Lee C. Bollinger

Lee C. Bollinger became the nineteenth President of Columbia University in 2002. A prominent advocate of affirmative action, he played a leading role in the twin Supreme Court cases— Grutter v Bollinger and Gratz v Bollinger—that upheld and clarified the importance of diversity as a compelling justification for affirmative action in higher education.

A leading First Amendment scholar, Bollinger serves on the faculty of Columbia Law School. He is a director of the Washington Post Company and a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board. Bollinger is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Bollinger’s books include: Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century; Eternally Vigilant: Free Speech in the Modern Era; Images of a Free Press; and The Tolerant Society: Freedom of Speech and Extremist Speech in America.

He received the National Humanitarian Award from the National Conference for Community and Justice, and the National Equal Justice Award from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. After graduating from the University of Oregon and Columbia Law School, Bollinger served as law clerk for Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Chief Justice Warren Burger on the United States Supreme Court.

Agnès Callamard

Dr. Agnès Callamard is the Director of Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression, an initiative seeking to advance understanding on freedom of expression global norms, and Special Adviser to the President of Columbia University, first amendment scholar Lee Bollinger.

Dr. Agnès Callamard has a distinguished career in human rights and humanitarian work globally. She spent nine years as the Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, the international human rights organization promoting and defending freedom of expression and access to information globally. Under her leadership, ARTICLE 19 reach and reputation flourished earning global recognition for its cutting edge public policy thinking on diverse issues including national security, equality and development. She founded and led HAP International (the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership), which is the first self-regulatory body for humanitarian agencies at the international level. Prior to this, Dr. Callamard was Chef de Cabinet for the Secretary General of Amnesty International (AI) and AI’s Research-Policy Coordinator, leading AI’s policy work and research on women’s human rights.

Agnès has advised senior levels of multilateral organizations and governments around the world and has led human rights investigations in more than 30 countries. She has published broadly in the field of human rights, women’s rights, refugee movements and accountability and holds a PhD in Political Science from the New School for Social Research in New York.

Yaman Akdeniz

Dr. Yaman Akdeniz (LLB, MA, PhD) is a Professor of Law at the Human Rights Law Research Center, Faculty of Law and the Pro Rector for the Istanbul Bilgi University. Between 2001 and 2009, Akdeniz was at the School of Law, University of Leeds. He established Cyber-Rights.Org in the UK. More recently, Akdeniz was appointed as an ‘elected independent expert’ to the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on Rights of Internet Users, and to the Council of Europe Committee of experts on cross-border flow of Internet traffic and Internet freedom.

His recent publications include Internet Child Pornography and the Law: National and International Responses and Racism on the Internet. Akdeniz also authored the 2006 Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Office entitled Stocktaking on efforts to combat Racism on the Internet; the 2010 Report of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media entitled Turkey and InternetCensorship; and 2011 Report of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media entitled Freedom of Expression on the Internet: Study of legal provisions and practices related to freedom of expression, the free flow of information and media pluralism on the Internet in OSCE participating States.

Sheikh Maytham Al Salman

Sheikh Maytham Al Salman is a Shia cleric from Bahrain. An internationally respected inter-faith leader and a renowned thought leader, Maytham Al Salman advocates for peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between cultures, religions and sects.

Sheikh Maytham Al Salman is the founding member and current coordinator of the Middle East and North Africa Civil Society Coalition to Counter Incitement to Hatred; a multi-stakeholder platform, established in April 2015, that is dedicated to ending incitement to violence, hostility, and discrimination. The Coalition monitors, analyses and reports on incitement speech across the region, and promotes interventions to counter such incitement.

Maytham is the director of Bahrain Inter-Faith, a non-profit organization seeking to prevent religious and social discrimination and sectarianism, and working to encourage and support interfaith dialogue.

Maytham serves on a committee of the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, advising the Office on the role of religious leaders in preventing incitement that could lead to atrocity crimes. He is also an expert associated with Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression, an initiative established by Columbia University President and first amendment scholar Lee Bollinger, to explore, and promote global norms on the protection of freedom of expression.

Maytham Al Salman is also a member of a number of inter-faith international initiatives, including the International Council for Religious Dialogue, the International Commission for Religious Freedom, the International Religious Committee for Cooperation with the United Nations and the World Association of religious tolerance. He is an active participant and contributor to human rights forums, including the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Forum for the Rights of Minorities. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, the World Forum of Religious Tolerance, the International Conference for Cultural Diplomacy, the International Conference for Interreligious Dialogue and the World Conference Dialogue among Civilizations, the International Conference for Islamic Unity.

Above all, Sheikh Maytham is an advocate for equal rights, tolerance and the end of discrimination, including in his own country of Bahrain. In 2011, in punishment for his advocacy, he was arrested, detained for several months and was tortured as were a number of other human rights defenders, some of whom are still in prison.

Catherine Anite

Catherine Anite is a Ugandan Human Rights advocate, focusing on the promotion and defense of freedom of expression, media rights, and access to information. She has over four years’ experience working with journalists, women, children and refugees. She is the Chief Legal Officer at the Human Rights Network for Journalists in Uganda, where she defends and represents journalists at police stations and Courts of Law, analyzes and publicizes laws and policies that impede on freedom of expression, publishes work on media rights, trains journalists on professional standards, promotes media self-regulation and spearheads media rights campaigns.

In September 2014 she successfully argued a case which created new jurisprudence on open justice for journalists in Uganda. Catherine and two other lawyers have challenged the constitutionality of the Press and Journalist Act and the Uganda Communications Act in the Constitutional Court of Uganda. She has also filed a Reference at the East African Court of Justice in Arusha, Tanzania, challenging the offence of criminal defamation. In 2012, Catherine was selected by Avocats Sans Frontiers and the East African Law Society in an EU Human Rights Defenders project to constitute a pool of human rights lawyers to defend rights in East Africa and the Great Lakes Region. Besides being a judge at the E. Price international media moot court at the University of Oxford in England, she was also selected by the U.S State Department in 2014 to participate in President Obama’s Washington Fellowship program for Young African Leaders, where she studied civic leadership at the University of Delaware. She has volunteered as a lawyer with the Women Lawyers Association (FIDA), Uganda Human Rights Commission, and Danish Refugee Council. Catherine holds a Bachelor’s degree (Honors) in Law from Makerere University, Uganda and a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the Law Development Centre in Kampala.

