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Tim Wu

Author, The Attention Merchants

Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate, professor at Columbia Law School, and director of the Poliak Center for the Study of First Amendment Issues at Columbia Journalism School. Wu's best known work is the development of Net Neutrality theory, but he also writes about private power, free speech, copyright, and antitrust.

In 2014, he ran as the progressive Democrat candidate for lieutenant governor of New York. His book The Master Switch (2010) has won wide recognition and various awards. Wu is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and a former contributing editor at The New Republic. He formerly wrote for Slate, where he won the Lowell Thomas Gold medal for Travel Journalism. Wu worked at the Federal Trade Commission during the first term of the Obama administration, and has also worked as Chair of the media reform group Free Press, as a fellow at Google, and worked for Riverstone Networks in the telecommunications industry. In 2015, he was appointed to the Executive Staff of the Office of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as a senior enforcement counsel and special advisor.