The ascendancy of authoritarianism around the world is facilitated by powerful new surveillance tools, new modes of censorship, and legal regimes that have failed to keep pace with technological change. Join Ron Deibert, cybersecurity expert and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, and Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, for a discussion of the rise of digital authoritarianism and the fight for our democratic freedoms. The discussion will be informed by Deibert’s just-released book, Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy, which addresses the marketplace for high-tech surveillance, professional disinformation, and computerized malfeasance. Prof. Sheila Coronel, director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, will introduce and moderate the discussion.

This event is co-sponsored by the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism, Knight First Amendment Institute, Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization, School of International and Public Affairs, at Columbia University, the NYU Democracy Project, and the New York Southeast Asia Network.

May 7, 2025, 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Columbia Journalism School
Pulitzer Hall, Lecture Hall, 3rd Floor
2950 Broadway
New York, NY 10027

Registration required.

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Ronald J. Deibert is the founder and director of the Citizen Lab, a world-renowned digital security research center at the University of Toronto. The bestselling author of Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society and Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet, he has also written many landmark articles and reports on espionage operations that infiltrated government and NGO computer networks. His team’s exposés of the spyware that attacks journalists and anti-corruption advocates around the world have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, and other media. Deibert has received multiple honors for his cutting-edge work, and in 2022 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada—the country’s second-highest honor of merit..

Jameel Jaffer is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Under his leadership, the Institute has filed precedent-setting litigation, undertaken major interdisciplinary research initiatives, and become an influential voice in debates about the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age.

Prior to joining the Knight Institute, Jaffer served as deputy legal director at the ACLU, where he oversaw the organization’s work on free speech, privacy, technology, national security, and international human rights. He litigated many significant post-9/11 cases involving human rights and national security, including cases relating to surveillance, secrecy, censorship, interrogation, detention, and extrajudicial killing. He led or co-led litigation teams that compelled the Bush administration to disclose the “torture memos,” compelled the Obama administration to disclose the “drone memos,” and compelled the National Security Agency to abandon its dragnet surveillance of Americans’ call records. He also played a major part in the ACLU’s decision to take on the representation of Edward Snowden. The New York Times described one of his transparency cases as “among the most successful in the history of public disclosure.”

Jaffer’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs.

Sheila Coronel is the Toni Stabile Professor of Professional Practice in Investigative Journalism and the Director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. Coronel began reporting in the Philippines during the twilight of the Marcos dictatorship, when she wrote for the underground opposition press and later for mainstream magazines and newspapers. As Marcos lost power and press restrictions eased, she reported on human rights abuses, the growing democratic movement and the election of Corazon Aquino as president. In 1989, Coronel and her colleagues founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Under Coronel's leadership, the Center became the leading investigative reporting institution in the Philippines and Asia. In 2001, the Center’s reporting led to the fall of President Joseph Estrada. In 2003, Coronel won Asia’s premier prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

Coronel has written and edited more than a dozen books on the Philippines, freedom of information and investigative journalism. She has trained journalists around the world and written investigative reporting textbooks for journalists in Southeast Asia and the Balkan region. She speaks frequently at international investigative reporting conferences and writes about global investigative journalism. Coronel joined the faculty of the Journalism School in 2006, when she was named director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism.

Columbia University makes every effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. If you require disability accommodations to attend this event, please contact the Office of Disability Services at 212-854-2388 or disability@columbia.edu at least 10 days in advance of the event. Requests for CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) or sign language interpretation require two weeks’ notice.

Digital Authoritarianism and the Fight for Democracy