The "From Gutenberg to the Web" winter term study abroad class participated Jan. 11 in a session at a Berlin university on Internet censorship and ways it can be circumvented for democratic purposes.
Students from Elon and DEKRA Hochschule Berlin had a dual screening of a ZDF television documentary on how activists got around censorship during the Arab Spring and how revolutionary hackers build homemade networks independent of the Internet.
The screening was followed by a panel discussion streamed live on the web and moderated by John Kantara, producer of the ZDF documentary and professor at DEKRA Hochschule.
Panelists included Ben Scott, a former adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on technology issues who now works for a Berlin technology and policy think tank. Scott was joined on the panel by Associate Professor Anthony Hatcher and Elon junior Jeff Stern. The panel fielded questions from an audience including students from both universities.