Media Mentions

This summer, a bipartisan group of about a hundred academics, journalists, pollsters, former government officials and former campaign staff members convened for an initiative called the Transition Integrity Project. By video conference, they met to game out hypothetical threats to the November election and a peaceful transfer of power if the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, were to win. Dividing into Team Trump and Team Biden, the group ran various scenarios about counting ballots and the litigation and protests and violence that could follow a contested election result. The idea was to test the machinery of American democracy...The conspiracy theories, the lies, the distortions, the overwhelming amount of information, the anger encoded in it — these all serve to create chaos and confusion and make people, even nonpartisans, exhausted, skeptical and cynical about politics. The spewing of falsehoods isn’t meant to win any battle of ideas. Its goal is to prevent the actual battle from being fought, by causing us to simply give up. And the problem isn’t just the internet. A working paper from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard released early this month found that effective disinformation campaigns are often an “elite-driven, mass-media led process” in which “social media played only a secondary and supportive role.” Trump’s election put him in the position to operate directly through Fox News and other conservative media outlets, like Rush Limbaugh’s talk-radio show, which have come to function “in effect as a party press,” the Harvard researchers found...In a 2018 book, “Network Propaganda,” Yochai Benkler, a director of the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, and two researchers there, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts, mapped the spread of political disinformation in the United States from 2015 to 2018. Analyzing the hyperlinks of four million news articles, the three authors found that the conservative media did not counter lies and distortions, but rather recycled them from one outlet to the next, on TV and radio and through like-minded websites.

The 2020 presidential election could be so tight, and the result so hotly contested, that the losing party refuses to concede, triggering a chaotic free-for-all in which Congress, the courts, and, in the most extreme case, the military could determine the winner. It may sound far-fetched, but the Constitution has major gaps when it comes to deciding a contested presidential race...Now let’s take the alternative scenario from above, where the Florida legislature replaces the pro-Biden slate of electors with a pro-Trump slate. Congress oversees counting the Electoral College votes. Both slates of electors from Florida — those ready to vote for Biden, and those for Trump — would surely show up in Washington claiming to represent the true will of the people. Who chooses which set of votes to count? Some say it would be Vice President Mike Pence in his capacity as president of the Senate. But most experts agree that decision falls to Congress. What happens if a split Congress can’t agree on which votes to count? The Constitution has no answer. In a true nightmare scenario, Pelosi declares the electors invalid, refuses to count the votes, and claims, in the scenario laid out above, that the House has the power to declare Biden the winner. Then, Senate Republicans rally behind Trump while Pelosi and the Supreme Court face off over who has authority. “If it’s a contest between Nancy Pelosi and the Supreme Court, we have no idea,” said Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law and leadership at Harvard Law School. “At some point, it’s the military’s judgment — because if Trump refuses to leave, who’s going to show up at the White House on Inauguration Day and escort him out?” ...Lessig said he believes the courts would ultimately get involved to avoid the appearance of a stolen election. “These are people who think about history. That’s what their whole lives are about,” he said. Still, at a time when norms are being shattered and the president is openly talking about neutering the United States Postal Service’s ability to count millions of mail-in ballots, Lessig says unimaginable scenarios have become very imaginable. “The question is not what’s reasonable or fair,” he said. “The question is what’s possible.”

In this episode—the second in our ongoing “Big Decisions” spin-off series—guest host and chair of the RFF Board of Directors Sue Tierney talks with Jody Freeman, director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, and Jeffrey Holmstead, a former assistant administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency. Both guests this week reflect on their experiences working on environmental policy during the hectic early years of a new presidential administration and discuss upcoming challenges for either a Biden presidency or another Trump term as the pandemic persists, global economic woes continue, and climate change intensifies. While Freeman has concerns that confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court could reduce the authority of environmental regulators, Holmstead contends that the court’s conservative turn could be an opportunity for Congress to take the lead in pursuing ambitious energy legislation again.

