Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu Named New America Fellow

New York, February 5, 2009 — Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu, an expert in communications policy and the media industries, was recently named by the New America Foundation a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow, one of 20 current fellows chosen for their potential to influence public thought.

Since being named a Schwartz Fellow, Wu has contributed significantly to the public discourse on U.S. communications policy. In a recent working paper, “Homes With Tails: What If You Could Own Your Internet Connection?,” he and co-author Derek Slater propose an innovative model where homeowners could supply their own fiber-optic internet connections that run exponentially faster than the current copper wire communications infrastructure. 

In addition to his academic writing, Wu has written for the New Yorker, New York Times, Slate, Washington Post, Forbes, New Republic, and other publications. He is the co-author of Who Controls the Internet? (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Who Gets Heard (Knopf, forthcoming 2009), and was recognized in 2006 as one of 50 leaders in science and technology by Scientific American magazine for his pioneering advocacy of net neutrality, the idea that public information networks should treat all content and platforms equally. He is chairman of the media reform organization Free Press and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Wu previously worked in the telecommunications industry in Silicon Valley, and was a law clerk for Judge Richard Posner and Justice Stephen Breyer. He graduated from McGill University and Harvard Law School and has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Chicago, and Stanford Law School.

 
New America’s Bernard L. Schwartz Fellowship Program trains and supports a new generation of aspiring public intellectuals. Each year, the foundation awards up to 35 fellowships to individuals who have powerful ideas for moving public thinking into new terrain. The fellowship is a one-year position with potential for renewal.

 
The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States. New America emphasizes work that is responsive to the changing conditions and problems of our 21st Century information-age economy – an era shaped by transforming innovation and wealth creation, but also by shortened job tenures, longer life spans, mobile capital, financial imbalances and rising inequality.

 

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