Ethical Tech Initiative

GW received two grants from New America's Public Interest Technology program to advance the public good through ethical tech and university collaboration. The Ethical Tech Initiative is an interdisciplinary collaboration where law meets computer science and engineering, media and public affairs, and social entrepreneurship. The initiative aims to examine the values that digital technologies implicitly embody and reflect, and the values that they should be built or redesigned to support. Through the initiative, we will bring in guest technologists to interact with faculty and students, lecture and participate in roundtables on issues such as manipulation through disinformation and the values implicit in algorithmic decision making. We will also launch a research project with colleagues from SEAS and the School of Media and Public Affairs on the efficacy of a variety of methods for combatting disinformation. Student researchers from GW Law and other graduate-level programs will study fact checking and labeling of disinformation communications on social media and ultimately write a paper on their findings. PIT Commons of DC is a regional multidisciplinary collective of institutions from local universities that aims to connect students who are interested in public interest technology law with job placements and opportunities, regardless of which university they attend. This effort seeks to pool resources that will help students network and find positions in the field, ultimately diversifying and expanding the career pipeline. For more info: