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Philip Hamburger

Philip Hamburger

Chief Executive Officer


Philip Hamburger is a scholar of constitutional law and its history at Columbia Law School. He received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and his J.D. from Yale Law School. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He also taught at George Washington University Law School, Northwestern Law School, University of Virginia Law School, and the University of Connecticut Law School. Professor Hamburger’s contributions are unrivaled by any U.S. legal scholar in driving the national conversations on the First Amendment and the separation of church and state and on administrative power. His work on administrative power has been celebrated by organizations like the Manhattan Institute and the Bradley Foundation, among others.

Is Social-Media Censorship a Crime?

By: Philip Hamburger December 13, 2022
Amid growing revelations about government involvement in social-media censorship, it’s no longer enough to talk simply about tech censorship. The problem should be understood as gov-tech censorship. The Biden White House has threatened tech companies and federal agencies have pressed them to censor disfavored opinions and users. So it’s time to ask about accountability. Will…
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Kamala Harris' Free Speech Task Force

By: Philip Hamburger June 11, 2022
After the COVID ‘misinformation’ experience, will the vice president’s new plan for addressing online harassment go any better? For most of its existence, I had avoided social media and held particular disdain for Twitter, which I saw as intrinsically anti-intellectual. So it was with some hesitation that I opened a Twitter account in the fall…
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Unchecked by Courts, Government Censorship of Social Media Platforms Will Prove Fatal to Free Speech in Digital Age

By: Philip Hamburger June 1, 2022
In the News
The Biden administration’s increasingly aggressive efforts to combat so-called misinformation, along with the prospective acquisition of Twitter by free speech advocate Elon Musk, have sparked a national debate about what role, if any, the government should play in censoring social media. While some have applauded the administration’s campaign to police online “misinformation” about COVID-19 and…
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