Chinmayi Arun

Chinmayi Arun is Research Director of the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University Delhi, where she is also an Assistant Professor of Law.  She is a member of the Indian Government’s multi stakeholder advisory group for the India Internet Governance Forum and one of the academic experts for the Internet & Jurisdiction Project’s Observatory. She has also been a consultant to the Law Commission of India.

Chinmayi has published academic papers on surveillance and the right to privacy in India, and on information gatekeeper liability in the context of internet intermediaries. She is lead author of the India country report in Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net report and the India report in the Global Network of Centres’ study of online intermediaries which was led by the Berkman Centre at Harvard Law School.

She has been invited to discuss her work at academic institutions like Oxford University and Harvard University, as well as at fora convened by international bodies like UNESCO. In an effort to make sure that her work is accessible and has impact, Chinmayi has participated and supported the government delegation in events such as the World Conference on International Telecommunications. She designed and is building an online information policy teaching and learning resource at ccgtlr.org.

Chinmayi has studied at the NALSAR University of Law, and London School of Economics and Political Science. At the LSE, she read regulatory theory and new media regulation, and was awarded the Bernard Levin Award for Student Journalism. She has worked with Ernst & Young and AZB & Partners, Mumbai in the past, and has taught at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences where she introduced courses on regulatory theory and communication regulation. She teaches seminar courses on Internet Governance at National Law University Delhi.

Bach Avezdjanov

Bach Avezdjanov is the Program Officer for Columbia Global Freedom of Expression. Prior to joining the initiative, he has worked in Kyrgyzstan for Freedom House, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Tian Shan Policy Center at the American University of Central Asia. Much of his work focused on legislative reform pertaining to torture prevention. He also worked on strengthening public assembly, religious freedoms, minority rights, and women’s rights.

After, Bach joined the UNHCR operation in Kassala, Sudan, a city on the border with Eritrea. In the capacity of a protection officer, he monitored refugee rights issues and designed projects to ensure that those issues are resolved.

Bach is fluent in Russian and holds a J.D. from the Boston University School of Law.

Sahar F. Aziz

Sahar F. Aziz is an associate professor at Texas A&M University School of Law where she teaches torts, national security, civil rights, race and the law, and Middle East law. She is a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. Prior to Texas A&M, she served as a Senior Policy Advisor for the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and an associate at Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll PLLP in Washington, D.C. where she litigated class action civil rights lawsuits. Professor Aziz started her career as a litigation associate at WilmerHale.

Professor Aziz’s scholarship is at the intersection of national security and civil rights law with a focus on how post-9/11 laws and policies adversely impact racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. She is also an expert on the Middle East wherein she focuses on the relationship between authoritarianism and rule of law in Egypt. Her academic articles have been published in the Harvard National Security Journal, George Washington International Law Review, Penn State Law Review, and the Texas Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Journal. In 2015, Professor Aziz was named an Emerging Scholar by Diverse Magazine and received the prestigious Derrick Bell Award from the American Association of Law Schools Minority Section in recognition of her scholarship and advocacy.

Professor Aziz has been featured on CNN, CSPAN, Fox News, Russia Today and Al Jazeera America and published commentaries on CNN.com, the New York Times, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Middle East Institute, the World Politics Review, the Houston Chronicle, The Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor, and Huffington Post. She is an editor of the Race and the Law Profs blog and serves on the board of the ACLU of Texas.

Professor Aziz has a J.D. and M.A. in Middle East Studies from the University of Texas where she served as an associate editor of the Texas Law Review. Professor Aziz clerked for the Honorable Andre M. Davis on the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.

 

Romel Regaldo Bagares

Mr. Romel Regalado Bagares is Executive Director of the Center for International Law, a Philippine-based NGO engaged in advocacy, training and strategic litigation for free expression. As a lawyer, he has been assisting journalists, human rights defenders, social media activists and users in free expression cases in various Philippines courts and tribunals and before UN human rights mechanisms. Most recently, he took part as lawyer and petitioner in the constitutional challenge against the Philippine Anti-Cyber Crime Law (the Alexander Adonis Petition).

He also recently assisted a jailed Thai blogger and poet challenge his imprisonment under Thailand’s repressive lese majeste laws before the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Mr. Bagares, who is senior associate at the Roque & Butuyan Law Offices in Manila, also lectures in public international law at the Lyceum Philippines University College of Law.

Cherif Bassiouni

Cherif Bassiouni is Emeritus Professor of Law at DePaul University where he taught for 45 years (1964-2009). He was a founding member, and later served as President and Emeritus President of the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University. In 1972, he was one of the founders of the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences (ISISC) in Siracusa, Italy, where he served as Dean from 1974-1988 and then as President to date. He also served as the Secretary-General and President of the Association Internationale de Droit Pénal in Paris from 1974-2004.

Professor Bassiouni pursued his legal education at the University of Cairo, Dijon University, France, and in the U.S. where he obtained his S.J.D. at George Washington University. He has been a member and chair of a number of U.N. and National Commissions of Inquiry into the conflicts of: the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Bahrain. He is the author of many books and law review articles in several languages. He is often referred to at the “father of international criminal law.” In 1999, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his seminal work in the establishment of the ICC. He was the co-chair of the Committee of Experts drafting the U.N. Anti-Torture Convention and has held several other U.N. positions. He has lectured at many Universities the world over, and has received numerous awards as well as fourteen medals from various countries and received ten honorary degrees from various universities around the world.

Emily Bell

Emily Bell was director of digital content for Britain’s Guardian News and Media from 2006 to 2010. Previous to that post, Bell was editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited from 2001 to 2006. Under Bell, the Guardian received numerous awards, including the Webby Award for a newspaper website in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009, and British Press Awards for Website of the Year in 2006, 2008 and 2009. Bell first joined the Observer newspaper, which became part of Guardian News and Media, in 1990, as a business reporter specializing in media business, marketing and technology. Bell is a leading media commentator in the U.K., writing about broadcasting and media policy issues. She is a 1987 graduate of Christ Church, Oxford University, where she earned a master’s degree in jurisprudence.

Esha Bhandari

Esha Bhandari (@bhandari_esha) is a Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, where she focuses on litigation and advocacy relating to online speech, academic freedom, privacy rights, and the impact of big data. Esha was previously an Equal Justice Works Fellow with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, where she was involved in litigating cases concerning a right to counsel in immigration proceedings, detainer policies, and discriminatory state and local laws. She has also been a staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, where she worked on two trials challenging a Texas law limiting women’s access to reproductive health care. Esha is a graduate of McGill University, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and Columbia Law School, and served as a law clerk to the Hon. Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Aurélie Bretonneau

Aurélie Bretonneau is member of the French Conseil d’Etat since 2007. She is currently serving in the litigation department, as rapporteur public (advocate general) appointed to the chamber specialised in public liberties, administrative police and taxes. She previously ran the Center of judicial research and the comparative law service of the Conseil d’Etat.

