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Jameel Jaffer
Jameel Jaffer is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Under his 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.
Until August 2016, Jaffer served as deputy legal director at the ACLU, where he oversaw the organization’s work on free speech, privacy, technology, national security, and international human rights. He litigated many significant post-9/11 cases involving human rights and national security, including cases relating to surveillance, secrecy, censorship, interrogation, detention, and extrajudicial killing. He led or co-led litigation teams that compelled the Bush administration to disclose the “torture memos,” compelled the Obama administration to disclose the “drone memos,” and compelled the National Security Agency to abandon its dragnet surveillance of Americans’ call records. He also played a major part in the ACLU’s decision to take on the representation of Edward Snowden. The New York Times described one of his transparency cases as “among the most successful in the history of public disclosure.”
Jaffer’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs. 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.” In recent years he has delivered the inaugural Peter Zenger Lecture at Columbia Journalism School; the Or’ Emet Lecture at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School; the Eva Holtby Lecture on Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum; and the Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center. He was also the honoree at the Columbia Law Review’s annual banquet in 2015, and the Harvard Law Review’s annual banquet in 2022. He was named to Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers” list in 2012, received the Vox Libera award from Canadian Journalists for Free Expression in 2015, and was inducted into the Newseum’s Freedom of Information “Hall of Fame” in 2016.
Jaffer is a graduate of Williams College, Cambridge University, and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He served as a law clerk to Honorable Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then to Right Honorable Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada. In recent years he has served on the board of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, the advisory board of First Look Media’s Press Freedom Litigation Fund, and the advisory board for the Center for Democracy and Technology. He has also served as a commissioner of the Canadian Commission on Democratic Expression and as a member of the Aspen Institute Commission on Information Disorder. He was a distinguished fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School from 2016 to 2021 and a fellow at the Open Society Foundations in 2013.
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Institute Update
War & Speech
A new season of “Views on First” about free speech and the war in Israel and Gaza
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Deep Dive
Judging in Secret
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel was once known as the “constitutional conscience” of the executive branch, but in recent years it has been known principally for green-lighting torture, mass surveillance, and extrajudicial killings.
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Deep Dive : Toward a Better Internet
A Digital Sphere that Serves Democracy
At 2022 Beaverbrook Lecture, Jameel Jaffer assesses watershed cases on regulation of social media
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Deep Dive : Press Freedom
The Espionage Act Has Been Abused — But Not in Trump’s Case
Reforms to the law are long overdue, but they have nothing to do with the Mar-a-Lago search
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Deep Dive
Reclaim the First Amendment — Harvard Law Review Address
Did the First Amendment serve us well during the “war on terror,” and will it serve us well during the age of social media, surveillance, and ascendant authoritarianism?
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Essays and Scholarship
How the Biden Administration and Congress Can Fix Prepublication Review: A Roadmap for Reform
Prepublication review is a sweeping and broken system in need of repair
By Jameel Jaffer , Alex Abdo , Meenakshi Krishnan & Ramya Krishnan -
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Review
Liars in High Places: Who's to blame for misinformation?
Jameel Jaffer reviews Cass Sunstein's Liars: Falsehood's and Free Speech in an Age of Deception
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Essays and Scholarship
What We Owe Whistleblowers
Jameel Jaffer argues that their disclosures since 9/11 have been vital, and that we should protect them better than we do
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Deep Dive
In the “War on Terror,” What Did Rights Organizations Get Wrong?
Jameel Jaffer reflects on what the human rights community might have done differently in the aftermath of 9/11
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Deep Dive : Press Freedom
The Justice Department’s New Media Protections Are (Mostly) a Promise, Not Yet a Reality
What’s most important is not what the Attorney General has already done, but what the Justice Department and Congress do next
By Anna Diakun & Jameel Jaffer -
Deep Dive
What Is America’s Spy Court Hiding From the Public?
Unnecessary secrecy about government surveillance is bad for the intelligence agencies, the spy court, and our democracy
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Deep Dive
A New Consensus Around Transparency and National Security Surveillance
Civil libertarian arguments that were dismissed a decade ago are now broadly accepted, even at the highest levels of the intelligence community
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Institute Update
You Say It's Your Birthday
Reflecting on five years of defending the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age
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Deep Dive : Public Officials and Social Media
Official Censorship Should Have No Place in the Digital Public Square
Courts are barring public officials from blocking critics from their social media accounts.
