Eirliani Abdul Rahman
We welcome Eirliani Abdul Rahman as the first CHDS scholarship holder.
As Prajna Leadership and Julio Frenk DrPH Fellow, Eirliani is pursuing a doctorate in public health at Harvard University. She is a member of the inaugural cohort of "Harvard Students in AI" program hosted by the Berkman Klein Center at the Harvard Law School. She has been named Visiting Researcher at the University of Cambridge's Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy from February to March 2024. She was awarded the 2021 American Public Health Association's International Health Section Student Annual Meeting Grant.
Since its inception in 2016, she had been a founding member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council as an expert on child online safety. In December 2022, Eirliani made global headlines following her resignation from the council, speaking out against the meteoric rise in hate speech after Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform. In response, Musk dissolved the council four days later.
For her doctoral thesis, Eirliani is currently working on the concept of 'indirect harassment', following her experience resigning from Twitter's Council. She argues that non-overt "signaling" to followers online, including in the form of coded/masked language and other linguistic innovations, should constitute harassment and that this needs to be enforced by social media platforms and national legislation.“