Lydia Cacho

Lydia Cacho is a Mexican award wining journalist; author and Human Rights activist specialized in women and children’s rights.  Her ample knowledge has led her to write nine books, from poetry to fiction, nonfiction investigative reporting and a Manual to prevent child abuse, she has published essays on gender issues and a 2014 investigation on the love life of mature Mexicans. Her international best seller on Sex Trafficking, Human Slavery and Child Pornography have been translated into twelve languages and sell in more than thirty countries around the world. She has received notable recognition for traveling around the world investigating Human Rights violations and organized criminal networks

Cacho has developed specialized tools to confront complex problems and search for real solutions using her grassroots experience as an author, an international reporter of Human Rights and as a well recognized founder of shelters for women and children victims of gender violence including sexual violence and Human Trafficking. Her approach to teaching new skills for Peace Journalism and to confront Human Trafficking and slavery around the world has gained her several awards and international prizes.

Lydia´s knowledge of different Law systems, psychology and pedagogy has led her to develop an effective teaching system using all resources including creative writing, narrative listening, art-therapy, techniques to interview children, and reporting organized crime with group collaboration skills. She has received 40 international Human Rights and journalism awards including the Human Rights Watch, Ginetta Sagan Amnesty Award; OXFAM award; IWMF award; CNN Hero; UNESCO- Guillermo Cano freedom of expression award; The Wallemberg Medal; The Tucholsky Award; PEN Canada Award; and World Press International Hero 2010 for the International Press Institute in Vienna.

She is an international Board member of Article 19; Chime for Change Fund; Oasis Foundation and of the House Citlaltepetl for International persecuted Writers. She has been a member of the jury of the international Human Rights film festivals in Mexico.

Mishi Choudhary

Mishi Choudhary is a technology lawyer, licensed to practice in New York and India with over a decade of experience in the area of intellectual property rights, Open Source licensing, e- commerce, privacy, surveillance, platform liability and user free expression. She has been involved in a number of court cases and other efforts around protection of online free speech and expression; privacy; surveillance and software patents in India.

She is the Founding Executive Director of SFLC.in, India, a legal services organization based out of New Delhi that brings together lawyers, policy analysts, technologists, and students to protect freedom in the digital world. At SFLC.in, she focuses her work on promotion of innovation and open access to knowledge by helping developers make great Free and Open Source Software, protect privacy and civil liberties for citizens in the digital world, educate policy makers to reach informed decisions on the use and adoption of technology. She is also the Legal Director at Software Freedom Law Center, New York that provides pro-bono legal services to developers of Free, Libre, and Open Source Software. Mishi has a Masters degree in Law from Columbia University in the City of New York, a Legum Baccalaureus (LL.B.) degree with Honors and a Bachelors degree in Political Science from the University of Delhi.

Sandra Coliver

Sandra Coliver is Senior Legal Officer for Freedom of Information and Expression at the Open Society Justice Initiative, an operational arm of the Open Society Foundations. Previously, she managed or participated in human rights and rule of law programs around the world, including with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the OSCE, and Article 19. She coordinated the drafting of the Tshwane Principles on National Security and Right to Information (2013), helped develop the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, FOE and Access to Information (1995), and wrote a commentary and edited a book on that theme (published by Martinus Nijhoff); wrote a Handbook on FOE Best Law and Practice; edited a book on hate speech laws and practice in more than two dozen countries; and co-authored two other books on freedom of expression and information issues.

She has submitted several interventions to the European and Inter-American Human Rights systems, and contributed to the UN Human Rights Committee’s General Comment on Article 19. She served on the Faculty of the Summer Program on International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at AU Washington College of Law, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley Law School.

Bertrand de la Chapelle

The Internet & Jurisdiction Project, launched in 2012, is a global multi-stakeholder dialogue process to establish a transnational due process framework for the Internet, in order to handle the tension between its cross-border nature and the diversity of national jurisdictions. Bertrand was previously a Director on the ICANN Board (2010-2013), France’s Thematic Ambassador and Special Envoy for the Information Society (2006-2010) and an active participant in the WSIS process (2002-2005). A determined promoter and implementer of multi-stakeholder governance processes for more than 15 years, he builds upon his experience as a diplomat, a civil society actor but also a tech entrepreneur, as co-founder and president of Virtools (1994- 1998), a pioneer provider of virtual reality development environment, acquired in 2005 by Dassault Systèmes. Bertrand is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique (1978), Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (1983), and Ecole Nationale d’Administration (1986).

Agustina Del Campo

Agustina Del Campo, LL.M., Esq. is the Director at the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information (CELE) at Universidad de Palermo and an international human rights consultant. Ms. Del Campo has a law degree from Universidad Catolica Argentina and an LL.M. in International Legal Studies from American University Washington College of Law. She previously ran the Impact Litigation Project at AU WCL where she coordinated the research and litigation of several freedom of expression cases before the Inter-American Commission and Court on Human Rights. Agustina has extensive experience in human rights training, particularly as it relates to freedom of expression and the press in the Inter-American human rights system. She taught and lectured in several Latin American countries and the U.S. Additionally, Agustina has authored and/or contributed to over a dozen publications.

H. R. Dipendra

H.R. Dipendra is a lawyer practising in Kuala Lumpur. His practice includes protecting and promoting media defence and freedom of expression within the Southeast Asia region. Dipendra is involved in projects including training of lawyers and media activists in the Southeast Asian region and has participated in trial observer missions and other case interventions. In addition, Dipendra is currently the Chairman of the Kuala Lumpur State Bar Committee, the largest State Bar in Peninsula Malaysia with approximately 7,300 lawyers. He also chairs the Professional Standards and Development Committee at the Malaysian Bar Council and the Civil Practice Committee at the Kuala Lumpur Bar Committee.

Dipendra is also a member of the Malaysian Bar Council Human Rights Committee. Dipendra was admitted to the Malaysian Bar in 2000 and is the managing partner of Messrs Arianti Dipendra Jeremiah. He holds a LLB from the University of London and graduated with a LLM (merit) from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1999.

Tais Gasparian

Born in 1958, in the city of São Paulo, São Paulo. Graduated in Law by Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo (1983) and graduated by Faculdade de Letras, Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo (1981). Enrolled with the Brazilian Bar Association, São Paulo Chapter, in 1984, under n. 74.182. Master in Philosophy and Jurisprudence by Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo (1989). Ms. Gasparian was Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Justice (2002), and member of the Board of Directors of Associação dos Advogados de São Paulo (AASP). She also participated in the Special Commission for Immaterial Property OAB- São Paulo Chapter (2004/2006) and is a member of Associação Brasileira de Direito Autoral [Brazilian Copyright Association] (ABDA). Ms. Gasparian Practices Civil Law, in consulting services and litigation, especially regarding freedom of speech.

Charles Glasser

Charles Glasser spent twelve years as the Global Media Counsel for Bloomberg News, where he was responsible for pre-publication review, ethics issues, and training more than 2,200 reporters in more than 120 bureaus around the world on legal issues and journalistic fundamentals, particularly focusing on investigative and business news. He also managed media litigation globally, and is acknowledged as an expert in international media law. He is the author and editor of “The International Libel and Privacy Handbook” (Third Edition, 2013, John Wiley and Sons) and is a regular panelist and contributor for several media law and journalism organizations including The Media Law Resource Center, The Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Media Law Defence Institute (UK).

Mr. Glasser also served as the news organization’s ombudsman, and was responsible for managing complaints, corrections and interacting with public relations and investor relations professionals who sought input into Bloomberg content, both before and after publication. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Mr. Glasser represented a wide variety of general circulation publications including Reader’s Digest, the New York Post, Star Magazine, and others. He is currently managing his own consultancy, providing legal and media ethics advice to publishers, managing Freedom of Information litigation and providing content and privacy guidelines to web-based startups. He currently acts as a media consultant to a wide range of news and content platforms at www.charlesglasser.net.

Frédéric Gras

Frédéric Gras, born in 1965 in Germany, is a French attorney at Law at the Bar of PARIS (France) who deals with Media Law (freedom of speech, intellectual property, advertisement) and Labour Law cases for media firms and journalists. He is also an expert for the Council of Europe (DG II) and a lecturer on Freedom of Speech for UNESCO, OSCE, ARTICLE 19 and Civil Rights Defenders (ex Swedish Committee) . He is a member of the editorial committee of LEGIPRESSE, a French Media Law Review. In a former academic life, he was a Lecturer at the University of PARIS II Pantheon-Assas and an Associate Professor at the Institute of Political studies in Rennes (Brittany).

Nani Jansen

Nani Jansen is a Dutch-qualified attorney who has been with MLDI since 2011. She oversees MLDI’s regular and strategic litigation. Nani has acted in freedom of expression cases before national and international courts and human rights tribunals, including the European Court of Human Rights, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the East African Court of Justice, the UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Prior to joining MLDI, Nani worked as a litigation and arbitration attorney with De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, a large law firm in the Netherlands. She also worked as a researcher on international peace and security for a non- profit organisation in New York and has experience working in the United Nations system.

Nani graduated in civil law and public international law from the University of Amsterdam and specialised in human rights at Columbia Law School and the European University Institute. She was admitted to the bar in The Netherlands in 2007 and is registered on the list of Pro Bono counsel at the African Court. Nani has published on issues in international law, data protection, international arbitration and human rights. She speaks English, Dutch, French and Italian.

Issaaf Ben Khalifa

Issaaf Ben Khalifa is a barrister, registered at the National Bar Association of Tunisia since 2005. As a young lawyer she supported civil society organizations working on women’s rights, by defending women subjected to sexual and domestic violence. She graduated with a Masters degree in Legal Studies and a Diploma of Higher Studies (DHS) in fundamental legal sciences from the University of Legal, Social and Political Sciences in Tunis. She taught the human rights course at the High Institute for Electronic Commerce in Tunisia (September 2006 – June 2007).

She was a human rights officer with the Regional Office for North Africa of United Nations Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), from June 2012 till March 2013 and currently is a human rights officer with the OHCHR Tunisia Country Office. Issaaf Ben Khalifa is the officer in charge of drafting the OHCHR-Tunisia report on “The judicial implementation of penal provisions related to the prosecution of journalists laid down in the Decree-law No 2011-115 (new press code)”.

Steve Killelea

Steve Killelea is an accomplished entrepreneur in high technology business development and at the forefront of philanthropic activities focused on sustainable development and peace. After successfully building two international software companies, Steve decided to dedicate most of his time and fortune to sustainable development and peace.

Steve has always had a strong passion for sustainable development, and in 2000 he established The Charitable Foundation (TCF), which specializes in working with the poorest communities of the world. TCF is one of the largest private overseas aid organizations in Australia. It aims to provide life-changing interventions reaching as many people as possible with special emphasis on targeting the poorest of the poor. TCF is active in East and Central Africa and parts of Asia and has substantially impacted the lives of over 2.3 million people.

In 2007 Steve founded the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), an international think tank dedicated to building a greater understanding of the interconnection between business, peace and economics with particular emphasis on the economic benefits of peace. IEP’s ground-breaking research includes the Global Peace Index, the world’s leading measure of peacefulness. Steve’s founding of IEP was recognized as one of the 50 most impactful philanthropic gifts in Australia’s history.

Steve currently serves on a number of influential Company Boards, Advisory Boards and President Councils. In 2010 he was honored as Member of the Order of Australia for his service to the global peace movement and the provision of humanitarian aid to the developing world. In 2013 Steve was nominated one of the “Top 100 Most Influential People in Armed Violence Reduction” by the UK group Action on Armed Violence.

Ross LaJeunesse

Ross LaJeunesse is Global Head of International Relations for Google, where he oversees the company’s efforts to promote and defend a free and open Internet around the world. LaJeunesse has been with Google for more than seven years, and previously served as Head of Government Affairs in Asia Pacific. Before joining Google, LaJeunesse served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He helped develop and execute the Governor’s comprehensive and ambitious policy agenda, including economic development, infrastructure investment and education reform issues.

In the mid-2000s, LaJeunesse was Chief of Staff to California Controller Steve Westly, the state’s chief financial officer. He also served as Chief of Staff to California Public Utilities Commissioner Susan Kennedy.  LaJeunesse began his career in Washington, D.C. as an assistant to United States Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell and later as a policy advisor to Senator Edward Kennedy.  LaJeunesse graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College and received his law degree with honors from Harvard Law School.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Rebecca MacKinnon directs the Ranking Digital Rights project at New America, evaluating tech companies on their respect for users’ free expression and privacy. MacKinnon is co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices and author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom. She was a founding Board member of the Global Network Initiative and is currently on the Board of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon was CNN’s Bureau Chief and correspondent in China and Japan between 1998-2004.

