Harvard University has hired former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as its first Knight Tech Governance Leadership Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. The lockdown queen’s fellowship is set to begin this fall.
The Ivy League university said it is “thrilled” to announce Ardern — who served as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023, and is widely known for being a radical leftist and strict authoritarian during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic — as one of its new hires.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (Photo by Lynn Grieveson/Getty Images)
“Ardern is known globally as a dedicated and effective leader in pursuing greater online platform accountability and content moderation standards,” the school said in its announcement on Tuesday.
Ardern added that she is “delighted” to be formally working with the Berkman Klein Center.
“The Center has been an incredibly important partner as we’ve developed the Christchurch Call to action on addressing violent extremism online,” the radical leftist former prime minister said.
Harvard said Ardern will work closely with Berkman Klein Center leadership “to explore emerging challenges of governance to protect against algorithmic harms during a critical moment of the explosive proliferation of generative AI tools.”
The Berkman Klein Center also said it is “deeply impressed” with how Ardern handled the Chinese virus in New Zealand while she was prime minister.
“Ardern is also noted for the exceptional results of her data-driven, evidence-based public health policy during her nation’s grappling with the COVID crisis,” the Center said.
“We are so deeply impressed by Jacinda Ardern’s track record of leadership in both accelerating political will and engaging those responsible for the design and deployment of technologies to create a better, safer, more inclusive future,” Berkman Klein Center Executive Director Sue Hendrickson added.
Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is “dedicated to exploring, understanding, and shaping the development of the digitally-networked environment,” the university said.
Last year, Ardern said that “disinformation” should be controlled like guns, bombs, and nukes. That same year, the foreigner was also hosted at the White House after delivering an impassioned gun control speech at Harvard.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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