Timothy Wu

Timothy Wu. He is an American legal scholar, author, and policy advocate best known for coining the term "net neutrality" and for his influential work on the history and policy of information industries. A professor at Columbia Law School, his scholarship focuses on telecommunications law, antitrust, and the control of information technology. His writings have significantly influenced public debate and regulatory policy, particularly at the Federal Communications Commission and within the Obama administration.

Early life and education

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1972, he spent part of his childhood in Switzerland before returning to the United States. He completed his undergraduate studies at McGill University, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in biochemistry. He subsequently attended Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor for the Harvard Law Review and graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1998. His early career included a prestigious clerkship for Judge Richard A. Posner on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Career

After his clerkship, he worked at the law firm Riverside and served as a senior advisor to the Federal Trade Commission. He began his academic career at the University of Virginia School of Law before joining the faculty of Columbia Law School, where he is the Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology. He has also held visiting professorships at Stanford Law School, the University of Chicago Law School, and Harvard Law School. In 2011, he served as a senior advisor to the National Economic Council during the Obama administration, focusing on technology and competition policy. He later served as a senior enforcement counsel at the New York State Office of the Attorney General under Letitia James.

Net neutrality advocacy

He is widely credited with coining and popularizing the term "net neutrality" in his seminal 2003 paper, "Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination." The concept argues that internet service providers should treat all data on the internet equally, without blocking, throttling, or creating paid fast lanes. His advocacy and scholarship provided the intellectual foundation for major regulatory actions, including the Federal Communications Commission's 2010 Open Internet Order and its stronger 2015 Title II classification under Tom Wheeler. His ideas have been central to ongoing legal and political battles involving Comcast, Verizon, and other telecommunications companies.

Publications and scholarship

He is the author of several influential books that examine the cyclical concentration of control over information technologies. His 2010 book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, analyzes industries like telephony, radio, and Hollywood, arguing they tend toward closed monopolies. The book won the 2011 Goldsmith Book Prize from the Shorenstein Center. His 2016 work, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, traces the history of the advertising industry and its capture of human attention. He has also published numerous articles in leading journals such as the Stanford Law Review and the Columbia Law Review, and his commentary appears frequently in publications like The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Personal life

He is married to Kate Judge, a fellow professor at Columbia Law School. The couple resides in New York City. An avid runner, he has completed the New York City Marathon. His father, Ming Wu, was a physicist, and his mother, Gillian Wu, was an immunologist, both of whom were academics at the University of Toronto.

Category:American legal scholars Category:Columbia Law School faculty Category:Net neutrality activists Category:1972 births Category:Living people