Student summer experiences in media law

Four Hussman School students spent their summers working for some of the nation’s most prestigious media law organizations. They worked for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and National Public Radio’s legal department.

Third-year doctoral student Liz Woolery interned for the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse tracks threats to free expression online and compiles that information into a publicly accessible database.

As part of her duties, Woolery blogged on the clearinghouse website on topics including secret government email accounts and whether a person’s use of anonymizing services actually increases the National Security Agency’s ability to monitor that person’s online activities.

Emily Ellis, who earned a bachelor’s degree from the school and graduated with honors last spring, interned for the H20 project at the Berkman Center. She worked on a digitally remixable legal textbook, researching and building modules on various legal topics. The H2O tool allows professors to compile chapters from law books, selections from cases and portions of law review articles to create course packs. The tool allows students to access the full version of each of those resources online. 

Kevin Delaney, who is in the third year of the M.A./J.D. dual-degree program, interned for the Office of the General Counsel at NPR. He assisted the lawyers in that office, working in the areas of administrative, First Amendment, intellectual property and employment law.  

Natasha Duarte, a student in the second year of the M.A./J.D. dual-degree program, interned for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF is a non-profit organization that works to protect civil liberties in the digital world through legal work and activism. She researched and wrote on a variety of legal issues, including protecting privacy from invasions such as facial recognition, government wiretapping of electronic communications and data mining.

Duarte blogged weekly about her summer for the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy.