Susan Benesch, Faculty Associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, teaches human rights at American University’s School of International Service and directs the Dangerous Speech Project.

Susan has taught human rights and refugee law at Georgetown and Princeton, among other universities, and has lectured at schools including Yale, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Virginia, and Humboldt University in Berlin. A human rights lawyer trained at Yale, she has also worked for the Center for Justice and Accountability, Amnesty International, and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First).

Her interest in speech dates back to her first career as a journalist. Before law school, she was chief staff writer for the Miami Herald in Haiti. She also covered wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, and reported from many countries for the New Republic, the Columbia Journalism Review, and the Crimes of War website, among other publications.

‍Areas of focus: International law, human rights law, freedom of expression and the U.S. First Amendment, online content moderation, gender-based violence and internet abuse.