2014 URI Diversity Week Keynote Lecturer
Heidi Boghosian, JD
In Spying on Democracy, she documents the disturbing increase in surveillance of ordinary citizens and the danger it poses to our privacy, our civil liberties, and to the future of democracy itself. Boghosian discusses how technology is being used to categorize and monitor people based on their associations, their movements, their purchases, their health histories, and their political beliefs. She shows how corporations and government agencies mine data from sources as varied as surveillance cameras and unmanned drones to iris scans and medical records and medical records, while combing websites, email, phone records and social media for resale to third parties, including U. S. intelligence agencies.
Heidi Boghosian is the executive director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute. She is the co-host of the weekly civil liberties radio show Law and Disorder on Pacifica's WBAI in New York and over 40 national affiliates. She received her JD from Temple Law School and served as the editor-in-chief of the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review. She also holds an MS from Boston University and a BA from Brown University.
Sponsored by the URI Multicultural Center and the URI Honors Colloquium, Boghosian, author of Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power and Public Resistance (San Francisco: City Lights, 2013) will talk about "Surveillance or Self Determination: Can Democracy Exist in the Age of Google, Comcast, and the NSA?" on Tuesday, September 30 at 7:30 pm in Edwards Auditorium. The talk is free and open to the public.
URI Diversity Week celebrates the importance of diversity and identity in higher education, in the workplace, in the community, and in the global arena. The core of Diversity Week are the schedule of workshops taught by faculty, staff, administrators, students, and friends. Other current activities include a keynote address co-sponsored with the URI Honors Colloquium; a film screening; art exhibit; a series of interactive diversity workshops; dance classes; a peace and harmony meditation;; and music workshops.
