April 23, 2025, 11:00am-12:30pm
CITI Seminar on Global Digital Governance: International Cooperation on Internet Freedom and Openness
In recent years there has been debate in U.S. foreign policy circles about ways to strengthen cooperation among democratic countries seeking to promote Internet freedom and openness. In this context, the Biden Administration considered spearheading a new alliance to work alongside other initiatives on democracy promotion and Internet freedom, and in April 2022 launched a Declaration for the Future of the Internet with sixty partner countries. But two years on, the policy environment has changed dramatically. Digital cooperation among the liberal democracies is now complicated by a host of new disagreements over trade, regulation, security, information and geopolitical alignments. At the same time, digital cooperation among nondemocratic governments is proceeding without such disruptions and is producing results. These trends raise a number of pressing questions about the future of global digital governance in general and the international coalitional dynamics around Internet freedom and openness in particular.
What has and has not been achieved in this issue-area, and what is the state of play today? How might the apparent weakening of the coalition of liberal democracies impact the international politics of Internet freedom and openness in the years ahead? How might key countries, regions and multinational companies adapt to the new environment? Can multistakeholder cooperation help to fill in any gaps and influence the trajectory of change?
This webinar will take stock of these and related questions. A panel of experts with hands-on experience in this field will lead off the conversation, and then the rest of the session will be devoted to open discussion among all interested attendees.
Introduction of the topic
Eli Noam is Paul Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility, Emeritus, and Director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia Business School.
Moderator
William J. Drake is Director of International Studies at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.
Panelists
Eileen Donahoe is a diplomat and human rights advocate working at the intersection of technology, human agency, digital freedom, and governance innovation. She served as U.S. Special Envoy for Digital Freedom in the Biden Administration and as U.S. Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in the Obama Administration. Between those diplomatic posts, she was the Executive Director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University.
Ambassador David A. Gross, a partner with the Washington, DC firm of Wiley Rein LLP, is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on international telecommunications and Internet policies, having addressed the UN General Assembly and led more U.S. delegations to major international telecommunication conferences than anyone else in modern history. He served as the U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy in the Bush Administration from 2001 to 2009.
Jason Pielemeier is Executive Director of the Global Network Initiative, a multistakeholder human rights collaboration among technology companies, academics, human rights and press freedom groups and investors. Prior to joining GNI, Jason was a Special Advisor at the U.S. Department of State from 2010 to 2017, where he led the Internet Freedom, Business, and Human Rights section in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. In that role, Jason worked with governments and stakeholders around the world to promote and protect human rights online.