Wikipedia & MIT Open Learning: A New Strategic Collaboration 

Wikipedia & MIT Open Learning: A New Strategic Collaboration 
An Open Conversation with Andrew Lih, Peter B. Kaufman, and Curt Newton 
Tuesday, October 6, 2026
5:30PM - 6:30PM EST
Question and answer session to follow.

Join MIT Open Learning’s Curt Newton, Peter B. Kaufman, and Wikimedian Andrew Lih for a conversation about this new collaboration and Wikipedia on trustworthy publicly available knowledge. 

Andrew Lih brings deep expertise in open knowledge and cultural heritage collaborations. Serving as Wikimedian at Large for the Smithsonian Institution, he helped spearhead the Smithsonian’s landmark 2020 Open Access initiative, which released millions of digital assets from its museums, libraries, archives, and zoo for public use. His previous work includes serving as Wikimedia Strategist at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and leading projects with the U.S. National Archives that expanded access to archival content through Wikimedia platforms.

Together, Lih, Newton, and Kaufman will discuss the opportunities and challenges of leveraging open educational resources to enrich Wikipedia, the importance of institutional partnerships in advancing public knowledge, and the broader role of openness in preserving and sharing cultural and educational resources for future generations.


About the speakers

Andrew Lih is a digital media strategist, author of The Wikipedia Revolution: How a bunch of nobodies created the world’s greatest encyclopedia and a noted expert in online collaboration, digital news innovation and linked open data. He was the recipient of the U.S. National Archives Citizen Archivist of the Year award and a Knight Foundation grant for his work with Wikipedia and cultural institutions. He was the inaugural Wiki Education Foundation research fellow in 2015.

He has been associate professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, American University and Hong Kong University, and started the new media program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1995. His multimedia reporting of China and the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics has appeared in the Wall Street Journal newspaper and website.

A veteran of AT&T Bell Laboratories, he was the founder of one of the first web startups, the online New York City guide – NY.com. He has been a speaker at South by Southwest (SXSW), the Online News Association, TEDx and Wikimania and his work and commentary has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Quartz and The Washington Post.

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.

Curt Newton leads MIT OpenCourseWare, part of MIT Open Learning, in supporting millions of global learners and educators every year with freely shared materials from over 2,500 MIT courses. Newton joined OpenCourseWare in 2004, shortly after its launch, captivated by the promise of open education, and worked as a Publication Manager and Site Curator prior to becoming Director in 2018. 

Newton is also a recognized leader in building more effective and equitable climate action through open knowledge practices and resources, at MIT and around the world, through a wide range of professional and civic engagements.

Please note, this conversation will be recorded and redistributed by MIT OpenCourseWare and MIT Open Learning for non-commercial use following the event. Any questions selected during the Q&A may be captured in the recording. By submitting a question, you consent to allowing your name and question to be shared by MIT OpenCourseWare and MIT Open Learning.