NEW YORK—Facebook announced today the appointment of Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and a recent visiting research scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute, to co-chair its Oversight Board. The board is charged with providing guidance on regulating and moderating content on the global platform.

The following response can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, Executive Director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

“Jamal Greene is a truly brilliant scholar who has thought deeply, including as a Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Knight Institute, about free speech and social media. There's no question that this new role will be a challenging one. Many questions about the autonomy, jurisdiction, and power of the Oversight Board remain to be answered, and there is also a more fundamental question of whether and to what extent it's realistic to think that the pathologies of social media can or will be addressed by the social media companies themselves. That Facebook has engaged Professor Greene for this role is promising, though, and he will be a major asset in navigating these challenging questions.”

Professor Greene was a Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Knight Institute during the 2018-2019 academic year. He edited the Institute's second essay series, Free Speech Futures, which includes eight essays by leading scholars that offer new approaches to First Amendment doctrine and to online content moderation.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, Knight First Amendment Institute, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org.