In the lead up to Monday's confirmation hearings to install Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the US Supreme Court, Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden raised concerns that the efforts to put Barrett on the court are unconstitutional and exemplify court packing. "The only court packing going on right now, is going on with Republicans packing the court now," Biden told reporters on Saturday. "It is not constitutional what they are doing." Facts First: This is false. Legal experts say there is nothing strictly unconstitutional about Barrett's confirmation process...Asked about Biden's comments, the campaign referred CNN to Laurence Tribe, Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Reached by CNN, Tribe said McConnell's decision to hold a hearing for Barrett despite refusing to do so for Garland goes against the Constitution's founding principles, but acknowledged the Republican-led nomination effort does not violate any specific article of the Constitution. In defense of Biden's claim, campaign spokesman Andrew Bates also added that "The structure and principles of our Constitution stand against this divisive and extreme power grab that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are carrying out in order to undo life-saving protections for Americans suffering from preexisting conditions. Ramming through this nomination after millions of Americans have already voted is contemptuous of the essential democratic structure that is the bedrock of the Constitution." "Most of what the Constitution forbids is not written down," Tribe noted. According to Tribe, Barrett's nomination process taking place before the election avoids consent by the governed, misuses the Senate's power of advice and consent, and violates the commitment to honor and decency he believes the framers intended those chosen to serve the American people must uphold. "The sheer power to appoint a Supreme Court justice when you've got the votes is not in question," Tribe said. "The question is what principles apply."

An op-ed by Beth Feldstein ‘21, Niki Rubin ‘22, Ross Svenson ‘21, and Katie Cion ‘21: Democracy dies in the elitist networks created and maintained by lawyers. As students at Harvard Law School (“HLS”), we know that many perceive Harvard as epitomizing the legal elite—HLS is historically the most represented school on the Supreme Court and has a similarly outsized presence in the broader federal judiciary. The HLS website contends that “no law school has done more to shape law.” But HLS applauds power, regardless of how it is deployed. Rather than counting its trophies, HLS must reckon with the toxic culture of elitism it perpetuates—and the disastrous effects this culture has on the most vulnerable in our country...Our organizations (the Harvard Chapters of the People’s Parity Project and American Constitution Society) work to recognize the privilege our education gives us and use our platforms for parityrather than power. It’s past time for everyone in the legal community—students, practitioners, and professors—to do the same. That means rethinking the reliance on elite credentials at the expense of their deleterious effects on our country. Judge Barrett's participation in a White House event to celebrate her nomination, without wearing a mask or attempting to socially distance, calls her fitness for the bench into question. Such reckless disregard for the health of attendees and the employees and reporters working at this event—over two dozen of whom have now tested positive for coronavirus—evinces poor judgment. But even before September’s superspreader disaster, Judge Barrett’s record displayed a callous indifference to human life. Between 2011 and 2017, Judge Barrett gave five paid speeches sponsored by the far-right Alliance Defending Freedom. The organization, designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, supports re-criminalizing homosexuality and sterilizing trans people. A Justice should rebuke hate groups, not accept money from them.

