and open? Andy Oram of O'Reilly Media explains an architecture that melds the cloud with free software. This event will be webcast live…

Jan 26, 2011 @ 6:00 PM

Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group

This month's cyberscholars will feature Brian Kernighan on "What Should an Educated Person Know about Computers?"; Yanni Loukissas on "Visualizing Human Presence Tools for the…

Event
Jan 25, 2011 @ 12:30 PM

Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Against Independent Media and Human Rights Sites

Ethan Zuckerman, Hal Roberts, and Jillian C. York

Ethan Zuckerman, Hal Roberts, and Jillian C. York will discuss the recently released Berkman Center report on "Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Against Independent Media and…

Jan 18, 2011 @ 6:00 PM

Four Ideas for a Better Internet

At Stanford Law School

Stanford Law School and Harvard Law School are pleased to invite you to a special reception and event on the Stanford campus, featuring four TED-style talks drawn from the…

Jan 11, 2011 @ 12:15 PM

Tim Wu on THE MASTER SWITCH

Tim Wu presents his widely acclaimed new book THE MASTER SWITCH: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. This event will be webcast live at 12:15PM ET today.

Dec 21, 2010 @ 12:30 PM

Application Developers and the Future of Music

Jim Lucchese, CEO of The Echo Nest

In this talk, The Echo Nest CEO Jim Lucchese will discuss the specific needs and vast potential of the growing music app development community, citing plenty of examples of new…

Dec 14, 2010 @ 12:30 PM

The Unstable Platforms and Uneasy Peers of Brave New World Music

Wayne Marshall, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT

Driven by the proliferation of accessible music- and video-production software and the connective possibilities of the social web, public culture is being remade in the wake of …