Dr. Nathan C. Walker is an award-winning First Amendment and human rights educator at Rutgers University-Camden, where he serves as a Lecturer II in the Philosophy & Religion and Digital Studies programs, an Honors College Faculty Fellow, and Principal Investigator of the AI Ethics Lab.

Dr. Walker works full-time as President of 1791 Delegates, a nonprofit public charity named after the year the Bill of Rights was ratified. In this role, he founded ReligionAndPublicLife.org, the social learning community where he hosts his online and hybrid courses.

Areas of Expertise

• First Amendment Law: Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.
• Human Rights Law: AI and Human Rights; freedom of religion or belief.
• Education Law: K-12 student and teacher rights; curricula, books, libraries; higher education administration, finance, accreditation; continuing legal education.
• Religious Studies: Religious literacy, religious pluralism, American religions, religion and democracy, world religions.
• Technology: AI Ethics & Law, EdTech, values alignment, privacy, tech policy, content moderation, online education, social learning, web and mobile app design.

Rutgers Awards

• 2024 Chancellor’s Grant for Pedagogical Innovation, Honors College Faculty Fellow
• 2024 Excellence in Online Teaching Award, Course Design
• 2022 Public Humanities Fellow
• 2022 Extraordinary Teaching Award
• 2022 Interfaith America Campus Curriculum Grant
• 2021 Provost’s Grant for Course Development, Honors College Faculty Fellow

Research

• Principal investigator, AI Ethics Lab, Rutgers University
• Contributing researcher, Munich Declaration of AI & Human Rights, Institute of Ethics in AI, Technical University of Munich
• Research associate, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, Centre for Applied Ethics, Unit for the Ethics of Technology and the School for Data Science and Computational Thinking.
• Expert AI Trainer, OpenAI’s Human Data Team, providing domain expertise in law and education to ensure the safety and accuracy of frontier models.
• Former visiting academic, Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford.
• Former resident research fellow in law and religion, Harvard University.

Education

• Nate has three learning disabilities and earned a doctorate in First Amendment Law from Columbia University, where he received two master’s degrees in higher education administration specializing in finance and education technology.
• An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, Reverend Nate holds a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary.
• Nate earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in musical theatre performance and theatre education from Emerson College and received a full scholarship to the American Conservatory Theater.

Certifications

• AI Ethics Officer, Tonex
• AI Strategy and Governance, University of Pennsylvania
• Artificial Intelligence: Ethics & Societal Challenges, Lund University, Sweden
• Ethics of AI, London School of Economics
• Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy
• Generative AI: Impact, Considerations, and Ethical Issues, IBM
• Generative AI for Everyone, DeepLearning.AI
• Human Resources, Supervisory Certificate, Columbia University
• Teacher Certification in PreK–12 Communication and Performing Arts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Personal

Nate was born in Munich, Germany, raised in the Lake Tahoe area of Northern Nevada, U.S., and enjoys learning American Sign Language. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his husband, Vikram Paralkar.