More recently, she has taught at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and is a visiting affiliate at the Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Global Communication Studies. She has held fellowships at Harvard’s Shorenstein and Berkman Centers, the Open Society Foundations, Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, and the New America Foundation. MacKinnon received her AB magna cum laude from Harvard University and was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan. She lives in Washington DC.

Henry Maina

Henry Maina worked in the human rights sector for 10 years before coming to ARTICLE 19 in 2008, specialising in criminal justice and human rights education at the Legal Resources Foundation. He also has expertise in advocacy and governance. Henry is skilled in programme management and fundraising, and has a masters degree in international development, law and human rights from Warwick University in the UK.

Catalina Botero Marino

Catalina Botero Marino is an international consultant on human rights and international law, and a professor with the Universidad Externado law school in Colombia. She was Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States from 2008 to October 5, 2014. Catalina Botero is a Colombian attorney who worked as Acting Magistrate and Auxiliary Magistrate in the Constitutional Court of Colombia for 8 years. She oleo acted as an adviser for the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Nation; National Director of the Office for the Promotion of Human Rights in the Office of the People’s Defender of Colombia, and professor and researcher at the Law School of the Universidad de los Andes and other national and international universities. She is the author of several books and essays published in different countries on freedom of expression, constitutional law, international criminal law and transitional justice. She received her law degree in 1988 at the Universidad de los Andes and did postgraduate studies there, as well as in Madrid, Spain, at Universidad Complutense, Universidad Carlos III, and the Center for Constitutional Studies.

Duncan McCargo

Duncan McCargo is Visiting Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, Professor of Political Science at the University of Leeds, and a Senior Research Affiliate at Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute. He teaches alternate semesters at Columbia and Leeds. His books include Politics and the Press in Thailand (Routledge 2000), Media and Politics in Pacific Asia (Routledge 2003), The Thaksinization of Thailand (co-authored, NIAS 2005), Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Cornell 2008) (which won the inaugural 2009 Bernard Schwartz Book Prize from the Asia Society), and most recently Mapping National Anxieties: Thailand’s Southern Conflict (NIAS 2012). McCargo held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2011-14) to work on politics and justice in Thailand, in the course of which he attended a number of important freedom of expression trials. He is now completing a book on these issues for Cornell University Press.

David McCraw

David McCraw has been a lawyer for The New York Times Company since 2002. He currently serves as a Vice President and Assistant General Counsel. He is responsible for the company’s litigation matters and for providing legal counsel to the Times newsroom on such issues as libel, freedom of information, access to the courts, and newsgathering. Mr. McCraw previously served as Deputy General Counsel of the New York Daily News and a litigation associate at Clifford Chance and Rogers & Wells. He is an adjunct professor of mass media law at the NYU School of Law. Mr. McCraw has been actively involved in international pro bono work on issues touching upon press freedom and freedom of information. He has worked on pro bono projects in Yemen, Kuwait, Russia, Cameroon, and Bahrain and conducted workshops on freedom of information in South America, China, and Central and Eastern Europe. He serves on the governing committee of the Vance Center, the international pro bono arm of the New York City Bar.

Jacob Mchangama

Jacob is the director of Justitia and in addition to his law degree he has a master’s degree in human rights and democratization from the European Inter-University Centre of staying. In 2007 Jacob obtained his license to practice law at Plesner, where he worked in the Division of Corporate Finance, specializing in mergers and acquisitions and private equity. From 2004-2007, Jacob worked as a paralegal at Eversheds, where he worked with general corporate and commercial law with a focus on mergers and acquisitions and venture capital. Since 2005 Jacob has taught International Human Rights at the University of Copenhagen; previously, he has taught teaching law.

Andrew McLaughlin

Andrew McLaughlin is head of content & new business initiatives at Medium, leading its NYC office. He serves as chairman of the board of Access Now, and on the boards of Public Knowledge, the Sunlight Foundation, Digg, and Chartbeat.  He is a Future Tense fellow at the New America Foundation, an advisor to Data & Society, and to the Open Technology Fund.  He has previously worked as Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. under President Obama, head of global public policy for Google, and chief policy officer for ICANN, and has taught at the Stanford and Harvard law schools.

Dunja Mijatović

Dunja Mijatović of Bosnia and Herzegovina was appointed OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media in March 2010, and reappointed for a second term in March 2013. She is an expert in media law and regulation. In 1998, as one of the founders of the Communications Regulatory Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, she helped to create a legal, regulatory and policy framework for the media in a complex post-war society. She was also involved in setting up a self-regulatory Press Council and the first Free Media Helpline in South East Europe. In 2007 she was elected Chair of the European Platform of Regulatory Agencies. She was the first non-EU Member State representative and the first woman to hold this post.

Previously, she chaired the Council of Europe’s Group of Specialists on freedom of expression and information in times of crisis. During her Chairmanship, the CoE Committee of Ministers adopted the Declaration by the Committee of Ministers on the protection and promotion of investigative journalism and Guidelines on protecting freedom of expression and information in times of crisis. As an expert on media and communications legislation, she has worked in Armenia, Austria, Iraq, Jordan, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Morocco and the UK.

Dario Milo

Dario Milo is a partner in the Dispute Resolution Practice at Webber Wentzel, where he leads a team on communications and information law. Dario obtained BComm, LLB and LLM degrees in Company Law and Constitutional Law from the University of the Witwatersrand. After working as an associate in the Media Law Department, Dario studied for an LLM degree in Communications Law at University College London. Thereafter, he received a PhD at University College London. His thesis examined privacy, reputation and freedom of the media in the context of the law of defamation and privacy, focusing on South African, English and US law.

Dario is also qualified as a solicitor of the High Court of England and Wales, and taught Media and Entertainment Law at University College London and BPP Professional Education plc. Dario teaches media law, access to information law, and privacy law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he is a visiting associate professor. He is the author of Defamation and Freedom of Speech, and co-author of the forthcoming book, A Practical Guide to Media Law. Dario and his team have been commissioned to write a guide on the Protection of Personal Information Bill when it becomes law.

Heba Morayef

Heba Morayef investigates human rights abuses in Egypt for Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading non-profit organizations for defending and protecting against human rights violations. She produces reports, news releases and op-eds based on her findings and conducts local and international advocacy. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Morayef worked at Amnesty International’s international secretariat in London as campaigner on Libya and Tunisia. She speaks English, Arabic, and French. In a Spring 2013 poll conducted by TIME magazine, 88% of readers counted Morayef among the 100 most influential people on the planet for her work in Egypt.

Suzanne Nossel

Suzanne Nossel was named Executive Director of the PEN American Center in 2013. Prior to PEN she served as Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. Her work led to passage of the Afghan Women and Girls Security and Promotion Act (2012), and drew attention to the chilling climate for free expression in Russia through the case of imprisoned punk band Pussy Riot. Before Amnesty, Suzanne served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations at the U.S. Department of State.

She played a leading role in U.S. engagement at the U.N. Human Rights Council. She was also Chief Operating Officer for Human Rights Watch. Suzanne has worked in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the implementation of South Africa’s National Peace Accord (early 1990s), and has done election monitoring and human rights documentation in Bosnia and Kosovo. Suzanne has served as vice-president of U.S. Business Development at Bertelsmann Media Worldwide, vice-president of strategy and operations for the Wall Street Journal, and a consultant at McKinsey & Company. She is the author of Presumed Equal: What America’s Top Women Lawyers Really Think About Their Firms. Suzanne contributes to and comments on human rights issues for news outlets including CNN and NPR.

Karuna Nundy

Karuna Nundy is an advocate at the Supreme Court of India, and international human rights lawyer. She represents and acts as legal policy adviser to governments, United Nations, companies and civil society movements. She is arguing as unconstitutional restrictions on online speech before the Supreme Court of India. Her pro bono practice includes also, the Supreme Court litigation from the 1984 gas disaster and toxic waste dumps in Bhopal. She has argued cases involving the rights of alleged terrorists, mentally ill people and class actions on sexual harassment.

Karuna’s advisory and policy work includes contributions to the Nepal Interim Constitution; a legislation workshop with the Senate of Pakistan; advice to the Government of Bhutan on compliance with human rights treaties; and legal reform in the Maldives with the Attorney General’s Office and the Chief Justice of the Maldives Supreme Court. In India, she drafted contributions to the new “anti-rape” laws and the Right to Food Act. Karuna has an Economics degree (St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University), a law degree (University of Cambridge), and an LL.M. (Columbia Law School). She is qualified to practice in India and NY. She is interviewed and comments on free speech, gender and legal issues on the BBC, India Today, the New York Times, NPR, FAZ, NDTV and other media.

Lynn Oberlander

Lynn Oberlander is a leading media attorney and advocate for journalists.  She has been the General Counsel, Media Operations for First Look Media since March of 2014.  For the previous seven years, from 2006 until 2014, she was the General Counsel of The New Yorker, where in addition to her legal duties, she also wrote for newyorker.com on media law topics. She is a frequent speaker on freedom of expression and media law topics. From 2001 through 2006, she was the Editorial Counsel at Forbes, and from 1996 – 2001, Ms. Oberlander was senior media counsel at NBC, working with the local and network news divisions. After clerking for the Hon. John H. Pratt of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 1991-92, Ms. Oberlander began her legal career at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison as a litigator and antitrust attorney.

She received her B.A., cum laude, from Yale College,where she was the news editor and a columnist for the Yale Daily News and her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was an editor of the Law Review and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.  She teaches a graduate course in Media, Corporate Responsibility, and the Law, both in a traditional classroom setting and on-line, at The New School in New York.  She is the chair of the Communications and Media Law Committee of the New York State Bar Association, and the chair of the board of directors of the Media Law Resource Center.  She also is the chair of the Manhattan Division of Jewish Home Lifecare, a major nursing home and elder care system.

Kyung-Sin Park

Korea University Law School Professor PARK Kyung-Sin, a.k.a. K.S. Park, one of the founders of Open Net Korea, and has written academically and been active in internet, free speech, privacy, defamation, copyright, international contracting, etc. (quoted in Freedom House report, New York Times)   He has given expert testimonies in high-profile free speech and privacy cases concerning Minerva, the internet real name verification law, the military’s seditious book blacklisting, the newspaper consumers’ boycott, and Park Jung-Geun the one jailed for retweeting North Korean government twits.  As a result, the “false news” crime in the Minerva case and the internet real name verification laws were struck down as unconstitutional, Park Jung-Geun and Minerva were acquitted, the soldiers challenging book blacklisting were reinstated, the newspaper boycotters’ judgment acquitted the “secondary boycotting” charge (2010-2013)).

Since 2006, he also has served as the executive director of the PSPD Law Center, a non-profit entity that has organized several impact litigations, including some of the above cases, in the areas of free speech, privacy, and copyright. There, the Law Center won the world’s first damage lawsuit against a copyright holder for “bad faith” takedown (2009).  On privacy, the Law Center won the world’s first damage lawsuit against a major portal for warrantless disclosure of the user identity data to the police (2012).  As a result of this judgment, all major portals stopped complying with such data requests by the government. As to the three major telcos that have continued to comply with user identity data requests, the Law Center won another suit in 2015 forcing them to inform the user on whether such data release has taken place on him or not.  The Law Center also filed a suit against the Korean Prosecutor’s Office for failing to notify an e-mail user of the fact of seizure of his emails and won a damages award (2013).)

In 2008, He also founded the Clinical Legal Education Center of Korea University School of Law (f.k.a. Global Legal Clinic) which in 2009 through 2010 successfully carried on a successful campaign to enter Korea into the Supplementary Fund in the wake of one of the largest oil spill ever.  In 2011, in the spirit of solidity of www.chillingeffects.org, he and his former clinic students founded www.internetlawclinic.org with law students, where people and cultural producers alike can obtain free legal advices in the areas of copyright, trademarks, publicity rights, defamation, privacy, etc.

Since 2002, he has served as a legal advisor to Korea Film Council and the Ministry of Culture, representing the country in negotiations concerning the UNESCO Cultural Diversity Convention and the country’s first ever film co-production treaty with France.  He has represented many film producers in their international distribution, co-production, and development deals, and has authored a world-wide survey of tax incentives for film production.

In 2009, he served as a member of the National Media Council, an advisory body to the National Assembly set up to examine the historic bills allowing media cross-ownership, among other things.  While sitting on the council, he has spearheaded an effort to oppose a new bill creating a new crime of “cyber-insult”.

Until, he has been a commissioner of the Korean Communication Standards Commission, a governmental entity censoring broadcasting and internet contents, where he has given many dissenting opinions.

An alumnus of Harvard University (Class of ’92, Physics) and UCLA Law School (Class of ’95), licensed in California and Washington State, he represented immigrant workers in restaurant, garment, and janitorial industry.  He has filed or defended, and won major lawsuits against brand-name garment manufacturers and large department stores (1995-1997, Los Angeles) and has also participated in the historic civil rights class action against the local Metropolitan Transit Authority.