A Myanmar election app backed by foreign funding, including an organization supported by the Canadian government, is “clearly discriminatory” toward the country’s persecuted Rohingya population, the former head of a United Nations fact-finding mission says. The mVoter2020, released last week, delivers information on nearly 7,000 candidates onto smartphones ahead of the country’s Nov. 8 election, in what was billed as an important contribution to democracy in a country where large numbers of people remain under orders to stay inside because of the pandemic. But the app and its underlying technology, backed by the Asia Foundation and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), include information on the ethnicity and religion of candidates. It is data that can be useful in a country that designates electoral seats for some specific groups but which critics say underpins divisive identity politics in the country. The app also described at least two Rohingya candidates using the term “Bengali,” an epithet employed by Myanmar leaders and Buddhist nationalists in a country whose armed forces have been accused of genocidal attacks on the largely Muslim minority group...To be associated with the term “Bengali” is to be associated with some of the worst actions against the Rohingya, said Yee Mon Htun, a Myanmar-born Canadian lawyer who is now an instructor and lecturer at Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic. More than 730,000 Rohingya have been driven out of Myanmar after 2017 “clearance operations” against the group in which women were raped and children burned to death as homes were torched. The idea that Rohingya are “foreign interlopers threatening the integrity of this country is why any violence or crimes against them is justified – because they’re not from this country,” said Ms. Htun, who recently completed a year working with organizations inside Myanmar to study hate speech. The term “Bengali” fits with a broader current of dehumanizing rhetoric against the Rohingya, she said, and “what’s happened in Myanmar shows that what seems like benign hate speech can translate into gross atrocities on the ground.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: On October 5, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued a statement, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, expressing ongoing disagreement with Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark gay marriage decision, arguing that it stigmatized religious opposition to gay marriage. The statement understandably raised concerns that a growing conservative majority on the court could use religious liberty as a cover to roll back rights for LGBTQ people. It is certainly likely that the current conservative majority will recognize exemptions from anti-discrimination law for religious groups like evangelical Christians. However, even after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, and even if Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, there are still five votes to protect gay and trans rights under most circumstances, including at work and in marriage. That’s because of 2020’s hugely important Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton. This ruling extended workplace anti-discrimination law to gay and trans people and makes reversal of 2015’s Obergefell extremely unlikely. The 6-3 decision in Bostock was written by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, and joined not only by the court’s four liberals, but also by Chief Justice John Roberts. Technically, Bostock was about a question of statutory interpretation — the meaning of Title VII — while Obergefell was about whether the Constitution guarantees a right to gay marriage. A justice could in theory think that Bostock is correctly decided while Obergefell was not. But there are powerful jurisprudential, as well as political, reasons to think neither Gorsuch nor Roberts would vote to overturn Obergefell.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Have a look, if you would, at this image: Is it a duck, or is it a rabbit? Many people see it as a duck; many others see it as a rabbit. You might see it as one and then as the other, maybe with some effort. You might try simultaneously to see the image as both a duck and a rabbit, but that is not possible. At any moment, it is one or the other; it is not both. If you can easily see it as one and then the other, congratulations. You might be especially creative. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein used the duck-rabbit figure to explain that there is a difference between “seeing that” and “seeing as.” When you see a table, you are seeing “that” it is a table. It just is a table. But when you see clouds in the sky forming an image of a face, you are seeing the cloud formation “as” a face. In the latter case, your own perspective is crucial. If you see a duck, you might think that you are seeing “that.” But you are really seeing “as.” People often confuse the two. Why do some people see a duck, and why do others see a rabbit? A likely answer points to the importance of our preconceptions. For example, researchers have found that people of all ages, and particularly those between the ages of 2 and 10, were significantly more likely to see the image as a rabbit on Easter Sunday...The duck-rabbit image is both puzzling and fun. It also helps us understand current social divisions, including those in both law and politics. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is a “textualist,” committed to following the ordinary meaning of congressional enactments. But what is that meaning? Textualists insist that they see a duck. But it might also be a rabbit.

Despite the recent concerns about coronavirus exposure at the Capitol — and the fast-approaching general election — the Senate confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is still happening. The hearing will air Monday, October 12, through Thursday, October 15, beginning at 9 am each day...Day one of the hearings will start with opening statements from Barrett as well as from every member of the committee, which is helmed by Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Meanwhile, questions for Barrett are slated to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, and a panel of outside witnesses will testify about her nomination on Thursday. The hearings mark one of the key steps in Republicans’ efforts to rush through Barrett’s nomination just weeks ahead of the general election, and its set-up will be somewhat different from confirmations in the past...An area that Democrats are expected to avoid is a focus on Barrett’s faith, which was a centerpiece of her 7th Circuit hearings, because she’s previously written about it in the context of possible judicial decisions, CNN reports. As Millhiser notes, however, some of the questions during those hearings — including a memorable one from Feinstein — came off as attacks on Barrett’s Catholicism rather than its relationship to her work. “It is fair game to criticize a nominee for their political beliefs, including their opposition to abortion. And it is fair game to criticize someone for political beliefs that are inspired by their religious faith,” writes Millhiser. “But, in a disastrous exchange with the future Judge Barrett during her 2017 confirmation hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) appeared to go a step further — seeming to attack Barrett’s Catholicism itself.” Harvard Law Professor Mark Tushnet has noted, though, that it’s possible for lawmakers to ask Barrett about her previous writings about faith and capital punishment without “lapsing into anti-Catholicism.”

