Susan Crawford is a leading telecommunications policy expert and professor of communications and Internet law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. During 2014, Crawford is also a John A. Reilly visiting professor in intellectual property at Harvard Law School. She has held prominent government positions as special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation (2009), and served as co-leader of the FCC transition team between the Bush and Obama administrations. She was a member of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Advisory Council on Technology and Innovation.
Crawford’s book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, published in 2013, examines how the US government allowed a few large companies to dominate the telecommunications industry, diminishing America’s global competitive advantage as other countries surpass the US in broadband speed and price. The current policies, Crawford warns, have created a deep “digital divide,” where stifled competition and high prices prevent one-third of Americans from having Internet access, threatening the country’s democratic freedom of information and economic future.
Crawford writes regularly for Bloomberg View and Wired magazine. She is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute where she spearheads the nonprofit’s work on making high-speed Internet accessible and affordable for all. Prior to her positions at Cardozo School of Law and Harvard, Crawford was a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Crawford received both her BA and JD from Yale University.
