Jameel Jaffer

Jameel Jaffer is a Canadian and American human rights and civil liberties attorney and the inaugural director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which was created by Columbia University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to defend the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age. The Institute engages in "strategic litigation, research, policy advocacy, and public education," and is notable for major legal victories relating to free speech online, government transparency, and the First Amendment rights of non-citizens. It has also published influential papers about free speech and new technology, including the paper that led Jack Dorsey, then the CEO of Twitter, to launch Bluesky.