Free Speech and the Regulation of Social Media - 2022 Annual Beaverbrook Lecture
About this event
The Supreme Court of the United States is set to consider the two cases involving Florida and Texas’s social media laws, signalling a hugely significant court battle in the United States about the questions of free speech and social media regulation. This court battle comes at a moment when democracies around the world grapple with similar issues.
The 2022 Beaverbrook Annual Lecture will consider the US case and address broader questions surrounding free speech and social media regulation. Such questions include: why do we protect free speech? Is free speech still worth protecting? Why is free speech online more complex than free speech offline? What kinds of regulations should we oppose in this space and which should we welcome?
About the speaker
Jameel Jaffer directs the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which defends the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age through strategic litigation, research, and public education. Under Jaffer’s leadership, the Institute has filed precedent-setting litigation, undertaken major interdisciplinary research initiatives, and become an influential voice in debates about the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age. Jaffer previously served as deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, where he oversaw the organization’s work on free speech, privacy, technology, national security, and international human rights. Over the course of his fourteen years at the ACLU, he argued civil liberties cases in multiple appeals courts as well as the U.S. Supreme Court and testified many times before U.S. federal agencies and the U.S. Congress. Jaffer’s recent writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, and the Yale Law Journal Forum. He is an executive editor of Just Security, a national security blog, and his most recent book, The Drone Memos, was one of the Guardian’s “Best Books of 2016.” He is a graduate of Williams College, Cambridge University, and Harvard Law School. Early in his legal career, he served as a law clerk to Hon. Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then to Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada. He currently serves on the board of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, on the advisory board for First Look Media’s Press Freedom Litigation Fund, and on the advisory board for the Center for Democracy and Technology.
This public lecture is generously supported by the Beaverbrook Foundation. Foundation president Timothy Aitken is a McGill graduate and grandson of Canadian-born British newspaper magnate and politician Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1964). The Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy thanks the Beaverbrook Foundation for their support.
