June 11, 2008

Jonathan Zittrain '95
(photo by Juliette Melton)

Jonathan Zittrain '95, one of the world's leading experts on the legal and policy issues surrounding the Internet, has accepted an offer to become a tenured professor at Harvard Law School. Currently the professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University, Zittrain is a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

"In the field of cyberlaw, Jonathan Zittrain is a true pioneer," said Dean Elena Kagan '86. "His scholarly work is some of the most thought-provoking in legal academia, and the ideas he grapples with are literally pushing the frontiers of his field. Jonathan returns to Harvard Law School as the Berkman Center is currently expanding its role, and the faculty recently embraced an 'open access' model for new research. He has also been a leader in effectively using technology in his teaching, which results in a powerful classroom experience. I am thrilled that Jonathan will help lead us into exciting new territory by returning to Harvard Law School."

In addition to his appointment as a professor of law, Zittrain will serve as a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center, along with Professors Yochai Benkler '94, William Fisher '82, Charles Nesson '63, and John Palfrey '01.

"HLS and the Berkman Center have become extraordinary platforms for innovation on and about the Internet," said Zittrain. "The Center's work involves amazingly diverse people, disciplines and universities, and I'm so pleased to be returning to it."

Zittrain is author of the new book, The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It, which examines how the Internet is transitioning from a user-dominated, highly innovative phenomenon to a closed, more restrictive "appliancized" model of technology. The book explores participatory solutions to a range of problems arising from the Internet. It has received critical acclaim from top Internet scholars and legal academics alike.

Zittrain's scholarly work connects theory to experimentation and building tools for and on the Internet. His concept of the shifting roles of public and private institutions is the intellectual underpinning for StopBadware, a large-scale empirical study of the flow of Internet malware online, undertaken jointly by HLS and Oxford’s Internet Institute. The study has flagged millions of sites that contain harmful code. From this dataset, the StopBadware research team has been able to track trends in computer security over time, isolate particular services more likely than others to host harmful code, and inform the public debate over the future of computing security. The project has involved Harvard Law School clinical students to develop a best-of-breed appeals process for ensuring that webmasters whose sites are listed in the database can get their sites removed once they are clean.

Zittrain is also a co-editor of Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, which documents Internet censorship around the world. As part of what would become the OpenNet Initiative, he pioneered the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudia Arabia. Today the Initiative involves researchers from four universities and tracks Internet censorship in 60 countries around the world. Its research reports have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, and an emerging methodology will solicit, assess, and distribute information about blocking from Internet users around the world as they are made. Zittrain was among the first to call for a code of conduct for multinational corporations doing business in regimes that filter the Web, an initiative he and others have described as "a Sullivan Principles for Cyberspace." This call has led to the establishment of a formal, multi-stakeholder process that includes human rights groups, academics, and major Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.

In addition to his J.D., Zittrain holds an M.P.A. from the Harvard Kennedy School and a B.S. from Yale University in cognitive science and artificial intelligence.