Danielle K. Citron

Danielle Citron is the Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law and Caddell and Chapman Professor of Law at UVA, where she writes and teaches about privacy, free expression and civil rights. 

In 2019, Citron was named a MacArthur Fellow based on her work on cyberstalking and intimate privacy. In 2021, she was named the inaugural director of the school’s LawTech Center, which focuses on pressing questions in law and technology.

In addition to her books, The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age (2022) and Hate Crimes in Cyberspace (2014), Citron has published more than 50 articles and essays, including in the Yale Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, California Law Review, Boston University Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Southern California Law Review, Texas Law Review, and many more, which have won professional awards from the International Association of Privacy Professionals and privacy think tank Future of Privacy, and been cited by state and federal courts. She has written more than 50 opinion pieces for major media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Time, CNN and Slate.

For the past decade, Citron has worked with lawmakers, law enforcement and tech companies to combat online abuse and to protect intimate privacy. In June 2019, she testified before Congress about the national security and privacy risks of deepfakes. She has been involved in reform efforts around the regulation of online platforms. In October 2019, she testified before Congress about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. From 2014 to 2016, Citron served as an advisor to then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris and as a member of Harris’ Task Force to Combat Cyber Exploitation and Violence Against Women. In 2011, Citron testified about misogynistic cyber hate speech before the Inter-Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism at the House of Commons in the United Kingdom. 

Citron is the vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit devoted to fighting for civil rights and liberties in the digital age founded in 2013 and named after her article “Cyber Civil Rights.” She serve on the board of directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Future of Privacy, as well as on the Advisory Board of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Technology and Society and the Center on Investigative Journalism.