Center for Business and Human Rights

This morning President Trump directed the Security and Exchange Commission to explore extending financial reporting deadlines from three months to six. In a morning tweet, he said this suggestion came from top business leaders who told him that this “would allow greater flexibility & save money.” Indeed. But at a time when public confidence in all institutions, including business, is declining, this is exactly the wrong direction for government to go.

This week several major Internet companies announced that they were taking down Infowars, Alex Jones’ inflammatory online platform. Notably absent from the list was Twitter. This is a case that is testing the core values of the major Internet providers and the practical applications of their community standards. And to date, Twitter is failing those tests.

A decade ago, a group of Internet companies, civil society organizations, academics, and investors launched the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a collaborative effort to promote free expression and protect user privacy on the Internet. Google helped lead this effort and a parallel project devoted to developing a human rights framework for the Internet. In 2010, Google further demonstrated its leadership by making a principled decision to withdraw its search-engine services from China.

In 1822, James Madison wrote that “a popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy or perhaps both.” Operating in a much simpler world, Madison and the other architects of American democracy did a brilliant job in developing a constitutional model that guarantees a free press and supports accountable government-essential elements to the provision of “popular information.”

A new report from the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights outlines the dangers posed by Russian political disinformation and offers recommendations to governments and Internet platforms on how to address threats.

Over the last two weeks, I have traveled to Myanmar and Bangladesh. This was my first visit back to Myanmar in more than five years. And while I am a chronic optimist, my visit offered grim confirmation of the dramatic deterioration of conditions in the country, especially for the Rohingya ethnic minority. These catastrophic conditions underscored the decline of U.S. leadership on human rights in this part of the world and globally.

This morning Microsoft President Brad Smith posted an essay on the company’s blog that raises important questions about the human rights challenges related to facial recognition technology. Microsoft, and in particular, Smith, have led the tech industry in addressing human rights issues that inevitably grow from the spreading use of emerging technologies. As Smith points out, these new technological capacities are often a force for good, but are also subject to manipulation and can cause great harm. What is clear is that these new technologies are now part of our lives and will play an ever-greater role in the future. Smith rightly focuses on vexing challenges relating to the governance of facial recognition technologies, a rapidly evolving area which requires new models in which both governments and companies assume greater responsibilities.

The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the visa ban is a piece of President Donald Trump’s broader efforts to drastically curtail immigration into the United States. A centerpiece of his “America First” agenda, Trump’s anti-immigration offensive also involves seeking to deport the so-called Dreamers and deter Central Americans from crossing the southern border by separating parents from their children. The message is clear: America is slamming the door on new immigrants, especially those coming from the global South.

The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council is yet another step in the administration’s retreat from the world stage. Once widely viewed as a global leader on issues like human rights, the U.S. is now a marginal player, in headlong retreat from the leadership position it has occupied since World War II.

At last year’s EFMD annual conference in Berlin, Germany, Paolo Boccardelli, dean of LUISS Business School and the conference co-chair, outlined 10 global trends that will have an impact on management education in the future: