Jameel Jaffer
Canada
other
Jameel Jaffer is a Canadian human rights and civil liberties attorney and the inaugural director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which was created to defend the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age. The Institute engages in "strategic litigation, research, and public education." Among the Knight Institute's first lawsuits was a successful constitutional challenge to President Trump's practice of blocking critics from his Twitter account.
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Sep 26, 2026
Far Left
First Amendment expert warned that the press freedom crisis is a 'break-the-glass moment' for American democracy.
The left respects Jaffer's civil liberties work but is skeptical of framing this as an unprecedented crisis, noting that the US has always suppressed dissent, from COINTELPRO to the Espionage Act prosecutions of whistleblowers.