Zeynep Tufekci

Techno-sociologist and columnist

The Baird Lecture

Thursday, March 12, 2026, 7 p.m.
Alumni Gym, Koury Athletic Center

Zeynep Tufekci is an internationally renowned techno-sociologist whose work analyzes the intersections of science, technology, politics and society. She is known for asking hard questions about artificial intelligence, privacy and surveillance, social movements, and public health, and she answers them in ways that defy disciplinary boundaries.

Tufekci is a New York Times opinion columnist and the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Her work on the social and moral implications of machine learning, big data and algorithmic decision-making argues that the true threat of artificial intelligence is rooted in privacy and human rights violations. She links the AI-powered erosion of privacy in processes such as facial recognition to the early stages of authoritarianism.

A 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary, Tufekci is the author of “Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest,” which examines the power of using social media to mobilize large numbers of people in political protest and why many modern social movements lack the direction to foster real change once the protest is over.

Prior to joining The New York Times, Tufekci spent years as a contributing opinion writer at several of the nation’s most acclaimed news publications. She was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, a fellow at the Princeton University Center for Information Technology and the inaugural director of the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia University.