New Yorker Profile Warns: When It Comes to Mark Zuckerberg, Be Careful!
Evan Osnos’s extraordinary profile of Mark Zuckerberg, published in the September 17, New Yorker, wouldn’t seem a fitting topic for coverage in this blog about public education. Osnos hardly touches on Mark Zuckerberg’s ventures thus far into education philanthropy—the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, which has made education-based philanthropy one of its primary foci, or the $100,000,000 gift to help Chris Christie and Cory Booker charterize the public schools in Newark, New Jersey, a controversial and poorly conceived initiative that did not improve the education of children in Newark.
Osnos’s profile explores the question of who has the power,”to pull the lever of what we see, hear, and experience.” Osnos is, of course, examining the role of Facebook and whether and how it functions as an arbiter of free speech. The central subject of the profile, however, is Mark Zuckerberg himself and how he thinks and operates. Continuing to explore the issue of free speech, Osnos explains: “Zuckerberg is hoping to erect a scalable system, an orderly decision tree that accounts for every eventuality and exception, but the boundaries of speech are a bedevilling problem that defies mechanistic fixes.”
Last spring when Zuckerberg testified before Congress, the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank described Zuckerberg as “the boy billionaire,” a caricature that precisely captures the Mark Zuckerberg Osnos depicts: a naif who knows coding and tech systems but who cannot comprehend his own and his company’s power. Unfortunately, Zuckerberg also seems unable to grasp what he doesn’t know.
How the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative will affect public education remains unclear. Writing forChalkbeat, Matt Barnum explains: “In late 2015, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan promised to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares to their philanthropy, which would focus part of its work on improving American education… But the organization remains one of the least transparent funders in education. Unlike a number of other philanthropies, CZI does not publicly list its grants, instead announcing only certain awards on Facebook or in press releases… As a limited liability company, CZI is not required to list donations on its tax forms, unlike private foundations… The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s recent giving vaults CZI into the top echelon of education funders, though it remains behind the Gates Foundation and Walton Family Foundation for now. Whereas CZI averaged a bit over $100 million in grants Continue reading: New Yorker Profile Warns: When It Comes to Mark Zuckerberg, Be Careful! | janresseger