President Trump publicly pressured the Justice Department on Friday to move against his political adversaries and complained that Attorney General William P. Barr is not doing enough to deliver results of a probe into how the Obama administration investigated possible collusion between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. The delayed report is “a disgrace,” and Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, should be jailed, Trump said in a rambling radio interview, one day after he argued on Twitter that his current Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, is a criminal who should be barred from running. Three weeks before the election and as he trails Biden in polls nationally as well as in key states, Trump is issuing a new torrent of threats and demands for federal action against Democrats, including former president Barack Obama, that go beyond his familiar and often erroneous claims of wrongdoing by his perceived political enemies...The president’s calls for the Justice Department to target his political opposition in the heat of a presidential campaign is a jarring moment without precedent in modern American history. But it is in keeping with Trump’s actions when he has faced adversity, which now includes testing positive for the coronavirus last week after for months minimizing the threat posed by a deadly virus that has killed more than 213,000 Americans. “The behavior would be shocking in a normal presidency, but Trump has literally been doing this for years,” Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, a Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, said of Trump’s calls to go after Democrats. “So it is reprehensible, but not shocking.”

Supreme Court Justice and liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who recently passed away at the age of 87, was best known for championing women’s rights. But she also leaves behind a remarkable environmental legacy. Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus, author of “The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court,” believes the “classic example” of Ginsburg’s contribution to environmental jurisprudence was the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA, which is widely considered the most important environmental case ever decided by the US Supreme Court. This was the case in which the court established that EPA had authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, an idea that EPA itself had rejected. No less importantly, according to Lazarus, the case established that a plaintiff who alleged climate injury had the right to bring a case in federal court — “a hugely significant decision in its own right,” according to Lazarus. In several other cases, Ginsburg not only cast the decisive note, she wrote the opinion for the court, which Lazarus says was even more notable. Of the cases for which Ginsburg wrote the opinion for the majority, he adds, the most significant was Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw. In this case, a group of citizens brought a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act alleging hundreds of violations of mercury emissions rules by the Laidlaw industrial facility in the area around South Carolina's North Tyger River. The Court of Appeals had held that the environmentalists lacked the requisite injury to bring the lawsuit, but the Supreme Court reversed the previous ruling. “Justice Ginsburg wrote a tour de force in that opinion,” Lazarus says. Her opinion not only established that these particular environmental plaintiffs had standing to bring their particular Clean Water Act suit.

After Donald Trump's recent hospitalization, the president and his team took a variety of steps to produce images of a "performative show of strength," as CNN's Brian Stelter put it. Referring to North Korea's political model, Stelter added, "This is the kind of thing you see from strongmen who want to appear to be leading -- it's a 'Dear Leader' sort of approach." A Washington Post report went on to note over the weekend, "[A]nalysts who study authoritarian regimes said critics are right to posit that Trump has borrowed from the playbooks of strongman leaders in his messaging. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said Trump shares the authoritarian urge for "constant public adoration," and she emphasized that he is 'very savvy about how the authoritarian leader-follower relationship works.'" But as important as it is to appreciate the degree to which the Republican incumbent emulates an authoritarian style, the substance of Trump's authoritarian tactics is more terrifying...The Times' report noted that this takes Trump's presidency "into new territory -- until now, occupied by leaders with names like Putin, Xi and Erdogan." Indeed, I made the case last week that if this were happening in another country, the world would look to the United States to condemn the authoritarian antics. Except, in 2020, the authoritarian antics, unlike anything in the American tradition, are coming from our own White House. Jack Goldsmith, who led the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush/Cheney era and who is now a professor at Harvard Law School, added, "It is crazy and it is unprecedented, but it's no different from what he has been saying since the beginning of his presidency. The only thing new is that he has moved from talking about it to seeming to order it."

