The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State

Lecture 1 | Government by Machine

Lecture 2 | What Robots Want

Jill Lepore ’95 Ph.D. is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker.  A prize-winning professor, she teaches classes in evidence, historical methods, humanistic inquiry, and American history. Much of her scholarship explores absences and asymmetries in the historical record, with a particular emphasis on the history and technology of evidence. As a wide-ranging and prolific essayist, and winner of the PEN prize for the Art of the Essay, Lepore writes about American history, law, literature, and politics. She is the author of many award-winning books, including the international bestseller, These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) and The Deadline, a collection of essays (2023). Her latest book is We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution (September 2025).

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