Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been appointed to dual fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School. She will serve as the 2023 Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow and a Hauser Leader in the school’s Center for Public Leadership beginning this fall. Ardern will also be the first tech governance leadership fellow at the school’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She will spend time at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, university to share her experience and learn from others.
Ardern led New Zealand through a devastating mass shooting in 2019 where a white supremacist gunman killed 51 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch. Two months after the shooting, Ardern launched the Christchurch Call with French President Emmanuel Macron to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. More than 50 countries joined the initiative, including technology companies like Facebook parent company Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, YouTube, Zoom and Twitter.
Ardern said she sees the Harvard opportunity as a chance not only to reflect and share her experience with others but also to learn from the school’s research community. Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Klein Center, said Ardern’s expertise will be invaluable as they search for workable solutions to some of the deepest online problems.
Ardern plans to return to New Zealand after the fellowships.
