Harith Khawaja'19

Congratulations, Harith!

Harith Khawaja'19

Harith Khawaja, from Lahore, Pakistan, is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and J.D. candidate at Stanford Law School. He graduated from Amherst College in 2019 with degrees in philosophy and computer science. His senior thesis, advised by Professor Joseph Moore, was in the philosophy of mind and science, and investigated the possibility of a "superintelligence" — a machine more intelligent than humans. For this interdisciplinary work, he was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize. His interests also extend to moral philosophy, and he presented a paper written for Professor Rafeeq Hasan's and Nishiten Shah's seminar, "Racial Justice and Injustice," at an undergraduate philosophy conference.
 
 Harith aspires to understand the ways technology affects our society and lead public and academic discourse on complex issues at the nexus of the two. In service of these goals, he is community-oriented. An immigrant and first-generation student, he led a 500-person protest at Amherst against President Trump’s “Muslim Ban.” A writer, his work on the ethics of technology has been featured in the MIT Tech Review. A speaker, his TEDx talk on self-driving cars has over 100,000 views. Harith has also worked as an engineer at Lyft. At Amherst, he co-captained the Men’s Squash Team, was President of the Philosophy Club, and co-founded the Artificial Intelligence Club.