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Analysis
How America Can Deliver Justice for Jamal Khashoggi
The recently released intelligence report concludes that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince was likely responsible for the journalist’s murder. That can’t be the end of the story.
By Jameel Jaffer & Joel Simon -
Deep Dive
Facebook’s ‘Supreme Court’ Faces Its First Major Test
The questions are bigger than whether Trump should have been suspended
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Analysis
The Biden Administration Should Drop the Assange Case
The case against Assange poses a major threat to press freedom
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Deep Dive
A First Amendment agenda for Biden's first 100 days
How the new administration can reaffirm the freedoms of speech, association, and petition in its first 100 days
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Analysis
Julian Assange is still in prison. And America's democratic principles are still at stake.
By Jameel JafferThe past four years have underscored the extent to which our democracy depends on the ability of journalists to report government secrets.
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Analysis
Clearview AI’s First Amendment Theory Threatens Privacy—and Free Speech, Too
Drawing the line around what is protected by the First Amendment is more challenging than you might think
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Analysis
Trump’s Executive Order on the ICC is Illegal, Not Just Shameful
Sanctions raise First Amendment concerns
By Jameel Jaffer & Carrie DeCell -
Analysis
It's Assange in the Dock, But It's National Security Journalism on Trial
Jameel Jaffer highlights press freedom concerns in his testimony in Assange extradition proceeding
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Analysis
A District Court Endorses a Broken Prepublication Review System
The ruling is troubling and a step in the wrong direction
By Alex Abdo , Jameel Jaffer , Meenakshi Krishnan & Ramya Krishnan -
Analysis
John Bolton's Silence — Here’s How He Could Lawfully Break It
How Bolton could publicly share his story
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Analysis
We May Never See John Bolton's Book
A New York Times op-ed by Jameel Jaffer and Ramya Krishnan on the dangers of prepublication review
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Analysis
Facebook and Free Speech Are Different Things
Some Thoughts about Mark Zuckerberg’s Remarks at Georgetown University
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Press Statement
Welcome to the Knight Institute’s New Website
Columbia University and the Knight Foundation established the Knight First Amendment Institute in the summer of 2016 with the goal of promoting the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age. In just three years, we’ve won major...
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Analysis
The Espionage Act and a Growing Threat to Press Freedom
The government’s now-routine use of the Espionage Act against journalists’ sources raises First Amendment concerns.
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Analysis
Assange Indictment Is Shot Across the Bow of Press Freedom
The indictment characterizes as “part of” a criminal conspiracy journalistic activities that are not just lawful but essential to press freedom
By Jameel Jaffer & Ben Wizner -
Analysis
Why U.S. intelligence should release any Khashoggi files
It's imperative to know what U.S. intelligence agences knew about threats to journalist's life, and whether they took any steps to warn him
By Jameel Jaffer & Joel Simon -
Analysis
CNN Suit Is an Important and Necessary Defense of Press Freedom
Revoking CNN's White House credentials undercuts role of the press as representatives of the people
By Jameel Jaffer & Katie Fallow -
Analysis
Digital Journalism and the New Public Square
In 2018 Or’ Emet Lecture, Jameel Jaffer assesses whether the law should afford special protection to journalism and research investigating social media platforms
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Essays and Scholarship
Introducing the Emerging Threats Essays
The Knight Institute's inaugural essay series invites leading thinkers to identify and grapple with newly arising or intensifying structural threats to the system of free expression.
By Jameel Jaffer & David Pozen -
Analysis
Is Trump’s Twitter Behavior Constitutional? A Court Will Decide.
Twitter is a novel means for presidential communication, but the problem of government officials limiting and manipulating political speech is all too familiar
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Press Statement
New Support for the Knight Institute's Work
Executive Director Jameel Jaffer says new funding shows breadth of support for core democratic freedoms
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Analysis
Supreme Court Cellphone Case Puts Free Speech – Not Just Privacy – at Risk
Carpenter v. United States could have drastic implications for First Amendment freedoms in the digital age
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Analysis
Should the ACLU Represent White Supremacists?
Knight Institute Executive Director Jameel Jaffer's speech to the 2017 ACLU biennial leadership conference
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Analysis
The Office of Legal Counsel and Secret Law
The public is entitled to know what the law is, not just what the Office of Legal Counsel wants it to know
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Analysis
Censorship at the Border Threatens Free Speech Everywhere
The Trump administration's proposed vetting of social-media accounts at the border threatens First Amendment values and the very idea of open society
By Jameel Jaffer