Keynote Speakers
Salman Rushdie
One of The Most Celebrated Authors of Our Time
Sir Salman Rushdie’s novels, greeted always with anticipation and acclaim, include The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet and The Enchantress of Florence. His most recent work, Lauguages of Truth, is a collection of non-fiction essays from 2003-2020. These essaysilluminate truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous and often searing prose. His latest novel, Quichotte, was included in TIME’s list of 100 Must-Read Books of 2019, and was shortlisted finalist for the 2019 Booker Prize.
An eclectic writer and noted public intellectual, Rushdie has won many of the world’s top literary prizes, published a heralded collection of essays, Step Across the Line, and served for two years as president of The PEN American Center, the world’s oldest human rights organization.
Masih Alinejad
Iranian Journalist and Women’s Rights Activist
Masih Alinejad is an Iranian journalist and women's rights activist renowned for her fearless stand against compulsory hijab and the Iranian regime's oppressive policies. Born in a small village in pre-revolutionary Iran, Masih grew up during her country's shift from a secular autocracy to a theocratic state. Her dedication to justice led her to journalism, where she exposed government corruption and human rights abuses. Forced into exile, Masih created the "My Stealthy Freedom" movement, empowering Iranian women to defy compulsory hijab laws and inspiring a global fight for freedom and equality.
Audrey Tang
Taiwan's First Digital Minister
Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first Digital Minister (2016-2024), is renowned for her groundbreaking work in digital democracy. Celebrated as one of TIME’s “100 Most Influential People in AI” in 2023, Tang played a pivotal role in Taiwan’s acclaimed COVID-19 response and safeguarded the 2024 elections from cyber threats. As the first globally recognized nonbinary cabinet member, Tang, identifying as "post-gender" and comfortable with any pronouns, is a respected community leader. A founding contributor to g0v, Tang promotes transparency in Taiwan’s governance. Tang’s contributions include the Join.gov.tw platform, enhancing public engagement in policy-making.
Nathan Law
Hong Kong Democracy Activist
Nathan Law is a protest leader, political prisoner and former legislator of Hong Kong. Since 2020 he has been wanted under the National Security Law by the Hong Kong authority and exiled in the UK. He was recognized by TIME magazine as one of the People of the Year in 2020 and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize multiple times.
Confirmed Speakers and Panelists
Musa al-Gharbi
Assistant Professor of Journalism, Communication and (by courtesy) Sociology, Stony Brook University
Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University and a research fellow with Heterodox Academy. His book, "We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite," is available now from Princeton University Press.
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar
Founder, Ideas Beyond Borders
Born in Babylon, Raised in Baghdad, Faisal Saeed Al Mutar experienced the villainy of extremism and authoritarian regimes firsthand. He survived the Iraq Civil War, the murder of family members, and several kidnapping attempts before becoming a refugee in the United States in 2013. In 2017, he founded the organization Ideas Beyond Borders, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming the Middle East by empowering people across the globe with access to new ideas, fresh perspectives, and the resources necessary to start groundbreaking businesses and take ownership of their own lives.
Samar Ali
Research Professor of Political Science and Law, Vanderbilt University
Ramiro Álvarez Ugarte
Deputy Director, Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión (CELE)
Rana Ayyub
Columnist, The Washington Post
Joan Barata
Senior Legal Fellow, The Future of Free Speech
James Bennet
Senior Editor and Lexington Columnist, The Economist
James Bennet is The Economist‘s Lexington columnist and a senior editor. Previously he served for a year as a visiting senior editor at The Economist. He has also served as editorial page editor of The New York Times and editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Before joining The Atlantic, he worked as a reporter at The Times in various roles, including Jerusalem bureau chief, magazine correspondent, White House correspondent and Detroit bureau chief.
Matt Brassard
Head of Growth, Ground News
Matt Brassards leads growth for Ground News, a startup that he joined in 2018 before they launched as their first non-dev employee. Since then, Ground News has grown into a community of thousands of people who use the platform to stay fully informed and adopt a more balanced perspective on the world's most pressing issues.
Anupam Chander
Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Technology, Georgetown Law
Neil Chilson
Head of A.I. Policy, The Abundance Institute
Neil Chilson is the Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute, where he works to restore optimism and sense of adventure to U.S. cultural and policy discussions about technology. Neil is a lawyer, computer scientist, and author of the book “Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World.” He is the first known human to file AI-generated comments on behalf of AI bots in a federal regulatory proceeding. Neil previously led technology policy and related grant-making efforts at philanthropic community Stand Together. Neil served as the Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, where he focused on the economics of privacy and blockchain-related issues.
Mishi Choudhary
Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Virtu
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.
Rodrigo Dianamti
President & Founder, Un Mundo Sin Mordaza
Rodrigo Diamanti is a Venezuelan human rights activist, director and president of the NGO Un Mundo Sin Mordaza, and Secretary of the Independent Expert Panel of the Organization of American States. His goal is to promote, defend, and educate on human rights at the international level. Un Mundo Sin Mordaza is an organization that defends human rights through art, with a special emphasis on freedom of expression. The organization’s message is disseminated through activists present in over 100 cities worldwide. Due to political persecution in Venezuela, Rodrigo was forced to leave the country and continues to fight for Venezuela's freedom by leading significant campaigns from abroad, such as SOS Venezuela and No Más Dictaduras.
Daniel Diermeier
Chancellor, Vanderbilt University
An internationally renowned political scientist and management scholar, Daniel Diermeier is the ninth chancellor of Vanderbilt University. Diermeier is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Guggenheim Foundation. From 2016 until 2020, Diermeier served as provost of the University of Chicago, where he was also David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy and the College at University of Chicago’s Department of Political Science.
Renée DiResta
Social Media Researcher
Renée DiResta is a social media researcher and the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality. She studies adversarial abuse online, ranging from state actors running influence operations to spammers and scammers to issues related to child safety. From 2019-2023, she was the Technical Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching, and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies.
David French
Columnist, The New York Times
David French is a columnist for The New York Times. A graduate of Harvard Law School, David was previously a senior editor at The Dispatch and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is a former constitutional litigator and a past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. David is a New York Times bestselling author, and his most recent book is Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. David is a former major in the United States Army Reserve and is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he was awarded the Bronze Star.
Inaya Folarin Iman
Journalist and Executive Director, Equiano Project
Inaya Folarin Iman is a broadcast journalist and is the Founder and Director of The Equiano Project, a forum to promote freedom of speech and open dialogue on the subjects of race, identity and culture. She has worked as a feature writer and columnist for various national publications including the Daily Mail, The Telegraph and spiked. She is a panellist on the moral and ethical BBC Radio 4 programme Moral Maze and is a regular commentator across leading political and cultural radio and TV programmes.
Sayash Kapoor
Laurance S. Rockefeller Graduate Prize Fellow & Ph.D. Candidate, Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University
Sayash Kapoor is a Laurance S. Rockefeller Graduate Prize Fellow in the University Center for Human Values and a computer science Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. He is a coauthor of AI Snake Oil, a book that provides a critical analysis of artificial intelligence, separating the hype from the true advances. His research examines the societal impacts of AI, with a focus on reproducibility, transparency, and accountability in AI systems. He is especially interested in the interaction between AI and policy. Kapoor has been recognized with various awards, including a best paper award at ACM FAccT, an impact recognition award at ACM CSCW, and inclusion in TIME’s inaugural list of the 100 most influential people in AI.
Ritu Kapur
CEO and Co-Founder, The Quint
Ritu Kapur is the co-founder and managing director of Quint Digital Limited which runs The Quint, an independent news site in India. She has strived to provide multiple platforms for free speech like The Quint's citizen journalism initiative "My Report” and Webqoof, The Quint’s fact check initiative. The Quint has won several awards including the Best News Website award, two years running at the WAN-IFRA South Asian Digital Media Awards.
Amna Khalid
Associate Professor in the Department of History, Carleton College
Amna Khalid specializes in modern South Asian history, the history of medicine, and the global history of free expression. Growing up under a series of military dictatorships, Amna has a strong interest in issues relating to censorship and free expression. She speaks frequently on academic freedom, free speech and campus politics at colleges and universities as well as at professional conferences. She hosts a podcast and accompanying blog called "Banished," which explores censorship in the past and present.
Jeff Kosseff
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, The Future of Free Speech
Jeff Kosseff writes about online speech, the First Amendment, and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In 2023, Johns Hopkins University Press published his latest book, Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation, which cautions against addressing the challenges created by misinformation through government regulation. He is also the author of The United States of Anonymous: How the First Amendment Shaped Online Speech, which examines and defends the U.S. tradition of anonymous speech, and The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet, which explores the history and future of Section 230.
Billion Lee
Co-Founder and Director, Cofacts
Billion started Cofacts in 2016 and has been advocating for marriage equality and open freedom. She has dedicated herself to connecting different communities and providing empowerment courses to combat disinformation. She has had fellowships to PolitiFact, Poynter, and DWeb camp in the United States for exchanges and has connected contributors from different countries to collaborate on clarifying information. She manages a community working on OSINT fact-checking skills and media literacy.
Jacob Mchangama
Executive Director, The Future of Free Speech
Research Professor, Vanderbilt University
Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). In 2018, he was a visiting scholar at Columbia’s Global Freedom of Expression Center. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media, published by Basic Books in 2022.
Sarah McLaughlin
Senior Scholar, Global Expression, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
Sarah McLaughlin studies the relationship between authoritarian governments and global censorship, especially in the academic context. She is currently working on a book about transnational repression in higher education, Authoritarians in the Academy, due next year with Johns Hopkins University Press.
