Bio
David Evan Harris is a CIGI senior fellow, a Chancellor’s Public Scholar at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and faculty member at the Haas School of Business, where he teaches courses on artificial intelligence (AI) ethics, social movements and social media, civic technology, futures thinking and scenario planning.
David is a senior research fellow at the International Computer Science Institute, a visiting fellow at the Integrity Institute and a senior advisor for AI ethics at the Psychology of Technology Institute. He is an affiliated faculty member with the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society Policy Lab; the Center for Latin American Studies; the Center for Equity, Gender & Leadership; and the Business & Public Policy Group at UC Berkeley.
In his previous role as a research manager at Meta (formerly Facebook), David managed teams of quantitative and qualitative researchers working on responsible AI, social impact and civic integrity. During his nearly five years with Meta, he worked on topic areas including: AI fairness and inclusion; AI governance and accountability; global election integrity; misinformation; coordinated inauthentic behaviour; hate speech; human rights; political violence; harassment and online safety for activists, journalists and politicians; community organizing; civic participation; racial justice; authoritative information; and volunteering and non-profit organizations.
David previously served as research director at the Institute for the Future, where he led research on the future of media, philanthropy, governance, international development and social movements. He was an intern at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and a confidential assistant at the Office of Management and Budget, Natural Resources Division.
David has a B.A. in the political economy of environment and development from UC Berkeley and an M.S. in sociology from the University of São Paulo in Brazil. His preferred research methods include ethnography, in-depth interviews, aggregation of expert opinion, survey design, scenario planning, signals scanning, multi-stakeholder workshop facilitation, grounded theory and content analysis.
In 2004, David founded the Global Lives Project, a network of people working to build a video library of daily life around the world, which he continues to support.