March 29, 2024

Can Classes on Field Experiments Scale? Lessons from SOC412

Last semester, I taught a Princeton undergrad/grad seminar on the craft, politics, and ethics of behavioral experimentation. The idea was simple: since large-scale human subjects research is now common outside universities, we need to equip students to make sense of that kind of power and think critically about it. In this post, I share lessons for teaching […]

Teaching the Craft, Ethics, and Politics of Field Experiments

How can we manage the politics and ethics of large-scale online behavioral research? When this question came up in April during a forum on Defending Democracy at Princeton, Ed Felten mentioned on stage that I was teaching a Princeton undergrad class on this very topic. No pressure! Ed was right about the need: people with […]

It’s time to bring Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies into the computer science curriculum

In the privacy technologies grad seminar that I taught last semester, Bitcoin proved to be the most popular topic among students. Two groups did very different and equally interesting final projects on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies; more on that below. More broadly, we’re seeing a huge demand for learning the computer science underlying Bitcoin, both at […]

Singapore Punishes Net Freedom Advocate

Over the last few days my activist self has come out.  I was a tenure reviewer for Dr. Cherian George at Nanyang Technical University, one of Singapore’s most high-profile universities.  His tenure case was overturned at the top, where university administration meets the country’s political elites. It is difficult to dismiss George on the basis […]

On the Harvard "Cheating" Scandal

The news that Harvard is investigating more than 100 students on charges of unauthorized collaboration on a take-home exam has, predictably, led many commentators to chime in. No matter who you are, a story like this is likely to trigger one of your hot buttons, whether it’s the declining moral standards of kids these days, […]