Big Tech, Democracy and Human Rights in South Asia

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The Center for Race & Gender and the Initiative on Political Conflict, Gender and People's Rights at the University of California, Berkeley; and the Center for the Study of Organized Hate with cosponsors present:

Big Tech, Democracy and Human Rights in South Asia

11.12. 2025 | 3 - 6:30 PM | 10 Stephens Hall (ISAS Conference Room)


PROGRAM

Premise:  Technologies connect nations, regions, communities,and peoples in a world that is increasingly polarized and in conflict with itself. The digital age is surfeit with disinformation and ideological and political extremes that are weaponized by authoritarian regimes across the globe. The transmission of disinformation and hate within and across borders in the contemporary era significantly relies on digital media platforms that are used by hundreds of millions of users and are owned by big tech organizations. What forces threaten democracy and just peace in the digital sphere? Big Tech firms are uneven in enforcing accountability for policy infringements relating to disinformation and hateful content. How does a lack of accountability on the part of Big Tech impact political dissension and heighten popular extremism? South Asia is a case in point where the scale of social mediatization of hate attests to the power of Big Tech and its adverse impact on democracy and human rights in the region. This conference brings together scholars and professionals whose work focuses on the intersection of Big Tech, democracy, human rights, law and society. The conference serves as a platform for dialogue on policy and advocacy to understand and counteract the damaging impacts of Big Tech on marginalized communities in South Asia.

3:00 - 4:30 PM

Welcome & Introductions

  • Angana P. Chatterji, Founding Chair, Political Conflict, Gender, and People’s Rights Initiative, Center for Race and Gender, and Research Anthropologist, UC Berkeley
  • Rohit Chopra, Professor, Department of Communication, Santa Clara University


Panel 1: Social Media Platforms: Impact on Democracy in South Asia

Moderator: 

  • Zeba Warsi, Foreign Affairs Producer, PBS NewsHour

Panelists:

  • Susan Benesch, Executive Director, Dangerous Speech Project; Adjunct Professor, American University, and Faculty Associate, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University
  • Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, Executive Director, Tech Global Institute
  • Jeff Horwitz, Technology reporter, Thomson Reuters


5:00 - 6:30 PM

Welcome & Introductions

  • Angana P. Chatterji, Founding Chair, Political Conflict, Gender, and People’s Rights Initiative, Center for Race and Gender, and Research Anthropologist, UC Berkeley
  • Raqib Hameed Naik, Founding Director, Center for the Study of Organized Hate
  • Leti Volpp, Director, Center for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley, and Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice, UC Berkeley School of Law 


Panel 2: Digital Hate and Disinformation: Transnational Implications

Moderator: Alexa Koenig, Faculty Co-Director, Human Rights Center and Research Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law

Panelists:

  • Michael Kugelman, South Asia Analyst & Columnist, Foreign Policy Magazine
  • Nighat Dad, Executive Director, Digital Rights Foundation
  • Gerry Shih, Jerusalem Bureau Chief, The Washington Post

Organized by the Center for Race & Gender and the Initiative on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights at UC Berkeley, and the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. 

Co-sponsored by the Institute for South Asia Studies at UC Berkeley, and the Center for South Asia at Stanford University.

ORGANIZER BIOS

Photo of Angana Chatterji

Angana P. Chatterji

Founding Chair, Initiative on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights at the Center for Race and Gender, and Research Anthropologist, UC Berkeley

A cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scholar of South Asia, she is also a Research Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Stanford University, and a Global Fellow at the Center for Law and Transformation, University of Bergen. Chatterji has offered expert testimony to the United Nations, European Parliament, and United States Congress and has been variously honored for her work. Publications include Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism is Changing India; Conflicted Democracies and Gendered Violence: The Right to Heal; and Kashmir: The Case for Freedom.

Raqib Hameed Naik with plaid shirt and grey background

Raqib Hameed Naik

Executive Director, Center for the Study of Organized Hate

Naik is the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) and founder of Hindutva Watch, a real-time tracker of human rights abuses, and India Hate Lab, which documents and analyzes hate speech targeting India’s religious minorities both online and offline. Naik is a Research Fellow at the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Fellow with the Human Rights Project at Bard College.

Photo of Leti Volpp

Leti Volpp

Director, Center for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley, and Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice, UC Berkeley School of Law

A scholar of immigration law and citizenship theory whose research examines how law is shaped by culture and identity. Variously honored, she was elected a member of the American Law Institute and a member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany. Publications include  Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places: Justice Beyond and Between (editor with Marianne Constable and Bryan Wagner) (Fordham University Press, 2019).

SPEAKER BIOS

Susan Benesch smiling with glasses

Susan Benesch

Executive Director, Dangerous Speech Project, Adjunct  Professor at American University, and Faculty Associate with the Berkman Klein  Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University

Benesch founded and directs the Dangerous Speech Project, to study rhetoric that can inspire violence and locate ways to prevent this without infringing on freedom of expression. Her research focuses on methods to diminish harmful speech online and the harm itself. She advises technology companies to improve content moderation and user behavior. Trained as an international human rights lawyer at Yale, Benesch has worked as a refugee lawyer and advocate and published widely.

