Knight First Amendment Institute Director Jameel Jaffer delivered the inaugural Peter Zenger lecture at Columbia Journalism School this fall. The lecture is named for a newspaper publisher who was tried for libel in the 1730s for printing articles criticizing New York’s royal governor. Many historians consider Zenger's acquittal to have been a milestone in the development of American press freedom.

But the seminal decisions relating to the freedoms of speech and the press were written years ago — before the digital age. In his lecture, Jaffer offers thoughts about modern threats to the First Amendment, including government surveillance and secrecy.