Suzanne Nossel
CEO, PEN America
Suzanne Nossel is the CEO of PEN America, the leading human rights and free expression organization, and is a key voice on free expression issues in the United States and globally. During the Obama administration, Nossel served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organisations. She is the author of Dare To Speak: Defending Free Speech For All and has been widely published in outlets including the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Guardian, Foreign Policy, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Washington Post and more. She is a Member of the Meta Oversight Board, which applies human rights principles to shape high-impact content moderation decisions on social media.
Chidi Odinkalu
Szabolcs Panyi
Investigative Editor, Central European Investigations, VSquare
Szabolcs Panyi is a Budapest-based Hungarian investigative journalist focused on uncovering corruption, Russian and Chinese influence, and cybersurveillance in Central Europe. He was also a member of the 'Pegasus Project' team, uncovering spyware abuses in 2021. The Hungarian government hacked his phone and surveilled him for his reporting. He is an advocate for press freedom and the safety of journalists.
David Plazas
Opinion and Engagement Director, The Tennessean
David Plazas is the Opinion and Engagement Director for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee. He writes award-winning columns, edits guest essays and leads opinion strategy for The Tennessean in Nashville, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis and The News Sentinel in Knoxville. He works closely with opinion editors across the national USA TODAY Network.
Jonas Parello-Plesner
Executive Director, Alliance of Democracies Foundation
Jonas Parello-Plesner is the Executive Director of the Copenhagen-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation, founded by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 2018. The Foundation seeks to advance democracy and strengthen the alliance between the world’s democracies. Parello-Plesner has been instrumental in making the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, the foundation’s annual event, bringing together world-class speakers and important annual publications such as the Democracy Perception Index.
Guilherme Döring Cunha Pereira
President, Gazeta do Povo
Guilherme Döring Cunha Pereira is the Chief Executive Officer of Grupo Paranaense de Comunicação (GRPCOM), the largest communication group of the State of Paraná and one of the foremost media companies in Brazil. It administers newspapers such as Gazeta do Povo and Tribuna, three radio stations, eight regional TV stations affiliated to Rede Globo, and the Instituto GRPCOM, which has a strong participation in education and the third sector.
Francesca Procaccini
Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University Law School
Francesca Procaccini researches and writes about federal courts and constitutional law, particularly First Amendment law. She joined the Vanderbilt Law faculty in 2022 after teaching at Harvard Law School for two years as a Climenko Fellow, where her scholarship focused on constitutional political rights. Before that, she was a fellow with the Yale Law School Information Society Project, where she researched modern applications of First Amendment law to digital political speech and taught courses on free speech law and media law.
Jeffrey Sachs
Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Acadia University
Jeffrey Sachs is an assistant professor at Acadia University, where he specializes in academic freedom, education politics, and Middle Eastern law. Since 2021, he has been a research analyst and consultant for PEN America and has written widely on campus free speech issues in Canada and the United States.
Freddie Sayers
Editor-in-Chief & CEO, UnHerd
Freddie Sayers is a journalist, commentator, and media entrepreneur. As CEO of Old Queen Street Media, he is the Publisher of leading titles including The Spectator and UnHerd. Under his leadership, UnHerd has solidified its reputation as a platform that challenges mainstream thinking and amplifies heterodox ideas and voices. In September 2024, Old Queen Street Media acquired The Spectator, the oldest continuously-published weekly in the English language.
John M. Seigenthaler
Partner, Finn Partners and former NBC anchor
During his 11 years at NBC News, John Seigenthaler anchored NBC Nightly News Weekend edition, appeared on Meet The Press, Dateline, TODAY, Weekend TODAY, MSNBC, CNBC and Discovery Channel. He also was an anchor and reporter in local television news at KOMO TV (ABC) in Seattle, and WKRN TV (ABC) and WSMV TV (NBC) in Nashville. He is a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors and a member of the judging committee for the RFK Journalism Awards.
Sarah Shirazyan
Director and Head of GenAI Policy at Meta, Inc. and a Lecturer at Stanford Law School
Dr. Sarah Shirayzan is the Director and Head of GenAI Policy at Meta and a Lecturer at Stanford Law School. In her role at Meta, Dr. Shirayzan leads the development of policies and standards for Generative AI products, with a focus on mitigating trust and safety risks. At Meta, she previously managed a global team that collaborated with academics, civil society, and advertisers to shape the company’s policies on misinformation, and algorithmic ranking.
Nadine Strossen
John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School
Nadine Strossen, New York Law School Professor Emerita and Senior Fellow at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), was national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. An internationally acclaimed free speech scholar and advocate, who regularly addresses diverse audiences and provides media commentary around the world, Strossen is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series distributed on public television in 2023.
David Sullivan
Executive Director, Digital Trust & Safety Partnership
David Sullivan is the founding Executive Director of the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership, where he leads a unique initiative focused on promoting a safer and more trustworthy internet. An experienced human rights and technology policy practitioner, he brings together unlikely allies to solve global challenges related to rights, security, and democracy in the digital age. Most recently, David served as Program Director at the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a unique collaboration between leading technology companies and human rights groups to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy rights online.