Katy Glenn Bass

Katy Glenn Bass

Katy Glenn Bass is the inaugural Research Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. She is responsible for conceptualizing and executing all of the Institute’s research initiatives, including the production of scholarship and research materials, the organization of conferences and symposia, and the Institute’s Senior Visiting Research Scholars program.

Glenn Bass oversaw the Institute’s recent symposium, The Tech Giants, Monopoly Power, and Public Discourse, bringing together scholars and experts in law, computer science, economics, information studies, journalism, political science, and other disciplines. The symposium resulted in 12 pieces of original scholarship on the extent and nature of the technology giants’ power to shape public discourse, and whether anti-monopoly tools might usefully be deployed to expose or counter this power. Working with the Institute’s current Visiting Scholar Amy Kapczynski, Glenn Bass is now preparing for a fall 2020 symposium, Data & Democracy.

Prior to joining the Institute, Glenn Bass worked at PEN America, where she supervised the production of reports analyzing free expression issues, including the lack of protections for national security whistleblowers, attacks on journalists covering the 2014 protests in Ferguson, MO, the impact of mass surveillance on online speech, and other topics. She has also taught at NYU Law’s Center for Constitutional Transitions and at the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at Fordham Law School. She holds a B.A. from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she received the Kaufman Pro Bono Service Award.

Selected writings and appearances

Trump the Truth: Free Expression in the President’s First 100 Days, 2017 (with Gabe Rottman and James Tager).

Freedom of Speech Under Fire in Ferguson, Newsweek, Aug. 14, 2015

Press Freedom Under Fire in Ferguson, 2014 (with Alex Weaver)

Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street, 2012 (with Sarah Knuckey and Emi MacLean)