He is also the founding editor (2007) and the Editor in Chief of Korea University Law Review, available on Westlaw.

His academic articles (Korean with English abstracts) on the relevant areas can be found here: http://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/po/citationindex/poCretDetail.kci?citationBean.cretId=CRT000887263&citationBean.artiId=ART001413212

His shorter writings can be found here. http://opennetkorea.org/en/wp/category/openblog

David Post

David G. Post recently retired from his position as I. Herman Stern Professor of Law at Temple University, where he taught intellectual property law and the law of cyberspace.  Post is the author of In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (Oxford), a Jeffersonian view of Internet law and policy, awarded the 2009 Green Bag Legal Writing Award and variously described as “beautifully written” and “astonishing” (Lawrence Lessig), “brilliant and a joy to read” (Jonathan Zittrain), and “an authentic work of genius, conceived and written in the finest Jeffersonian spirit” (Sean Wilentz). In addition, he is the (co)-author of Cyberlaw: Problems of Policy and Jurisprudence in the Information Age (West), and has published numerous scholarly articles on intellectual property, the law of cyberspace, and complexity theory (including Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace, the 2nd most-frequently-cited law review article of all time in the field of intellectual property). He is a regular contributor to the influential legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy.

Darío Ramirez

Darío has experience in the areas of international human rights law, public international law, media law and journalism, refugees and women’s rights. Before joining ARTICLE 19, Darío was Deputy General Director of the Unit for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights at Mexico’s Ministry of the Interior. Prior to this, he worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Darío holds a bachelor degree in international relations and an LLM in public international law from the University of Amsterdam.

Paul Schabas

Paul Schabas is a senior litigation partner at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, Toronto. He lads the firm’s media law practice, representing journalists and media organizations including the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper. He counsels on numerous libel trials and on leading defamation, free expression and access to information cases in the Supreme Court of Canada, including Grant v. Torstar, Breeden v. Black, R. v Mentuck, Toronto Star v. Canada, and Criminal Lawyers Association v. Ontario. Mr. Schabas has extensive experience in commercial litigation and international arbitrations, white collar criminal, tax, and constitutional law. He is an Adjunct Professor at University of Toronto Faculty of Law and elected Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada (governing body for Ontario’s 50,000 lawyers).

Mr. Schabas is also a chair of Law Foundation of Ontario, Fellow of American College of Trial Lawyers, at International Academy of Trial Lawyers, past president of Canadian Media Lawyers Association, Pro Bono Law Ontario, director of Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. He is a frequent author and speaker on media and constitutional law issues. In the past he submitted briefs on free expression law to international tribunals and governments and is named one of Canada’s 25 “most influential” lawyers by Canadian Lawyer (2011).

Frederick Schauer

Frederick Schauer is David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. He is also Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, Emeritus, at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, where he taught from 1990 to 2008, served as academic dean and acting dean, and also taught courses on evidence and freedom of speech at the Harvard Law School. Previously, Schauer was professor of law at the University of Michigan, and has also been visiting professor of law at the Columbia Law School, Fischel-Neil Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, Morton Distinguished Visiting Professor of the Humanities at Dartmouth College, distinguished visiting professor at the University of Toronto, distinguished visitor at New York University, and James Goold Cutler Professor of Law at the College of William and Mary. In 2007-2008, he was the Eastman Professor at Oxford University and a fellow of Balliol College, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and former holder of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

David Schulz

David Schulz is a Visiting Clinical Lecturer at Yale Law School, where he also serves as Co- Director of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, a program of the Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression. He is a partner in the law firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz LLP, a national trial and appellate practice representing news and entertainment media in defamation, privacy, newsgathering, access, intellectual property and related First Amendment matters. Mr. Schulz specializes in media law, First Amendment, and intellectual property, and represents a broad range of media clients, including international newswire services, national newspapers, television networks and station owners, magazine and book publishers, cable news networks, and Internet content providers. He was a lecturer for many years at Columbia Law School and regularly writes and speaks on media law issues. He is a graduate of Knox College, Yale University, and Yale Law School.

Joel Simon

Since his appointment as executive director in 2006, Joel Simon has led the Committee to Protect Journalists through a period of expansion. Under his guidance, CPJ launched the Global Campaign Against Impunity, established a Journalist Assistance program and spearheaded CPJ’s efforts to defend press freedom in the digital space. CPJ has also been honored with the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights and a News & Documentary Emmy for its work in defense of press freedom. Simon has written on press freedom issues for publications including Columbia Journalism Review, World Policy Journal, Asahi Shimbun, and The Times of India. His press freedom analysis is featured regularly in major media, including The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and BBC.

Before becoming executive director of CPJ, Simon served as the Americas program coordinator and then deputy director. As a journalist in Latin America, Simon covered the Guatemalan civil war, the Zapatista uprising in Southern Mexico, the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the economic turmoil in Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet Union. A graduate of Amherst College and Stanford University, he is the author of Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge.

Jack Snyder

Jack Snyder is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the political science department and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His books include Power and Progress:  International Politics in Transition (Routledge 2012); Religion and International Relations Theory (Columbia 2011); From Voting to Violence:  Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (Norton 2000); Myths of Empire:  Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Cornell 1991), and Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), co-editor with Alexander Cooley.  His articles include “Nationalism and the Marketplace of Ideas,” International Security, fall 1996, co-authored with Karen Ballentine. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Snyder received a B.A. in government from Harvard University in 1973, the Certificate of Columbia’s Russian Institute in 1978, and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia in 1981.

Vidar Stromme

Vidar specializes in litigation, with a particular focus on oil and gas and on media law. Vidar joined the firm in 1993, but has a broad experience as Attorney General (Civil Affairs) and also as District Attorney and Associate Judge. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Law of the University of Oslo, and he is admitted to the Supreme Court of Norway. Since 1 January 2015 Vidar Strømme has been the Chairman of the firm’s board.

Ruti Teitel

Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School; and a Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics.  She is the author of the landmark Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press, 2000) and many articles and book chapters on international and comparative law, often focusing on political transitions.  In 2012, she published Humanity’s Law (OUP, 2012) setting out a paradigm shift in international affairs. Her latest book is Globalizing Transitional Justice (OUP 2014) which explores the last decade in the evolution of the field.  She also writes and tweets regularly for a broader audience @rutiteitel.

