NEW YORK (TIP): Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director at the ACLU, has been named the  founding director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. In May, Columbia and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the creation of the new institute which will work—through litigation, research and public advocacy—to preserve and expand the freedoms of expression and the press in the digital age.

“We’re at a moment in our history when freedom of expression, access to information and high quality journalism have never been more important, yet are facing unprecedented challenges,” said Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger, a noted First Amendment legal scholar. “No one understands that better than Jameel Jaffer. Throughout his accomplished career, Jameel has proven himself to be among the First Amendment’s most effective defenders and we could hardly have a more ideal founding director of the Knight Institute at Columbia.”

Since he joined the staff of the ACLU in 2002, Jaffer has litigated some of the most significant post-9/11 cases relating to national security and civil liberties, among them: constitutional challenges to gag orders imposed under the USA Patriot Act, surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency, the viewpoint-based denial of visas to foreign scholars, and the sealing of judicial opinions issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He has argued cases at all levels of the federal court system, including in the U.S. Supreme Court, and has testified before Congress about a variety of topics relating to national security and civil liberties. Jaffer is also one of the nation’s leading Freedom of Information Act attorneys, having litigated landmark cases that resulted in the publication of crucial documents about the U.S. government’s counter-terrorism policies.

“The digital age has brought us a wealth of new ways to communicate, but digital technology is also vulnerable to surveillance and control. At the same time, news organizations have fewer resources to fight for access to government records and defend free expression,” said Alberto Ibargüen, president of Knight Foundation. “Jameel Jaffer’s integrity, intellect and collaborative nature make him the right leader for a new organization. His experience at the intersection of law and technology make him the forward-looking legal strategist the Institute needs to select—and win—precedent-setting battles.”

The Knight First Amendment Institute will address a range of significant and emerging First Amendment issues on which Jaffer has direct expertise, including electronic surveillance by government; privacy rights on digital platforms; the overall freedom of internet platforms, and the rights and responsibilities of the corporate actors who own those platforms; public access to government records, including judicial records; secrecy obligations imposed on technology companies; and the prosecution of government whistleblowers.

In his role as director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, Jaffer created the ACLU’s project on speech, privacy, and technology; oversaw a major expansion of the ACLU’s work on issues relating to civil liberties in the digital age; and was instrumental in the ACLU’s decision to take on the representation of whistleblower Edward Snowden. He also directed the ACLU’s litigation relating to the NSA surveillance programs that Snowden disclosed.