Ben Green

Faculty by courtesy

Ben Green

Assistant Professor of Information; Assistant Professor of Public Policy (by courtesy)

Green studies the social and political impacts of government algorithms. His book, The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future, was published in 2019 by MIT Press.

In the Media

Green: "Antagonism toward data centers is real and organic"

Jun 10, 2026 Fortune

Amid allegations of Chinese interference in the data center debate, Ben Green argues that the increased negative public attitude surrounding them is real and organic.

News

Green shares data center concerns with Michigan lawmakers

Feb 15, 2026

The Ford School's Ben Green testified before members of Michigan's House Subcommittee on Oversight regarding the anticipated impacts data centers will have on Michiganders. Various networks have covered Green's expertise on this issue.

In the Media

Green addresses data center forum

Dec 4, 2025 Michigan Advance

Ford School professor Ben Green addressed citizen concerns about data centers at a forum in Howell, Michigan

News

Green discusses local impacts of data centers

Nov 30, 2025

Ford School professor Ben Green's research on the impacts of data centers recently caught the eye of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection, which asked him to deliver a presentation on the topic to its Citizens Advisory Council on Nov...

In the Media

Green comments on community push-back on data centers

Oct 29, 2025 Gizmodo

“I don’t think that the case is super compelling for what these data centers are bringing to the table,” Ben Green, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, told Gizmodo. “And I think that is borne out by just how...

Publication

Growth of data centers requires new policies to mitigate local community impacts

Jul 17, 2025

The rapid growth of data centers, with their enormous energy and water demands, requires targeted policy interventions to mitigate environmental impacts and protect local communities. A new report by the University of Michigan’s Science, Technology, ...

News

DOGE Plan to Push AI Across the US Federal Government is Wildly Dangerous - Green

Mar 6, 2025

Ford School assistant professor (by courtesy) Ben Green, wrote an essay for Tech Policy on Elon Musk's new “AI-first strategy” for the federal government, and commented, "unleashing AI to revolutionize the federal government is a recipe for disaster....

In the Media

Green describes practical problems with algorithm oversight

Feb 4, 2025 Financial Times

Ben Green, professor at the Ford School, explains why human oversight of algorithms, such as the one that runs Google's Gmail spam protection, does not always work. He cites how "the human overseers are on a tight schedule — they have many cases to r...

News

STPP awarded MIDAS grant to advance equitable AI research

Jul 23, 2024

A research project from the Ford School’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) program was selected by the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society (MIDAS) as part of its 2024 Propelling Original Data Science grants to accelerate respon...

News

Green examines water data as part of UMSI theme year

Sep 13, 2023

“Water conservation and access” brings a slew of images to mind: wastewater flowing through main lines to a city treatment plant, a fisherman yanking invasive mussels off the hull of a trawler, the installation of filters in communities that lack acc...

News

Ford School welcomes new faculty that bridge research and policy engagement

Aug 21, 2023

A former foreign minister to Mali, a leading educational economist, a tech entrepreneur who explores indigenous technoscience are among the outstanding new faculty that add depth to the Ford School and connect student education, rigorous academic res...

State & Hill

Faculty News, spring 2023

May 3, 2023

Dominique Adams-Santos, Celeste Watkins-Hayes, and PhD candidate Kayonne Christy contributed a chapter, "Narratives in Context: Locating Racism and Sexism in Black Women's Health Experiences," to The Routledge Companion to Intersectionalities. Th...

Headshots of Kathryn M. Dominguez, Rusty Hills, Morela Hernandez, Brian Jacob, Barry Rabe, Megan Stewart, David Thacher, Christina Weiland

News

Green discusses the fairness of algorithms at Harvard University

Jan 10, 2023

Postdoctoral scholar Ben Green recently joined Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society for a webinar focused on what fairness means in the context of algorithms and how fairness can be measured. Joined by other scholars s...

State & Hill

Faculty News, fall 2022

Dec 19, 2022

Jenna Bednar published “The Fractured Superpower: Federalism is Remaking U.S. Democracy and Foreign Policy,” in Foreign Affairs. The Coalition for Networked Information, the Association of Research Libraries, and EDUCAUSE awarded Paul Courant the...

Headshots of Brian Jacob, Paula Lantz, Katherine Michelmore, Jeffrey Morenoff, Susan D. Page, Shobita Parthasarathy, Natasha Pilkauskas, Joy Rohde, Joe Schwarz, and Fabiana Silva

Publication

Green discusses "substantive algorithmic fairness"

Oct 19, 2022

Ford School assistant professor Ben Green, and an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, says that if algorithms are to improve society, focusing only on whether they’re mathematically “fair” won’t get us ...