Rhobit Chopra in a blue shirt with a brick wall background

Rohit Chopra

Professor, Department of Communication, Santa Clara University
Chopra is Professor of Communication at Santa Clara University and Visiting Fellow at the Center for South Asia at Stanford University. He also serves as Advisor to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. Chopra's research centers on online right-wing communities in global contexts, the relationship between media, memory, and violence, and disability in media. His recent books include The Gita for a Global World: Ethical Action in an Age of Flux (2021) and The Virtual Hindu Rashtra: Saffron Nationalism and New Media (2019).

Nighat Dad smiling with glasses and long brown hair

Nighat Dad

Executive Director, Digital Rights Foundation

Dad is a lawyer from Pakistan and a digital policy expert. She serves on the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on AI, the Meta Oversight Board, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Data Frontiers. Her work spans global tech governance, regulation and policy processes, including the UN Global Digital Compact. She has advised companies like Microsoft and Meta, as well as governments in the UK, EU, and US. Recognized for advancing online freedom, women’s rights and accountability, she was named a Next Generation Leader by TIME in 2015.

Sabhanaz Rashid Diya with blue chair in background

Sabhanaz Rashid Diya

Executive Director, Tech Global Institute

Diya is the founding executive director of Tech Global Institute, a policy nonprofit focused on advancing equity and accountability of technologies in the Global Majority. She has advised governments in twenty countries and lead briefings with the White House, the U.S. Department of State and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, multilateral international organizations such the World Bank and the UN, bilateral donors, and a variety of global startups and corporations, on policy and law relating to global Internet and platform governance, Responsible AI and human rights.

black and white photo of jeff H

Jeff Horwitz

Technology reporter, Thomson Reuters

Horwitzis an investigative technology reporter for Thomson Reuters in San Francisco, and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, American Banker, Legal Times, The San Bernardino Sun and The Washington City Paper. He was a Knight Bagehot fellow at Columbia University, and has won Loeb and Polk awards, as well as the Christopher J. Welles Memorial Prize and the New York Press Club's Gold Keyboard.

Alexa smiling with green background

Alexa Koenig

Research Professor of Law, Co-Faculty Director, Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law

Koenig is Co-Faculty Director of the Human Rights Center (HRC) (winner of the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions), Director of HRC’s Investigations Program, and an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she teaches classes that focus on the intersection of emerging technologies and human rights. She also co-teaches a class on open source investigative reporting at Berkeley Journalism. Koenig co-founded the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab, which trains students and professionals to use social media and other digital open source content to strengthen human rights research, reporting, and accountability.

Michael Kugelman smiling in grey suit

Michael Kugelman

South Asia Analyst & Columnist, Foreign Policy Magazine

Kugelman has served as a Washington DC-based analyst of South Asia for nearly two decades. He is currently a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and writes its South Asia Brief, a weekly newsletter of news and analysis from the region. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, where he contributes to the Foundation's work on India and Bangladesh. Formerly, he served as the Director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center.

Gerry with glasses and long dark hair

Gerry Shih

Jerusalem Bureau Chief, The Washington Post

Shih covers Israel, the Palestinian territories and the greater Middle East for The Post. He joined the paper in 2018, and served as the New Delhi Bureau Chief at The Post during 2021-2025, reporting on politics, foreign policy, intelligence and technology in India and other South Asian countries, prior to which, he covered China. Previously, Shih reported for the Associated Press, Reuters and The New York Times. Shih was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2024, for his work on India, and the recipient of the 2023 South Asian Journalists Association Daniel Pearl Award and the 2020 Osborn Elliott Prize.

Zeba Warsi smiling with red jacket

Zeba Warsi

Foreign Affairs Producer, PBS NewsHour

Warsi is a foreign affairs producer with PBS NewsHour. She focuses her work on human-centric stories and long-form special projects. Prior to the NewsHour, Warsi was a political correspondent with CNN's India affiliate based in New Delhi, covering far-right extremism, religious violence and social movements for nearly a decade.  Twice nominated for an Emmy, Warsi was a leading member of the NewsHour team that received the 2024 Peabody award for coverage of the war in Gaza and Israel, and served on the jury for the 2025 Emmy Awards.

*If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) to fully participate in this event, please contact Ariana Ceja at centerrg@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event. 

DIRECTIONS

For directions to the ISAS, please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your Google Maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

The event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

Event hosted by CRG's Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative (PCRes) and the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH),  and co-sponsored by the Institute for South Asia Studies (ISAS)


Topics

CRG Events topic page, Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative topic page, PCRes Forums + Special Events topic page

CRG Research Initiative Event + CRG Symposium