How Safe Is Our Personal Data?

Guest: Nicole Bennett, Associate Director of Indiana University's Center for Refugee Students

Interviewer: Jim Allison

March 12, 2026

 

In March, Civic Conversations welcomed Nicole Bennett, associate director of Indiana University's Center for Refugee Students and a PhD student in the Department of Geography. She is researching current data collection and tracking efforts in the United States. You can find a series of her articles at The Conversation.

 

Bennett discussed how personal data that was once siloed is now flowing through a complex network of interagency agreements, contracts, and commercial partnerships, making our data more accessible and more vulnerable to security risks. She also discussed the challenges that artificial intelligence poses to data security, including cyber threats and vulnerabilities, as well as Palantir's role in integrating disparate datasets for government and military use.

Loss of Science Funding...What Now?

Guest: Thomas Kaufman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biology at Indiana University

Interviewer: Jim Allison

February 18, 2026

 

Civic Conversations welcomed Thomas Kaufman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biology at Indiana University, to discuss the impact of the loss of science funding in the United States. In 2025, over 3,800 grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation were terminated or frozen by the Trump Administration. Indiana University and three other state universities lost approximately $24.5 million in federal research grants. According to Kaufman, the impact will be dramatic, saying, "Once expertise and personnel are lost, research programs are extremely difficult to restart" because those personnel move on.

 

For instance, at IU, Kaufman says, physics training grants supporting six graduate students were terminated, meaning those students would not receive the training they need for scientific progress, and that international science talent will be lost as researchers move to other countries like China. "These short-sighted policies will harm public health and U.S. competitiveness against countries like China," said Kaufman.