Even the judge who struck it down this week doesn’t think this is the end of a rule on methane emissions that the Trump administration has been fighting for three-and-a-half years. On Thursday, October 8th, Wyoming federal judge Scott Skavdahl issued a 57-page decision rescinding an Obama-era rule that limited emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times stronger than CO2, from oil and gas drilling operations on federal and Indian lands...The decision could have big consequences. If Skavdahl’s ruling stands, and if separate court cases cement the Environmental Protection Agency’s view under the Trump administration that it lacks broad rule-setting authority, then “there will be little hope for a future administration to be able to regulate methane emissions from oil and gas operations without an act of Congress,” said Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, in emailed comments...Yet this isn’t the first time that the Obama-era rule has appeared dead. In September 2018 the Trump administration stripped the meat off it and reissued it as a new, far narrower rule — only for a California court in July 2020 to strike down the skinnier replacement and order the original reinstated. Appeals are ongoing. “The roller coaster has returned to the station, though the Court doubts any of the parties will be exiting the ride just yet,” Judge Skavdahl wrote acerbically of the 3.5-year legal saga. “[I]t is likely this Court's decision will not end this ride but simply serve as a lift hill transporting it to another level.” Vizcarra, too, expects the decision to be appealed.

Andrew Crespo, a Harvard Law School professor, discusses how Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death leaves the court's three remaining liberals looking for new alliances. Steve Sanders, a professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, discusses how two conservative justices used the court's rejection of an appeal, to complain that the court's 2015 same-sex marriage ruling threatens religious liberty. June Grasso hosts.

Twitter announced on Friday — less than 30 days ahead of the US election — that it’s enacting a series of significant changes in order to make it harder to spread election misinformation on its platform. It’s one of the most aggressive series of actions any social media company has taken yet to stop the spread of misinformation on their platforms... “As always, the big question for both platforms is around enforcement,” wrote Evelyn Douek, a researcher at Harvard Law School studying the regulation of online speech, in a message to Recode. “Will they be able to work quickly enough on November 3 and in the days following? So far, signs aren’t promising.” Twitter already has a policy of adding labels to misleading content that “may suppress participation or mislead people” about how to vote. But in recent cases when President Trump has tweeted misleading information about voting, it’s taken the platform several hours to add such labels. Facebook has similarly been criticized for its response time...Douek said that platforms “need to be moving much quicker and more comprehensively on actually applying their rules.” But, she added, if “introducing more friction is the only way to keep up with the content, then that’s what they should do.” The concept of “friction” to which Douek is referring is the idea of slowing down the spread of misinformation on social media to give fact-checkers more time to correct it. It’s also an ideal that many misinformation experts have long advocated. Overall, misinformation experts, including Douek, lauded Twitter for introducing friction by nudging users to think twice before sharing misleading content.

In today's segment of "Bloomberg Equality," Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Harvard University professor of constitutional law, discusses what Amy Coney Barrett's inclusion on the Supreme Court bench could mean for the future of women's rights and diversity. She speaks with Bloomberg's Caroline Hyde, Romaine Bostick and Taylor Riggs on "Bloomberg Markets: The Close."

An article by Emma Svoboda ‘23: As dawn broke on Oct. 6 in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, it was unclear who was running the country. Thousands of protestors had taken to the streets the previous day to protest the results of a parliamentary election widely viewed as fraudulent, which shut opposition parties out of government for the first time in Kyrgyzstan’s history. Photos from the city’s central Ala-Too Square show a sea of people holding up their cell phone flashlights. Later in the evening of Oct. 6, protests turned violent, with police using flash bombs and rubber bullets against protestors; more than 500 injuries were reported, along with at least one death. Demonstrators overtook state security guards and broke into the White House, Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary building, where they were photographed drinking tea in ransacked government offices. Three days later, after tumultuous protests continued around the country, President Sooronbay Jeenbekov bowed to the pressures of protestors and indicated his willingness to resign. Jeenbekov, in a statement, signaled that he is prepared to step down as president as soon as “legitimate heads of the executive authorities are approved and the country takes the path of legitimacy” and committed to maintaining peace and tranquility in the country. Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous country of 6.5 million people tucked between China and Kazakhstan in Central Asia. Colonized by the Russian Empire in the 19th century, the country gained its independence after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Kyrgyzstan is one of the poorest countries in Central Asia, but also the region’s only true democracy—Jeenbekov came to power in a 2017 election in which he won only 55 percent of the vote, unlike the leaders of neighboring Tajikistan and Turkmenistan who have held onto power with sham elections.

