Zeynep Tufekci

Dr. Zeynep Tufekci is an internationally renowned techno-sociologist whose work analyzes the intersections of science, technology, politics, and society. The New York Times billed her as someone who has “quietly made a habit of being right on the big things.” She asks hard questions about challenges including AI, privacy and surveillance, social movements, and public health, and answers them in ways that defy disciplinary boundaries. Aided by her background as a computer programmer, her current work as a sociologist, a penchant for complex systems-based thinking, and an international perspective as a Turkish-born American, Zeynep offers unique and often controversial insights on the topics you’re already thinking about—and the ones you should be. Dr. Tufekci is a New York Times opinion columnist and the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

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With artificial intelligence on the rise, Zeynep’s longtime work on the social and moral implications of how we use machine learning, big data, and algorithmic decision-making is more important than ever. While everyone else is worried about mass technological unemployment and having existential crises about robots taking over the world, Tufekci 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. Because of her work in this space, Zeynep appeared as a featured expert in the documentary Coded Bias, which exposed the racial and gender discrimination coded into the algorithms controlling many aspects of our lives. The film reveals that these AI systems—once thought to be neutral and impartial—are only as objective as the people who build them and the data on which they’re trained.

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Tufekci is the author of Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. In it, she 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. Of the book, Washington Post said, “It is Tufekci’s personal experience in the squares and streets, melded with her scholarly insights on technology and communication platforms, that makes Twitter and Tear Gas such an unusual and illuminating work.” The paper also named it one of its “50 Notable Works of Nonfiction” in the year of its release.

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Zeynep Tufekci was a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Commentary for her “insightful, often prescient, columns on the pandemic and American culture […] that brought clarity to the shifting official guidance and compelled us towards greater compassion and informed response.” She remains a prominent voice in the public health space, publishing insights that call attention to the extensive disregard of those suffering with long COVID and that examine what we can learn from our missteps during this pandemic to better prepare for the next one.

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Prior to joining the New York Times as a columnist, Tufekci spent years as a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, Scientific American, and Wired. 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.