Jameel Jaffer joined the Advisory Board in November 2024. Jameel is a human rights litigator based in New York City. He is the inaugural director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which was founded by Columbia University and the Knight Foundation in 2016 to promote the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age. He previously served in various leadership positions at the American Civil Liberties Union, ultimately overseeing the organization’s work on free speech, privacy, technology, national security, and international human rights.

Jameel has argued human rights and civil liberties cases in multiple appeals courts as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, and has testified many times before U.S. agencies and the U.S. Congress. His recent writing has been published in New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the Guardian, and Foreign Affairs. Immediately after law school, he served as a law clerk to Honorable Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then to Right Honorable Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada.

Jaffer has argued human rights and civil liberties cases in multiple appeals courts as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, and has testified many times before U.S. agencies and the U.S. Congress. His recent writing has been published in New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the Guardian, and Foreign Affairs. Immediately after law school, he served as a law clerk to Honorable Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then to Right Honorable Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada.