Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky served as Chief Information Officer at NYU Shanghai from 2014 to 2017 and is now the Vice Provost for Educational Technologies at NYU. In this role, he designs, develops, and enhances all academic aspects of technology-based teaching and learning, University-wide; oversees the development of NYU’s instructional technology strategy, working with deans, faculty, NYU IT, and other university offices; maintains an inventory of online education offerings; and helps schools use educational technology to recruit new students, help existing students learn and progress, and generate costs savings or new revenues. He chairs the University’s Future of Technology-Enhanced Education Committee.

At NYU, Shirky is an Associate Professor at the Arthur L. Carter Center of Journalism in FAS and Associate Arts Professor in Tisch School of the Arts’ Interactive Telecommunications Program. Before joining NYU’s full-time faculty in fall 2004, he was a partner at an international investment company, and was the original Professor of New Media at Hunter College, where he helped design its MFA in Integrated Media Arts program. In 2010, he was the Edward R. Murrow Visiting Lecturer at Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.

A leading voice on the social and economic impact of internet technologies, he is the author of Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream (2015), Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010), and Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008). In 2010, he was named one of Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” He has had regular columns in Business 2.0 and FEED, among other publications, and his writings have appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Computerworld, and Foreign Affairs.

Education

• BA, Fine Art
  Yale University