Michael R. Klein Supports Future of Cyberspace Exploration and Study

Harvard Law School and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University are pleased to announce that Michael R. Klein LL.M. ’67 has made a generous gift of $15 million to the Berkman Center. In recognition, the Center will now be known as the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

“This gift helps ensure that Harvard Law School will remain at the forefront of problem solving as we confront and take advantage of the global and digital future,” said Martha Minow, Morgan and Helen Chu Dean of the Law School. “In 1997, a remarkably farsighted gift from the late Jack N. Berkman ’29 and Lillian R. Berkman created the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The scope of the Center’s work and the global reach of the Internet have grown dramatically over the last two decades. Now, as the Center approaches a third decade of innovation, we are deeply grateful for Mike Klein’s gift, which will build on the Berkman family’s generosity to sustain the Center’s leadership position and allow for continued exploration in the years to come.”

Klein’s gift is the largest individual gift to the Law School’s Campaign for the Third Century to date. The Campaign is part of the University-wide, $6.5 billion Harvard Campaign that runs until 2018.

“A generous Brandeis Fellowship enabled me to attend Harvard, and that education opened extraordinary opportunities for me,” Klein said. “Now, the ability to give back to Harvard Law School is a privilege that I am deeply grateful for, particularly because my contribution can be directed to an exciting, entrepreneurial Center that is in the vanguard of cyberspace research.”

A Center—and a gift—for the future

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is dedicated to exploring, understanding, and shaping the development of the digitally networked environment. A diverse, interdisciplinary community of scholars, practitioners, technologists, policy experts, and advocates, the Center has tackled the most important challenges of the digital age while keeping a focus on tangible real-world impact in the public interest. Its faculty, fellows, staff, and affiliates conduct research, build tools and platforms, educate others, and form bridges and facilitate dialogue across and among diverse communities.

At a time when the opportunities and challenges of an increasingly networked world abound and digital transformations are profoundly shaping the future of society, this gift will not only provide vital core support, but will also allow the Center to start new explorations, launch innovative programs, and incubate novel collaborations both nationally and internationally.

“Mike Klein’s extraordinary commitment joins the Berkman family’s in allowing us the rare and precious liberty to plan and build according to imagination and conscience,” said Jonathan Zittrain ’95, the Center’s co-founder and current faculty director. “The Center was premised on the idea that the Internet’s design invites contribution, and that difficult problems can be understood and solved through thoughtful and sensitive combinations of technical and institutional innovations, both public and private.”

“In particular, this gift will help us to build new and enhanced interfaces between the worlds of computer science, engineering, law, governance, and policy through powerful research initiatives, educational programs, and outreach efforts, bringing together the best know-how from both academia and practice, and engaging the next generation of technology and policy leaders and makers,” said Urs Gasser LL.M. ’03, professor of practice at HLS and executive director of the Berkman Klein Center.

The Center has catalyzed dozens of initiatives concerning the Internet, particularly in the areas of law and policy, education and public discourse, and access to information. These endeavors include rigorous academic research with the aim of achieving tangible, real-world impact, such as the recent high-profile “Don’t Panic: Making Progress on the ‘Going Dark’ Debate” report released by the Center’s Berklett Cybersecurity project, which garnered widespread attention from policymakers and the media. Other key initiatives include building tools that preserve and monitor access to information, such as