State & Hill

Faculty News, spring 2022

May 31, 2022

Arun Agrawal was selected as co-chair on the Intergovernmental Transformative Change Assessment, sponsored by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Javed Ali provided his expertise on national security to numerous...

Headshots of 10 Ford School faculty arranged in a grid

Publication

Green explores tech ethics and its boundaries in new paper

Feb 4, 2022

Who gets to define the ethics behind the use of technology in society? The discussion has become more pressing amid controversies related to misinformation, privacy, and algorithmic bias. Ben Green explores this question as editor of a special i...

News

Green named Center for Democracy & Technology fellow

Jan 28, 2022

This week, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) named Ben Green as a non-resident fellow. He joins Shobita Parthasarathy as one of 31 fellows from across the country that represent a wide range of fields and disciplines that inform CDT's resea...

Publication

Green’s paper receives Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award

Jan 13, 2022

The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) recently awarded Ben Green, assistant professor and postdoctoral scholar, the Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award. The award is for Green’s paper, “The Flaws of Policies Requiring Human Oversight of Government Algo...

State & Hill

Faculty News, fall 2021

Dec 13, 2021

The U-M Institute for Clinical & Health Research recognized John Ayanian with a 2020 Distinguished Clinical and Translational Research Mentor Award. Joshua Basseches received a grant from the Climate Social Science Network to continue working on the ...

Headshots of Ren Farley, Liz Gerber, Edie Goldenberg, Jon Hanson, Catie Hausman, John Leahy, Yusuf Neggers, Mara Ostfeld, Christina Weiland, and Dean Yang

State & Hill

Discourse: Ford School faculty in the news

Dec 13, 2021

"College students can take out loans to pay for college, but it's absolutely impossible to take out a loan to pay for your own preschool. It's just not something a 3- or 4-year-old can do to manage their own education. So the idea that we have someth...

Headshots of Betsey Stevenson, Luke Shaefer, Megan Tompkins-Stange, Ambassador Susan D. Page, and Ben Green

In the Media

Green explains relationship between pandemic and government surveillance

Dec 9, 2021 Los Angeles Times

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed governments to roll out higher surveillance systems without pushback from citizens. Such emergencies “can be moments where governments roll out new invasive forms of data collection and it just becomes t...

In the Media

Human oversight of automated decision-making doesn't work, says Green

Sep 28, 2021 Protocol

Commenting on his recent research, Ben Green told Protocol, “The point is not to say: Let's just allow these algorithms to be used without the human oversight. But if we're only comfortable with these algorithms because we have human oversight, we ac...

News

Green calls for increased regulation with government use of algorithms

Sep 22, 2021

Do algorithms help or hinder human decision-making? In a recent op-ed for The Hill, Ben Green, an assistant professor and postdoctoral scholar, argues that policymakers need to consider how humans interact with AI when regulating the use of AI in hig...

Publication

Should complex, high-stakes government decisions be reliant on predictive algorithms?

Aug 27, 2021

Machine learning is increasingly used for government decision-making to predict adverse outcomes. For instance, many cities and states in the U.S. have adopted pretrial risk assessments that inform decisions about whether to release criminal defendan...

News

Green takes a look at tech ethics

Jun 15, 2021

Technology companies have been at the center of many public controversies recently—from hacking threats and data security to fake news and manipulating algorithms. Do the ethics of technological advancement—"tech ethics"—have any influence on the com...

State & Hill

Faculty News spring 2021

Jun 10, 2021

Javed Ali has appeared recently in outlets such as 60 Minutes, ABC News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, NPR’s Morning Edition, and the Los Angeles Times. He’ll become an associate professor of practice at the Ford School this fall. I...

Headshots of Javed Ali, Robert Axelrod, Paul Courant, Susan Dynarski, Adrienne Harris, Earl Lewis, Shobita Parthasarathy, Molly Spencer, David Thacher, Megan Tompkins-Stange

State & Hill

Faculty News fall 2020

Dec 9, 2020

Javed Ali organized a panel for New America on domestic terrorism. His new podcast, The Burn Bag, produced with two Ford School alumni, A'ndre Gonawela (BA ‘19) and Ryan Rosenthal (BA ‘19), has featured U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan, General David Paetr...

In the Media

Green: City governments more skeptical of tech tool promises

Sep 21, 2020 Wired

“People in city government are much less wowed by the promises of shiny tech tools than they used to be,” says Ben Green. He attributes that to growing distrust of large tech companies, and smart city projects that have underwhelmed or imploded, such...