Center for Business and Human Rights

In the last two years, Facebook asserts, it has focused more attention on “content governance and enforcement issues” than on any other topic.  Independent assessments, such as a 2018 NYU-Stanford study, confirm a dramatic reduction of what researchers called “fake news” on Facebook’s platform.  And yet despite this measurable progress, the company continues to send mixed signals on undertaking reform and resists making a few basic changes that would fundamentally address some of its core problems. On Sunday, in The Washington Post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for “new rules” to govern the Internet. While he focused on many of the right issues, the key reforms he proposed miss the mark.

For decades many of the world’s leading art museums have been the proud beneficiaries of large financial contributions from the Sackler family of New York. Sackler wings display world-class art in the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, and numerous other museums and university art collections. These donations stem from the Sacklers’ remarkable financial success in the pharmaceutical industry, which allowed them to build a family fortune now estimated at more than $13 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook will shift its focus to “private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure.” While some commentators initially applauded this statement as a 180-degree turn from the company’s past, the real import is unclear because Zuckerberg didn’t mention any plan of action. As he later acknowledged, “this isn’t a product announcement, it’s a statement of principles.”

International Women’s Day offers an opportunity to take stock of areas where women have made progress in the struggle for equality but also to examine the gaps that remain. In the United States, women have made notable gains politically, but far too many continue to struggle to gain economic equality, including at the highest levels of American business.

A new report from the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights examines domestically generated disinformation in the US and urges social media platforms to take a harder line in addressing the problem.

During the fall 2018 semester, a group of NYU Stern MBA students including Gabriel Ng (MBA/MPA ‘19), Su-Kyong Park (MBA ‘20) and Kinni Shah (MBA ‘19), took part in a Stern Solutions experiential learning project focused on the cost of recruiting migrant workers in Qatar.

As he wound down his two-day summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, President Trump was asked again to comment on the torture and murder of Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student who died in 2017. Warmbier had been studying in North Korea in 2015 when he was arrested and held on bogus charges for 17 months, ultimately lapsing into a coma and dying.

In 1964, the United States Supreme Court protected journalists from legal retaliation by powerful politicians and other public figures seeking to impede their reporting. The case, New York Times v. Sullivan, significantly limited the scope of defamation lawsuits that could be brought against publishers or reporters by public officials and other prominent figures, requiring proof of “reckless disregard” of the truth. Over the past five decades, the Sullivan case has empowered journalists to root out official corruption and expose wrongdoing by the powerful.