Virtual Dukakis
The Dukakis Center has had a discreet presence on the Internet for nearly two decades, if not longer. In certain instances the Center has pioneered the use on campus of various platforms, formats, and tools. We have been streaming events for fifteen years. In February 2012 several fellow ACT instructors, student interns, and friends of the Center helped launch our now defunct blog, Politis. (You might recall our humorous public service announcement urging our Greek followers to exercise their right to vote in the 2012 legislative elections.)
Likewise, we were hosting teleconference sessions and hybrid events well before webinars and Zoom conferences were a thing. (Remember Noam Chomsky, who spoke to an audience at ACT in 2006 live from MIT, or Nicholas Burns and Daniel Serwer, who joined us live from Harvard and the US Institute of Peace, respectively, both in 2010?) We were poised in March 2020 to host a live holographic / robotic tele-presence featuring Audrey Tang, Digital Minister for Taiwan, before the Covid pandemic compelled us to cancel that year’s Public Affairs symposium.
This application of technology extends to the teaching and research interests of our staff. In 2004 our director, David Wisner, taught a prototype seminar on e-politics at ACT, having already designed two hybrid courses using our new Blackboard platform. Around the same time he delivered an invited lecture at the University of Macedonia on the online dimensions of the 2004 US General Election. A decade later, having in the meantime attended meetings of the Internet Governance Forum, Dr. Wisner added a chapter on what he called “ap-solute politics” in the teaching manual he published for the benefit of students taking his popular freshman politics course.
Since ca. 2004 our presence on social media has been steady albeit unspectacular, limited largely to our Politis pages on Facebook and on LinkedIn. The Facebook page includes several galleries with photographs and videos from our many public events on and off campus. For a time, the Center also hosted a lively Facebook group under the “Politis” moniker.
Our presence currently on LinkedIn exists as a showcase account, on which Dukakis Center Director David Wisner occasionally editorializes and shares pertinent news stories. This feature has slowly replaced the dedicated LinkedIn page we set up several years ago and which grew exponentially over the years.
Perhaps our most ample digital resource has been our //www.youtube.com/@politisthevoiceofthedukaki8998">YouTube channel (“Politis: the voice of the Dukakis Center”), which Dukakis Center senior intern Pantelis Rafail helped us set up in October 2019. Our playlists include in-house productions of events; special uploads like our 2021 documentary “Now More Than Ever;” and shared videos from other sources, such as ACT’s official YouTube channel or Pantelis Savvidis Anixneusis channel. All told we have access to more than 50 videos of Dukakis Center activities on or via our channel.
Highlights from 2024 include appearances on Dukakis Center Live of Charles Stewart, [the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of political science at MIT], Rikard Joswiak, author of the “Wider Europe” newsletter at Radio Free Europe, and Andrew Miller (until November 2024 Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs at the Department of State).
Elsewhere, in 2022 two Dukakis Center interns created a pilot Instagram page, which a current intern will revise and relaunch this spring. Of course we also post to the ACT and Dukakis Center news pages of the ACT website.
Yes, there are plenty of ways our friends and followers can keep up with our activities.
