- Founder, AI Ethics Lab at Rutgers University
- 2027 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident in AI & Human Rights
- AI Ethics
- Responsible Technology
- Democracy
- Human Rights
- AI - Emerging Tech
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
- Education, Policy & Practice
- Government & Politics
- Health & Wellbeing
- Human Rights
- Government & Global Affairs
- Law, First Amendment, Civil Rights
- Resilience, Well-being, Happiness
- Society, Culture, & Education
- Technology, Innovation & Science
- Technology Ethics, Regulation
Dr. Nathan C. Walker is an award-winning First Amendment and human rights educator and founder of the AI Ethics Lab at Rutgers University. He is a 2027 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident conducting research on AI and human rights.
He has held research appointments at Harvard, Oxford, and Stellenbosch University in South Africa. A certified AI Ethics Officer, Dr. Walker has worked with industry as an Expert AI Trainer for OpenAI and Handshake AI, provided ethics training to Adobe employees, and facilitated a working group at Google’s ethics-to-industry summit.
He has published five books on law, education, and religion, and presented his research at the United Nations in New York, UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, UNESCO in Paris, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. State Department.
He earned his doctorate in First Amendment law and two master’s degrees from Columbia University. An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, he holds a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary.
He is the president of 1791 Delegates, a public charity named after the year the Bill of Rights was ratified. In this capacity he founded the social learning community ReligionAndPublicLife.org, which serves 4K online learners.
He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA with his husband, Vikram Paralkar.
Dr. Walker has served as an Expert AI Trainer at OpenAI and a research fellow at Handshake AI, facilitated the governance working group at an AI ethics-to-industry symposium at Google, and led a workshop on training AI models with rights for Adobe employees.
He has given talks at leading industry conferences, including Ai4 in Las Vegas, Utah Tech Week, and the Futures AI Summit in London.
Dr. Walker founded the AI Ethics Lab at Rutgers and built research collaborations with scholars from the Institute for Ethics in AI at the Technical University of Munich and Stellenbosch University in South Africa, where Dr. Walker serves as a non-resident research associate.
Dr. Walker has served as a visiting academic at the University of Oxford's Institute for Ethics in AI, a resident research fellow at Harvard University, and has given invited talks at Princeton University, Columbia University, the University of Kansas, Virginia Tech, and Utah Valley University.
Dr. Walker’s AI Ethics Lab co-published a human rights report presented at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. He's presented his research on AI and human rights at UNESCO in Paris and moderated a North-South policy dialogue on the proposed UN Convention on AI, Data and Human Rights.
He has also served as a contributing researcher to the Aspen Institute’s “Defining Technologies of Our Time” initiative, and Dr. Walker’s research on AI Principles and U.S. Presidents maps the ethical implications in federal executive orders.
Dr. Walker teaches a course on Happiness at Rutgers University, which explores evidence-based approaches to human flourishing. In November 2016, Publishers Weekly listed his book Cultivating Empathy as one of “six books for a post-election spiritual detox.”
Forthcoming:
Is “smart” the best we can imagine for this century’s technological advancements?
Many harms caused by AI are not due to a lack of intelligence but to the moral distance between the people who own, build, and regulate AI systems and those affected by them. Think of the physical and cultural distance between those in Silicon Valley and a product’s deployment in a developing country, or the psychological distance between a technologist and the children using their AI companions.
To bridge these gaps, Dr. Nathan C. Walker, founder of the AI Ethics Lab at Rutgers University, introduces moral imagination as an applied design practice: the ability to picture yourself in a moral dilemma involving AI to understand competing points of view.
Unlike compliance protocols that can chill ethical reflection, this approach invites key players, from investors to developers and regulators of AI, to immerse themselves in case studies concerning technology’s impact on society. In doing so, they identify ethical blind spots and cultivate empathy for people whose lives are shaped by their decisions.
Given AI’s impact on every part of society, Moral Imagination also empowers users of AI to reject playing a passive role in technology’s advancements and become active moral agents. The stories speak directly to everyday people, shaping the responsible tech movement. Through engaging role-plays, this book offers educators, technologists, justice workers, and business leaders a shared ethical vocabulary for engaging the moral issues of our time.
When we embed the practice of moral imagination into every stage of the AI lifecycle, we shift our focus from creating smart technology to empowering humans to make wise choices.
Nathan C. Walker, The First Amendment and State Bans on Teachers’ Religious Garb. New York: Routledge, Hardback 2019. Paperback 2021.
“A thorough, magisterial account of a timely and historically important legal debate.” ~ Kirkus Reviews
Nathan C. Walker, Cultivating Empathy: The Worth and Dignity of Every Person—Without Exception. Boston, MA: Skinner House Press, 2016.
In November 2016, Publishers Weekly listed Cultivating Empathy as one of “six books for a post-election spiritual detox.”
Nathan C. Walker, Exorcising Preaching: Crafting Intellectually Honest Worship. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2014.
