Knight Foundation and Columbia U. Launch $60 Million Center to Defend 1st Amendment

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Columbia University will spend $60 million to create a new center dedicated to defending the First Amendment, the institutions said Tuesday.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University will be a bulwark against encroachments on free speech at a time when the influence of newspapers — which played a major role in protecting freedom of expression for decades — is waning, said Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University.

“We’ve counted on The New York Times, the Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Washington Post to carry forward that ethos,” he said. “Our concern is the resources are not there.”

Knight and Columbia will each provide $1 million annually in operating support to the institute for five years. They will also each chip in $5 million annually during the same time frame to create a $50 million endowment.

The institute will operate as a stand-alone nonprofit and will combine research and litigation expertise from throughout Columbia’s campus, including its journalism, law, and engineering schools. It will support research, promote free expression at conferences and as a public advocate, and pursue cases in the courts. The institute will place a priority on “unsettled questions in the digital age,” including regulation of the Internet, the rights of individuals using smartphones, and the use of technology in courtrooms, according to a news release.

New technology means new wrinkles in freedom-of-speech case law, said Alberto Ibargüen, president of Knight. For instance, the European Union’s “right to be forgotten” ruling, which can in some circumstances allow individuals to change personal information on sites like Google and Yahoo, has raised concerns about limiting access to information. National Security Agency surveillance of journalists and the overall security of Internet platforms will also provide important tests of the First Amendment in the coming years, Mr. Ibargüen predicted.

As technology continues to develop, “it is entirely reasonable to assume there will be challenges to it in one form or another,” he said. “In all cases, we’d want this institute to be prepared to speak on behalf of greater, rather than lesser, freedom of expression.”

Press Freedom in Danger

During more than six decades, the grant maker has spent $110 million to support freedom of expression and freedom of the press, including grants to the Newseum, Yale Law School, and the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic.

With dwindling budgets and staff, newsrooms are unable to press government agencies for documents that should be available to the public, said Teri Hayt, executive director of the American Society of News Editors. Public officials know they can stonewall newspapers, radio stations, and television news outlets: In the hunt for breaking news, they quickly move on to other stories.

“Most of these offices know you can’t afford an attorney, so they’re going to wait you out,” she said. As a result, editors “have to weigh the challenges they really want to make a stink over.”

Mr. Bollinger and Mr. Ibargüen said they did not see the institute serving as a “legal clinic” for smaller news outlets in need of pro bono representation. Still, they hope newsrooms of all sizes will benefit from the institute’s work tackling groundbreaking cases and supporting research on the First Amendment in the digital age.

A search for a director is under way. When one is found, the institute will likely begin to fine-tune its mission, said Mr. Bollinger, a prominent First Amendment scholar.

The current political climate has troubling implications for freedom of the press, according to Mr. Bollinger. He referred to a suggestion made by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, that media organizations’ libel protections be loosened.

“In any time of great stress and in any time of fear and sense of threat, the First Amendment as we know it is not popularly supported,” he said.

Mr. Ibargüen said the Obama administration’s prosecution of people who leak information to the press, and its failure to provide complete and timely responses to Freedom of Information Act requests, have also thwarted journalists’ attempts to serve the public interest.

Said Mr. Ibargüen: “I have no concern they won’t have enough to do.”