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. 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.
Joined 2026