NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights

Our Goal

Members of WEST have worked with the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights since its founding to lift the profile of the department and its leadership, promote its research, highlight its convenings and demonstrate its influence with corporate decision-makers. In addition to developing and implementing research report roll-out plans that break through the crowded media landscape, WEST creates opportunities to elevate the expertise of Center leadership and shape cultural understanding of the most pressing business and human rights challenges.

Our
Partnership

Founded in 2013, the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights investigates the most persistent human rights challenges to cultivate new understandings of the root causes and provide insights on core business practices affect workers and communities.

As the levels of misinformation and disinformation increased ahead of the 2020 Presidential elections, the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights turned its focus to the role that tech and social media companies have in preventing the dissemination of content that erodes public trust and risks fomenting violence.

Collaborating with the Center, WEST distilled its research into the most salient, accessible points before developing an effective media outreach strategy. We craft the press release and supporting materials and tailor pitches to targeted media lists, thinking creatively about the many angles and ways to garner attention to the Center’s reports.

WEST continues to carefully monitor the news cycle to create opportunities to insert the Center’s research and analysis regarding false information and social media. For example, when Facebook announced that the company will rebrand as Meta, WEST quickly repackaged existing research and developed a statement on behalf of Paul M. Barrett, deputy director of the Center.

We also craft op-eds and commentary pieces on behalf of the Center’s leadership and experts to increase the profile and reach of their analysis, with the goal of shaping future public policy and corporate practices so that businesses contribute to the improvement rather than the erosion of human rights.

Business and human rights as an area of research and teaching in business schools has expanded significantly, taking in topics as diverse as outsourcing, land rights and privacy. — Andrew Jack, Financial Times

Our Results

Our partnership with the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights has created the framework for a new playbook for business and human rights in an effort to ensure the people who make companies successful are also able to benefit from that success. Leaders and experts from the Center are routinely cited in major mainstream coverage of the role of social media companies in responding to disinformation on their platform. The Center’s focus on the spread of disinformation and misinformation online has opened new national conversations around the responsibility and regulation of social media companies in countering the spread of false information.

Media Coverage

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