Speaker Profile
Tamar Mitts is an Assistant Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and a Faculty Member at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, the Institute of Global Politics, and the Data Science Institute at Columbia University.
Mitts’s research addresses emerging challenges at the intersection of technology and security. She studies how militant and hate groups use digital platforms for mobilization and recruitment, how state and non-state actors shape public opinion by manipulating media content, and how technology companies address growing trust and safety issues on their platforms. Mitts’s book, Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. Safe Havens for Hate offers a novel account of how content moderation shapes the activity of harmful content producers. Drawing on rich data on the activity of over a hundred militant and hate organizations, Mitts shows that different moderation standards across platforms create “safe havens” that allow these actors to organize, launch campaigns, and mobilize supporters.
Mitts holds an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and a B.A. in politics from New York University. Her articles have been published in leading journals, including The American Political Science Review, International Organization, The Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and The Journal of Economic Perspectives, and her research has been cited in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Fortune, Vox, War on the Rocks, and Foreign Policy.
