The Global Network Initiative (GNI) is pleased to welcome Rebecca MacKinnon to its academic constituency as a member.
“It isn’t often that we have the opportunity to welcome a founding member of GNI back into our membership ranks. Rebecca MacKinnon is an icon in the digital rights space and we are incredibly excited that she will continue to help shape GNI’s growth as she returns as an independent expert member of our academic constituency,” expressed GNI’s Executive Director Jason Pielemeier.
Rebecca MacKinnon is a writer and advocate for human rights in the digital age. Currently a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, she previously served as Vice President for Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation. Her award-winning book Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom remains a defining text in debates about corporate and governmental control of online speech. A former CNN bureau chief in Beijing and Tokyo, she co-founded the citizen media network Global Voices, and also founded Ranking Digital Rights, an organization that evaluates companies on their respect for users’ privacy and free expression.
“As if freedom of expression and privacy were not already under threat, AI has brought the challenge to a whole new level. I look forward to working with GNI’s multistakeholder community to improve how companies and governments protect people’s privacy and freedom of expression,” said Rebecca upon joining GNI.
A founding board member of the Global Network Initiative, she has taught at the University of Hong Kong and the University of Pennsylvania and held fellowships at the University of California’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, the Open Society Foundations, Princeton, and New America.