Who we are
Brook Farm Institute for Critical Studies runs this website at brookfarminstitute.com. We are a small, independent educational institute based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
What we collect and why
Seminar registration. When you register for a seminar, we collect your name, email address, and phone number in order to confirm your enrollment and communicate with you about the course. Payments are handled by Stripe, which also collects your billing address. We never see or store your credit card information, and we do not store your street address or ZIP code — those stay with Stripe. We do keep your billing city, state, and country on file for our own reporting on where students come from.
Mailing list. If you sign up for our mailing list, your email is stored with our email provider, MailerLite. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any email we send.
Waitlists and reminders. If you join a waitlist or ask to be reminded about a course, we store your name and email address solely for that purpose.
Student accounts. Creating an account is optional, and you can take our seminars without one. Accounts are handled by Google Firebase Authentication. If you sign in with a password, Firebase stores your email address and a secure hash of your password; we never see the password itself. If you sign in with Google, we receive your email address and name from Google. On our own server we store your name, your phone number if you choose to add one, your email address, which sign-in method you used, and the date you confirmed your email address. When you create an account we email you a six-digit code to confirm that the address is yours.
To keep you signed in, we set a cookie that lasts up to fourteen days. You can end every session on every device at any time from the My Profile page.
Deleting your account. You can delete your account yourself at any time from the My Profile page. This permanently removes your login and the name and phone number saved to your account. Your seminar registrations and receipts remain on file as our record of those enrollments, which we keep for accounting purposes and so that instructors have an accurate roster.
Cookies
We use cookies for basic site functionality, for keeping you signed in if you create an account, and for advertising. We use the Meta Pixel, which sets cookies that help us measure the effectiveness of our ads on Facebook and Instagram, and we set a small number of our own cookies for the same purpose, including a cookie that stores a one-way hash of your email address so we can recognize a returning visitor without storing the address itself in the cookie. If you prefer not to be tracked, you can opt out through your browser’s cookie settings or via Meta’s ad preferences.
Children
We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13.
Who we share data with
We use Stripe for payment processing, MailerLite for email, Google Firebase for student account sign-in, and Meta (Facebook) for advertising measurement. When you register for a seminar, sign up for our mailing list, or otherwise interact with our ads, we send Meta a one-way cryptographic hash (SHA-256) of certain personal details — your email address, phone number, first and last name, city, state, ZIP code, and country — never the details themselves. We also send Meta your IP address and browser type, which it requires to match an ad click to a later visit, along with anonymized behavioral data such as pages viewed, registrations started, and completed purchases (including the amount paid). We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information with anyone else.
Last updated: September 29, 2026