Professor Teitel is founding co-chair of the American Society of International Law’s Interest Group on Transitional Justice and Rule of Law, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the Executive Committee of the International Studies Association Human Rights Section as well as on the ILA International Human Rights Committee.  Prof. Teitel is also on the Board of the London Review of International Law.  Last year, she was a Straus Fellow-in-Residence at New York University Law School’s Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice (2012-2013).

Mark Stephens, CBE

Mark Stephens, CBE is a Senior Member at Howard Kennedy FSI specializing in international, appellate and complex litigation, constitutional, human rights, IP, media & regulatory work, defamation, privacy, media, art and cultural property, data protection and freedom of information, and international arbitration. Mark Stephens has undertaken some of the highest profile cases in England and abroad.

Mark is also extremely active in many other areas having been appointed by the Foreign Secretary to the FCO Free Expression advisory board and the Lord Chancellor to be a Champion for the Community Legal Service. He has been retained by a number of Governments as an advisor and to represent their interests including, Republic of Cyprus, Jamaica. Libya, Mauritius, and the Russian Republic. Additionally, Mark has litigated in countries as diverse as Anguilla, Antigua, Australia, Cyprus, France, India, Iraq, Iran, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Samoa, Singapore, and the United States.

Stephen I. Vladeck

Stephen I. Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) is a Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law. His teaching and research focus on federal jurisdiction, constitutional law, and national security law. A nationally recognized expert on the role of the federal courts in the war on terrorism, Vladeck’s prolific and widely cited scholarship has appeared in an array of legal publications—including the Harvard Law Review and the Yale Law Journal — and his popular writing has been published in forums ranging from the New York Times to BuzzFeed. Vladeck, who is a co-editor of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks, frequently represents parties or amici in litigation challenging government counterterrorism policies, and has authored reports on related topics for a wide range of organizations—including the First Amendment Center, the Constitution Project, and the ABA’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security.

Professor Vladeck has won numerous awards for his teaching, his scholarship, and his service to the law school. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a senior editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of National Security Law and Policy, co-editor in-chief of the Just Security blog, a senior contributor to the Lawfare blog, the Supreme Court Fellow at the Constitution Project, and a fellow at the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law.

A 2004 graduate of Yale Law School, Vladeck clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. While a law student, he was Executive Editor of the Yale Law Journal and the Student Director of the Balancing Civil Liberties & National Security Post-9/11 Litigation Project, and he was awarded the Potter Stewart Prize for Best Team Performance in Moot Court and the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for Outstanding Moot Court Oralist. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001, where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.” Vladeck’s wife, Karen, is a litigation associate at Arent Fox LLP.

Dirk Voorhoof

Dirk Voorhoof is a Professor at Ghent University, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences (Center for Journalism Studies) and the Faculty of Law (Human Rights Center), where he teaches courses in Media Law, Copyright Law and Journalism Ethics. Since 2004 he is also lecturing at Copenhagen University, Faculty of Law, where he is giving course in Media Law. Since 2002 he participates in the Media Lawyers Advocate Programme at Oxford University (PCMLP, Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy), IMLA (International Media Lawyers Association) and the International Monroe Price Media Law Moot Court Competition, hosted at Oxford University, PCMLP/IMLA. Dirk Voorhoof is a founding member of Legal Human Academy (Oxford-Copenhagen-Ghent) and expert for the Council of Europe in projects on media law and freedom of expression.

Expertise and interests include freedom of expression, democracy and human rights; rights and responsibilities of journalists and media; broadcasting law; media policy; children’s rights and the media; media and restrictions on hate speech, racism and discrimination; freedom of artistic expression; the relation between media and the judiciary; copyright law; access to administrative documents; advertising regulation and journalism, media ethics, self-regulation, freedom of expression in the employment relation and whistleblowing.

Richard N. Winfield

Richard N. Winfield regularly teaches comparative mass media law at Columbia Law School, and mass media and Internet law at Fordham Law School. He leads media law reform programs of the International Senior Lawyers Project, a non-governmental organization he co-founded in 2000. He has spoken and consulted on media law reform projects in over 20 countries, including Russia, China and Japan. His amici curiae briefs in press freedom appeals have been submitted to the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. For over three decades he served as general counsel of the Associated Press while a partner at Rogers & Wells, which later became Clifford Chance US LLP. There he defended AP and other media clients in many hundreds of press freedom cases in the United States and abroad.

Mr. Winfield conceived, compiled, contributed to and edited the anthology, Exporting the Matrix: The Campaign to Reform Media Laws Abroad. Carolina Academic Press published his book in 2012. His articles have appeared in leading law journals. Mr. Winfield served as chairman of the World Press Freedom Committee and the Fund for Peace, and served as a trustee of Freedom House.

Doreen Weisenhaus

Doreen Weisenhaus teaches media law and ethics. Prior to joining the Journalism and Media Studies Centre in 2000, she was city editor of The New York Times. She also was the first legal editor of The New York Times Magazine before becoming its law and politics editor. Before that, Weisenhaus was editor-in-chief of The National Law Journal, a leading publication for lawyers in the U.S. that won several major journalism awards during her tenure. She also was a prosecutor in New York City, a television news producer in Chicago and a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal. She holds a Juris Doctor degree from Northwestern University’s School of Law and a Bachelor of Science degree from the Medill School of Journalism, also at Northwestern. She is the author of Hong Kong Media Law: A Guide for Journalists and Media Professionals (Hong Kong University Press 2007) and an expanded second edition in 2014.

Her research interests include international press freedom and global trends in media law and policy. She has contributed to a number of publications including the International Encyclopedia of Communication (on communication law and policy in Asia) and the International Libel and Privacy Handbook. She is co-editor and co-author of a forthcoming book, Media Law and Policy in the Internet Age, that documents and analyzes media law reform trends worldwide, to be published by Hart Publishing Oxford.

Can Yeginsu

Can Yeginsu is a barrister based in 4 New Square Chambers in London, specialising in commercial law, public law and human rights, and public international law. He is the co-author of a leading human rights textbook published by Oxford University Press, has this year been lecturing on international arbitration at Harvard Law School, and is a Visiting Professor at Koç Law School in Istanbul where he teaches a graduate class on investment treaty arbitration.

Mr. Yeginsu is currently, or has recently been, instructed as counsel in human rights challenges involving the freedom of expression before the UK Supreme Court, the English Court of Appeal, the English High Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court of the Gambia, and the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States. He is ranked as a leading barrister in Chambers Global, Chamber and Partners, and Legal 500.

Mr. Yeginsu was educated at Oxford, Princeton, and Harvard Law School. He is bi-lingual in English and Turkish, and can just about communicate in French.