Policymakers at all levels of government are struggling to thoughtfully harness data in the service of public values. Many public servants grew up in an era of firmly separate disciplines: You were either an engineer or an economist, either a programmer or a social worker, but never both. In an era in which data is everything, the risks to core democratic principles—equity, fairness, support for the most vulnerable, delivery of effective government services—caused by technological illiteracy in policymakers, and policy illiteracy in computer scientists, are staggering.

This has happened because traditional academic disciplines, as they currently operate, often aren't designed to help students study and apply technical expertise to advance the public interest (as distinct from advancing commercial interests). Students doggedly find their own public interest paths; in fact, the digital generation now in college and graduate school craves meaningful work that will change the world. As long as they can make ends meet, they'll happily work for less money in public interest jobs in government and nonprofits. But most universities haven't provided pathways for these digital natives to cross-train in policy and computer science by working on real problems, or to combine expertise in data science with the capacity to think deeply about the ethical and social implications of the use of digital technology.

Susan Crawford (@scrawford) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED, a professor at Harvard Law School, and author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age.

In traditional academic settings, every public-policy-minded technologist feels a little lonely, fruitlessly attempting to cross-register into courses that might provide a few snippets of legal and policy skills or allow them to apply their coding abilities to a real, live public problem. Landing internships and fellowships can feel like guerrilla warfare to these scrappy students. This has to change—and now a consortium of foundations and academics is looking for solutions.

Last month, a hand-picked group of university presidents and provosts from across the country, plus a few university faculty members, met for two days at an estate-turned-conference center on Long Island to catalyze the intentional creation of a new academic field aimed at addressing precisely this gap in interdisciplinary opportunities. This new area, "public interest technology," is still being defined; it encompasses designing public policy and laws with an awareness of how technology actually works, as well as ensuring that technology is being used to serve public values of fairness and equity. It means consciously thinking about the welfare of society in general, rather than the incentives of a single company.

The group was convened by Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, Larry Kramer, president of the Hewlett Foundation, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of New America, all of whom are deeply interested in solving the high-stakes problems of siloed training for students who want to serve, plus underequipped policymakers. The presidents and provosts, a high-minded yet deeply practical bunch, took their seats in a converted indoor equestrian training ring—think enormous elliptical conference table surrounding carpeted acreage, with a giant glass skylight overhead—listened attentively, and spoke thoughtfully. I was there, at one point walking around the inside of the ring to moderate part of the conversation. It felt like an important meeting.

Ford and Hewlett are nudging universities to commit themselves to this new field, drawing an analogy to public interest law. Not too many decades ago, there weren't clear professional pathways for law students who wanted to serve the public rather than private clients, although the need for services was overwhelming. The Ford Foundation, in particular, seeded the development of clinics that gave opportunities to law students to learn to act like lawyers while still in school; a world of fellowships, internships, published research, and loan forgiveness programs funded by a host of actors followed. The foundations believe that solving the problem of inadequate public interest technology services and pathways in America similarly requires intentional cross-disciplinary curriculum development and student support. And they don't intend to fund all of this themselves; they are cajoling universities to concentrate their fund-raising efforts on supporting this new field.

Traditional universities are particularly well-suited to making this digital-age flavor of training happen. Their buildings can be meeting places for public officials, supervisors, and students to work together on crucial policy problems. The University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon University are ahead of the game, already intentionally pulling together resources and faculty and offering new programs at the nexus of ethical technology and policy, but many others are committed to promoting similar collaborative work across departments.