The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America’s Top Secrets

The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs presents Matt Connelly, professor of international and global history at Columbia University, and co-director of its social science research center, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. Connelly is also the principal investigator of History Lab, a project that uses data science to analyze state secrecy, with a focus on intelligence, surveillance, and weapons of mass destruction.

The “Declassification Engine” is the first book-length study to come out of History Lab, and combines data science and history to uncover how government officials use secrecy to hoard power and evade democratic accountability. The “Declassification Engine” analyzes a vast trove of state secrets to unearth not only what the government really does not want us to know, but why. It is ultimately a study of power: of the greed that it enables, of the negligence that it protects, and of what we lose as citizens when our leaders cannot be held to account.

Matt Connelly will be here to discuss this book and more.

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