About

Photo: Vandana Aneja. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Jillian C. York is Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Her work focuses on free expression, with an focus toward the Arab world, and as such she has written for a variety of publications, including Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and CNN. Jillian contributed chapters to the upcoming volumes Beyond Wikileaks: Implications for the Future of Communication, Journalism, and Society (Palgrave Macmillian; March 2013) and State Power 2.0: Authoritarian Entrenchment and Political Engagement Worldwide (Ashgate Publishing; expected November 2013).  She serves on the Board of Directors of Global Voices Online, and on the Advisory Boards of R-Shief, OnlineCensorship.org, Radio Free Asia’s Open Technology Fund and Internews’ Global Internet Policy Project.

I do quite a bit of public speaking; a list of recent and upcoming talks can be found here.
Contact info can be found here.

[long first-person bio]:

I have a tendency to define myself by my work, so you’ll forgive me if I do so here.  Assume that I am much much more, and if we are lucky enough to someday meet, I’ll buy you a beer and we can talk about that.

I am passionate about the idea of the Internet as a facilitator for global connections, and, as such, I believe that it must be as free and accessible as possible.  To that end, I currently serve as the Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where my work focuses on such issues as government-enforced online censorship, corporate social responsibility, bloggers’ rights, and mass surveillance.  I am also currently a student at THNK, the Amsterdam School of Creative Leadership.

I write a regular column on the intersection of technology and government control for Al Jazeera, and have been published by, among others, the Guardian, the Atlantic, and Nieman Reports.  I recently contributed chapters to the upcoming volumes: Beyond WikiLeaks: Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism & Society (Palgrave MacMillan); State Power 2.0: Authoritarian Entrenchment and Political Engagement Worldwide (Ashgate Publishing; co-authored with Katherine Maher); and the Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics (CQ Press/Sage Reference). For a fairly complete list of my published writing, go here.

Prior to joining the EFF, I worked at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University on a number of projects, including the OpenNet Initiative and Herdict Web. In 2009, I co-founded Talk Morocco, which was a winner of Deutsche Welle’s Best of Blogs (BOBs) competition in 2010. I am on the board of Global Voices Online, an incredible media project to which I also occasionally contribute content, and in 2011 was named to Foreign Policy Magazine’s Top 100 ‘Twitterati’ list.  I serve on the advisory boards of several projects, including OnlineCensorship.org, R-Shief, Internews’ Global Internet Policy Project, and Radio Free Asia’s Open Technology Fund, and am a professional member of PEN Center USA.

Having spent a few years living in Morocco and traveling throughout the Middle East and North Africa, I am particularly interested in free expression issues in that region.  I’m also interested, on a personal level, in questions of identity, the future of journalism, online activism, and foreign policy.

I tweet a lot. My Twitter feed was once (aptly, if I do say so myself) called “Grim reality mixed with activism, humanism, feminism and a dash of humor.”

If you want to understand a little about my life, this quote from Cory Doctorow describes it best.

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog.  The opinions expressed here represent my own and not and not those of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Global Voices, or any other organization with which I am affiliated.  Additionally, I am human, and therefore, my views are subject to change.

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