Catalysts of Open: Philanthropy’s Role in the Open Education Movement

Celebrate 25 years of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)—a bold experiment that became a global movement. This symposium brings together learners, educators, supporters, open knowledge leaders, and the MIT community to honor OCW’s extraordinary impact and to chart the future of open education.

Since its launch in 2001, OCW has empowered millions worldwide with free access to MIT course materials. This anniversary offers a moment to recognize the vibrant ecosystem that sustains open knowledge as a public good—and to reaffirm MIT’s mission-driven leadership in ensuring that high-quality learning remains accessible to all.

Join us for an engaging, dynamic, and celebratory program featuring MIT leadership, pioneering faculty, global learners, open education innovators, and philanthropic partners. Together, we will explore OCW’s legacy, its role in the evolving open ecosystem, and the opportunities and challenges ahead.

Who Should Attend
This gathering welcomes:

• Learners and educators worldwide who use OCW to teach, learn, and create new opportunities
• Philanthropic supporters and donors who power open education
• MIT faculty, students, and staff invested in sharing knowledge freely and openly
• Collaborators across the global open education and open knowledge ecosystems

For the complete program, please visit MIT Open Learning. [add event url]

2:00–3:00 PM
Catalysts of Open: Philanthropy’s Role in the Open Education Movement
A conversation with supporters and partners from the open education funding community about the essential role that philanthropy has played—and continues to play—in driving forward a global movement centered on access, equity, and the belief that knowledge should be a public good.


Speaker biographies

Peter Baldwin is a Research Professor of history at UCLA, Global Distinguished Professor at NYU, and the chair of Arcadia, the London-based philanthropy founded together with his wife, Lisbet Rausing. Arcadia funds open access as one of its priorities, including the Open Access Book Prizes given annually by the ACLS. He chairs the Digital Committee of the New York Public Library’s Board of Trustees and serves on the Wikimedia Endowment Board. He is the author of Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All (MIT Press, 2023).

TJ Bliss, Ph.D., is a former program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation where he led the foundation's strategy for Open Educational Resources (OER). He co-developed the Costs, Outcomes, Uses, and Perceptions (COUP) research framework, which is foundational to open education research throughout the world and was instrumental in developing the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. Bliss is the Associate Commissioner of Academic Affairs for the Utah System of Higher Education and a clinical assistant professor in Education Leadership at the University of Idaho. He was formerly the Chief Academic Officer for the Idaho State Board of Education, Chief Advancement Officer for the Wiki Education Foundation, and Director of Assessment for the Idaho Department of Education. Through these senior leadership roles, he has worked to increase access, affordability, and success for students at the international, national, state, and institutional levels, across higher education and K-12. Bliss currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Western Academic Leadership Forum and is a member of the national Alumni Board of Brigham Young University, where he earned a B.S. in Microbiology and Ph.D. in Education Research. He also earned an M.S. in Biology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
 
Catherine M. Casserly, Ph.D. (Cathy) is an Advisor, Strategic Consultant and Executive Coach. She is an experienced leader and focused strategist who challenges entrenched thinking and positions individuals and organizations for accelerated performance. Her work spans the U.S. and international arenas and includes: consulting & advising; executive leadership coaching with startups, philanthropy, and nonprofits: and, board of directors roles. Previously, Catherine was CEO and President of Creative Commons, an Aspen Institute Fellow, Vice President at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and Vice President at EdCast. She is a founding pioneer of the now global Open Educational Resources field, developing, managing, and launching The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's inaugural 100 million USD investments. Her work portfolio includes board and advisory roles including: Open Education Global, OpenStax at Rice University, ScholarRX, and English Helper.
 
Peter B. Kaufman is Associate Director of Development at MIT Open Learning. Educated at Cornell and Columbia, he is the author of The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge (Seven Stories Press, 2021) and The Moving Image: A User’s Manual (The MIT Press, 2025). An educator, publisher, and documentary film producer, he has served as Associate Director of Columbia University’s Center for Teaching and Learning; co-chair of the JISC Film & Sound Think Tank; co-chair of the Copyright Committee of the Association of Moving Image Archivists; a member of the Scholar Advisory Committee of WGBH’s American Archive of Public Broadcasting; a member of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences; and a long-time consultant to the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus for Audiovisual Conservation. He has been working with major philanthropic foundations around the world for more than 30 years.

All sessions will be streamed live on the MIT OpenCourseWare YouTube Channel. They will be recorded and made available online after the event.

To see the complete program, please visit MIT Open Learning.