On Unlearning with Ruha Benjamin

To open Mozilla Festival 2025, Imagination: A Manifesto author Dr. Ruha Benjamin joins Nabiha Syed, Mozilla Foundation Executive Director, for a conversation that redefines unlearning as a radical act of possibility.

From the biases baked into our digital worlds to the myths that shape our laws and institutions, this conversation explores how power operates through the stories we inherit—and how breaking free from them can unlock new ways of thinking and building.

Originally recorded November 7th, 2025

Speakers Featured

Photograph of Ruha Benjamin

Ruha Benjamin

Ruha Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, and she recently released her fourth book, Imagination: A Manifesto. Ruha is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and in 2024 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellowship.

Photograph of Nabiha Syed

Nabiha Syed

Nabiha Syed is Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation, the global nonprofit that champions trustworthy AI and advocates for a more open, equitable internet. Formerly, Nabiha was CEO of The Markup, an award-winning journalism non-profit recognized as “Most Innovative” by FastCompany in 2022. Prior to The Markup, Nabiha was a highly acclaimed media lawyer with a legal career spanning private practice and the New York Times First Amendment Fellowship. Nabiha sits on the board of the Scott Trust, the $1B+ British company that owns The Guardian newspaper, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, and the New Press. She also serves as an advisor to ex/ante, the first venture fund dedicated to agentic tech, and is a current member of The World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance. In 2023, Nabiha was awarded the NAACP/Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award.