Berkman Center receives $4M gift from MacArthur Foundation

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awarded the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School a $4 million gift in support of the center’s second decade. This is the single largest gift from a foundation in the Berkman Center’s history.

“This generous award from the MacArthur Foundation will help us pursue scholarship with impact in the field of Internet studies for years to come,” said John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center. “We are very proud to have received this award, and we look forward to working with a broad community of scholars, activists, and progressive companies as we continue to build out into the Net and study it as we go.”

The MacArthur Foundation has supported the Berkman Center through a series of grants over the past decade, as well as through meaningful substantive involvement in the center’s work. Efforts have ranged from extensive investigation into the emerging digital media ecosystem to empirical study of the rise of state-sponsored Internet filtering and surveillance, and have already led to numerous policy changes, two books, and two spin-off organizations (one of which is a nonprofit).

In its second decade as an entrepreneurial nonprofit (the 2007-08 academic year marks the center’s 10th anniversary), the Berkman Center and its community will continue to pursue a shared research agenda focused on law, technology, innovation, and knowledge; the relationship between Internet and civic activity; and technology, law, and development.