Past Events


November 20 Wednesday

“People Learning to Choose Their Destiny”: a Q&A with Janet Brown, Executive Director of the Commission on Presidential Debates

Executive Director Janet Brown will discuss the plans that the Commission on Presidential Debates has for 2020 with debate expert Belabbes Benkredda.

Belabbes Benkredda is the founding director of The Munathara Initiative, the Arab’s world’s largest debate organization. He was named a 2016 Yale World Fellow and received the 2013 NDI Democracy Award. He is a currently a Gruber Fellow in Global Justice at Yale Law School and a Visiting Fellow at YLS's Information Society Project.

November 14 Wednesday

Free Expression in an Age of Surveillance: Measuring the “Chilling Effect”

On Wednesday, Nov. 14, the Knight Institute and the Information Society Project at Yale Law School will host the second event in a series examining the role that the First Amendment should play in assessing the lawfulness of government surveillance. The panel, co-sponsored by the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia Journalism School, asks: Does surveillance chill speech and dissent? How so? And can we measure the chilling effect?

October 10 Wednesday

"Covering the Market: A Conversation with Finance Columnist Matt Levine '04"

Confused by finance? Come meet the alum who not only explains finance - but makes it funny.

Lunch will be provided

September 26 Wednesday

Freedom of Expression in an Age of Surveillance, Jack Balkin, Jennifer Granick, Neil Richards

This panel is the first in a series of events examining the role that the First Amendment should play in assessing the lawfulness of government surveillance.

April 11 Wednesday

Poynter Speaker: Fake News, Bogus Science, and Bad Math: A Journalist's Advice for Cutting Through BS

"Fake news" is all the rage nowadays, but it's an issue with a long history. Much of Charles Seife's career has been devoted to distinguishing real from fake -- real news from fake news, good science from bad, useful numbers from bogus ones. In this talk, he'll discuss some prominent cases of misconduct, fraud, and other forms of deception that he's encountered and describe tools that he uses to sniff them out.

April 9 Monday

Afternoon Tea with Jay Carney

Journalists and Writers at Yale Law (JWYL) and the Information Society Project (ISP) will be hosting an Afternoon Tea with Jay Carney. Tea, coffee, and cookies will be served. If you would like to join, please RSVP here.

March 28 Wednesday

Poynter Speaker: Jon Ronson, author, journalist

Jon Ronson’s nonfiction books So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, The Psychopath Test, Them: Adventures with Extremists, Lost at Sea and The Men Who Stare At Goats have all been international and/or New York Times bestsellers. The Psychopath Test spent nearly two years on the UK bestseller list. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

His most recent work is an Audible Original audio series, The Butterfly Effect. It was released in July 2017, went straight to Number One in the US and UK audiobook charts.

February 20 Tuesday

Defeating Censorship With Collaborative Journalism, Laurent Richard, Founder and Executive Director of Freedom Voices Network

Freedom Voices Network is led by Laurent Richard, French award-winning investigative journalist and 2017 Knight-Wallace fellow. He is co-founder of the highly reputed inquiry magazine Cash Investigation broadcast on French public television.

February 6 Tuesday

Presidential Rhetoric from Clinton, to Obama, to Trump

The Information Society Project is hosting a moderated panel of presidential speechwriters, including Vinca LaFleur (President Clinton), Terry Szuplat (President Obama), and Sarada Peri (President Obama) to discuss their experiences at the White House, how the government communicates with the country and the world, and a number of other topics.

February 1 Thursday

The First Amendment on Campus: Constitutional Reflections on Recent Campus Speech Controversies, with Prof. Catherine Ross 87'

Join Prof. Catherine Ross 87’, of George Washington University Law School to discuss the First Amendment on campus. Prof. Ross holds a B.A., Ph.D. (History) and JD from Yale and is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor of Law at George Washington University where she specializes in constitutional law (with particular emphasis on the First Amendment), family law, and children’s rights.

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