Amy Coney Barrett told a Jacksonville University audience in 2016 that the Supreme Court is unlikely to overturn a woman’s right to an abortion, the key holding of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. However, Barrett has written law review articles that outline arguments attorneys theoretically could use in trying to strike down that ruling and other precedents, though the writings are analyses that don't urge specific action or say how she would decide specific cases. Among them: She cited legal experts who do not count Roe v. Wade among "superprecedents" – Supreme Court decisions that are so ingrained in American life that they can't be overturned. The potential for Barrett to join a 6-3 conservative majority that could erase the controversial 47-year-old ruling is expected to be one flashpoint during her Senate confirmation hearings scheduled to start Monday...If the Senate confirms Barrett's nomination, could she provide the legal impetus to overturn the ruling? Legal experts who have examined her writings and court decisions offer conflicting scenarios. "I don’t doubt that Judge Barrett would be more prepared to overturn significant Supreme Court precedents than anyone on the current Court other than perhaps Justice (Clarence) Thomas," said Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School expert on constitutional law who had a young Barack Obama as a law school researcher.  "Her writing on the subject is admirably candid even if shockingly unconservative," Tribe said. "She strongly believes that a Supreme Court justice who believes a prior decision, whether about the Constitution or about the meaning of an act of Congress, was wrong should feel free to overrule it without any substantial concern for the importance of stability and predictability in the Court’s jurisprudence."

The Harvard Gazette interviewed Beatrice Lindstrom, a clinical instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic, about her still unresolved, decade-long efforts on behalf of the victims of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti.

Facebook Inc.’s announcement Thursday that it had shut down a network of phony accounts attempting to influence the November elections reinforced fears that people are working to use social media to undermine U.S. democracy. But unlike 2016, when most attention focused on campaigns associated with the Russian government, this year’s wave of disinformation is coming largely from President Donald Trump and his American supporters, a growing body of research shows, raising new challenges for social media companies.  Facebook tied the campaign it exposed Thursday to Rally Forge, a U.S. marketing firm hired by Turning Point USA, a conservative youth organization that has already been linked to other attempts to manipulate online political debate, and an advocacy organization called the Inclusive Conservation Group. The social network removed 200 Facebook accounts, 55 pages, and 76 Instagram accounts. It also banned Rally Forge.  The fake accounts, created to look like real Facebook users, posted commentary parroting Trump administration talking points on the pages of news organizations...A study published last week by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center showed how the president promoted disinformation largely by manipulating the mass media into repeating his claims. “There's no question that the leading force of this disinformation campaign has been President Trump himself,” said Yochai Benkler, the study’s main author, a stance that has been echoed by numerous other experts in the field. Benkler thinks the fixation on social media has overstated its relative importance compared to traditional news media in spreading disinformation. “We always focus on Twitter because that's the new shiny object in the media ecosystem, but when we actually looked at the last six months, Trump uses press briefings and news releases every bit as much as he uses Twitter,” he said.

Anthropologist Mary Gray, who said her research focusing on queer and other underrepresented communities often was seen as a "marginal topic" in some academic circles, never thought she would have access to a grant that would give her over half a million dollars with no strings attached. All that changed when Gray was chosen as one of this year’s MacArthur Fellows, which will provide her with a $625,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation that she can use in any way she chooses. The fellowship, commonly referred to as the MacArthur “genius grant," counts essayist Susan Sontag, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, filmmaker Errol Morris and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda among its past recipients. This year, there are 21 fellows from fields as varied as astrophysics and choreography, and each will receive the same amount of money, which will be disbursed over five years. Gray, 51, is one of three LGBTQ MacArthur “geniuses” in the Class of 2020 who spoke with NBC News about their work, their plans for the grant money and the diversity of voices in this year’s class. She is joined by writer Jacqueline Woodson and econometrician Isaiah Andrews. “This is for every queer kid out there,” Gray said of her selection. “The last thing I would have thought was that the work I do would be acknowledged in this way.” Gray’s recent academic work explores how the digital economy has transformed labor, identity and human rights. Driving this research is her past research on how queer people in rural America have used the internet to form communities around their identities, which stems from her upbringing in California’s rural Central Valley. She is currently a faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, while also maintaining faculty positions in the anthropology and gender studies departments at Indiana University.