Boston Harbor, viewed from the Harbor Islands

I have good news to share; I’ve been selected for a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University for the 2026-2027 academic year, where I will be one of nine fellows working on the theme of Academic Freedom and Connecting Across Difference. While there, I plan to build out a new initiative on the science of civil liberties, develop new research in that area, and coordinate a program to help institutions rediscover the abiding beauty of intellectual freedom.

In the 19th century, the French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville toured the U.S. to make sense of what made democracy in America so special. In a beautiful passage, he described intellectual freedom as a life-giving blessing and not just a right: “Poetry, eloquence, memory, the beauty of wit, the fires of imagination, the depth of thought, all these gifts which heaven shares out by chance turned to the advantage of democracy.”

With this simple statement, de Tocqueville expressed the statistical poetry that makes freedom in a democracy as beautiful as it is strong. If creativity and excellence are distributed widely across humanity, then a democratic society will stand to benefit the most from human creativity—and will be the system best positioned to cause creativity to flourish. 

de Tocqueville expressed the statistical poetry that makes freedom in a democracy as beautiful as it is strong

In 2026, democracies worldwide are struggling to protect free thought as it is beleaguered by governments, a culture of hate accelerated by social media, and AI tools that are eroding faith in our collective fires of imagination. Tending that fire requires both protection and cultivation, which will be dual focuses of my time at Radcliffe. 

In my work on the science of civil liberties, I’ll be growing an area of research that my colleague Jonathon Penney and I have been discussing for at least a decade (see this talk about his new book on Chilling Effects). I’m especially interested in the rise of AI as a tool for censorship (something I’ve been working on with Lucas Wright) and the effects of threats on researchers inside and outside of academia (work I’ve done with Sarah Gilbert). All of this will contribute to a new project we’re calling “STAND” – which is organizing a community of scientists to work alongside legal scholars and litigators to improve how the courts make sense of claims about threats to freedom of expression, assembly, religion, and other basic rights.

If the fires of the imagination are to grant us warmth and light, they also need to be tended. That’s why I’m also going to grow “In Good Company,” an art collaboration with Sophia Brueckner that supports communities to research, tell stories, and make art about people who overcame threats to their freedom of expression.  We will be inviting community members at all levels to share stories and create art from their institution’s past to build solidarity with younger generations over stories that have sometimes been forgotten. 

Because freedoms arise from norms as much as law and code, they cannot be cultivated alone. Last weekend in-between apartment hunting, I bicycled from Boston to Providence Rhode Island, imagining the journey taken by the city’s founder Roger Williams in the winter of 1636. After Williams was banished from Massachusetts for advocating for religious freedom and indigenous land rights, the Wampanoag and Narragansett peoples sheltered him and supported his efforts to build a colony around those freedoms. Riding out to Narragansett Bay, I couldn’t help but think that courage and hospitality are equally essential ingredients for any culture of rights to flourish.

That’s why I’m especially looking forward to the conversations I know will happen with the other fellows, with colleagues at the Knight First Amendment Institute, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, and the wonderful community here at the Citizens and Technology Lab. 

And if this is something you would like to team up on, I would love to hear from you — preferably after my move in July. See you in Boston next year!