On Thursday, October 28th, 2021, we led our fourth installment of our Practitioner-Scholar Roundtable. The Oversight Board is one of the most significant innovations in global human rights governance, affecting freedom of expression and other rights for over 2.5 billion users. Facebook created the Board to provide independent review of its decisions and policies regarding content on Facebook and Instagram. Since its launch in early 2021, the Board has issued decisions ranging from the suspension of President Trump’s Facebook account to the removal of hateful content in France, Myanmar, Colombia and South Africa. It has frequently overturned Facebook’s decisions and issued policy recommendations.
This panel will discuss whether and how the Oversight Board adds to the international human rights architecture, undermines it, or does something quite different. The discussion will be led by:
- Jamal Greene is the Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia University and co-chair of the Oversight Board
- Vivek Krishnamurthy is the Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC)
- Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Civil Society at the University of Toronto
- Chris Tenove (Moderator) is ActInCourts Coordinator and postdoctoral fellow in Political Science, University of British Columbia
- Lisa Sundstrom (Chair) is Principal Investigator of the ActInCourts Network, and Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia
If you missed the event, you can watch a recording on Zoom.