“Bold, creative and provocative, focused powerfully on a witness of liberation.” ~ Rev. Burns Stanfield, Instructor, Harvard Divinity School
Michael D. Waggoner and Nathan C. Walker, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Education. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
"A comprehensive and probing guide to the meeting of schools and faith in the American experience." ~ Kirkus Reviews
Nathan C. Walker & Edwin J. Greenlee, eds., Whose God Rules? Is the United States a Secular Nation or a Theolegal Democracy? New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Foreword by Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Contributors included Martha Nussbaum and Kent Greenawalt.
- Aug. 2026 – Dignity by Design: AI and the Duty of Care. Ai4, Las Vegas, NV.
- Aug. 2026 – Representation Matters: Building Inclusive Teams and Ethical Systems. Ai4, Las Vegas, NV.
- May 2026 – AI and Medical Research. Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research, New York, NY.
- Apr. 2026 – Expert Panelist, “Artificial Intelligence, Cultural Rights, and the Right to Development,” Thirteenth Session of the Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development (EMRTD), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), United Nations Headquarters, New York, NY.
- Apr. 2026 – AI, Ethics, and Safety in Suicide Prevention. Riverside Trauma Center, Dedham, MA.
- Apr. 2026 – AI Ethics: Not a Checklist but a Way of Life, embedded video in the AI and Suicide Prevention presentation by the Riverside Trauma Center for the Massachusetts Suicide Prevention Conference, Boston, MA.
- Apr. 2026 – AI Ethics: From Smart to Wise Technology. Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ.
- Apr. 2026 – Bipartisan Lessons From Studying AI Ethics in Executive Orders. Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ.
- Mar. 2026 – AI in Human Subjects Research, Assoc. for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs, Washington, DC.
- Mar. 2026 – Bounded Freedom: Human Expression in the Age of AI, Pennington Public Library, Pennington, NJ.
- Feb. 2026 – The AI & Human Rights Index, Int'l Assoc. for Safe & Ethical AI, UNESCO, Paris, France.
- Feb. 2026 – AI & Human Rights. Envision Conference, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
- Jan. 2026 – Trustworthy Legal Practices in the Age of Co-Intelligence, New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, Newark, NJ.
- Jan. 2026 – Ethical Use of AI in Psychiatry, Society for Liaison Psychiatry, New York, NY.
- Jan. 2026 – AI & Ethics, Madison & Lila Self Graduate Fellows, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS.
- Jan. 2026 – Co-Intelligence: An Ethical Odyssey from Smart to Wise AI, Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS.
- Workshop Facilitator: Responsible AI in Nonprofit Management, New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, Newark, NJ.
- Guest Lecture: Ethical AI for Future Developers, South Brunswick High School, Monmouth Junction, NJ
- Featured Talk: AI Ethics: From Smart to Wise Technology, Future AI Summit, London, UK.
- Working Group Facilitator: AI Ethics-to-Industry: From Principles to Practice, Google, San Francisco, CA.
- Guest Lecture: Ethical Decision-Making for Communicators, Columbia University, NY, NY.
- Keynote: Moral Imagination: From Smart to Wise AI. Ethics Awareness Week. Utah Valley University, Orem, UT.
- Workshop Facilitator: AI Principles & U.S. Presidents. Utah Valley University, Orem, UT.
- Workshop Facilitator: Training AI Models with Rights, Civics at Work for Adobe Employees, Orem, UT.
- Moderator: North–South Policy Dialogue on a UN Convention on AI, Data and Human Rights. Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
- Panelist: Sectoral Impacts of AI on Human Rights. North–South Policy Dialogue on a UN Convention on AI, Data and Human Rights. Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
- Solo Talk: From Moral Distance to Moral Imagination. Ai4, Las Vegas, NV.
- Featured Expert: Ask Me Anything. Ai4, Las Vegas, NV.
- Fireside Chat: Fostering Diversity in AI: Building Inclusive Technologies and Teams. Ai4, Las Vegas, NV.
- Roundtable: AI Global Safety: Preventing Catastrophic Risks. Globethics, Geneva, Switzerland.
- Lecture: Driving the Future: Opportunities and Challenges of Autonomous Vehicles. Globethics, Geneva, Switzerland.
- Moderator: Scaling AI Ethics: Local Case Studies, Global Implications, National Liberty Museum, Philadelphia, PA.
- Keynote: Moral Imagination: From Smart to Wise Technology, International Rescue Committee, New York, NY.
- Panelist: Building Self-Sufficiency with AI. International Rescue Committee, New York, NY.
- Guest Lecture: From Smart to Wise Cities. Smart Cities for Good, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
- Workshop: AI & Polling Research: Ethical Considerations. Public Religion Research Institute, Washington, DC.
- Panelist: Responsible Tech in the Throes of Innovation. Utah Tech Week, Salt Lake City, UT.
For speaking engagements, please contact
Lisa Reiter, Senior Vice President, Chartwell Speakers