Words Matter: The Future of Free Speech

The American Council on Germany and 1014 will host a discussion and luncheon with Gypsy Guillén Kaiser, Chief Global Affairs Officer, Committee to Protect Journalists, and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulz, Director of the Leibniz Institute of Media Research, Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI).

Gypsy Guillén Kaiser joined the Committee to Protect Journalists as advocacy and communications director in 2021. A specialist in advancing structural change to ensure freedom of the press, defend human rights, and secure social and economic justice, Guillén Kaiser has worked nearly two decades with international non-governmental organizations and as a journalist. She has participated in missions to more than a dozen countries, including Argentina, Costa Rica, Egypt, India, Peru, Singapore and South Africa. Most recently, she led strategic outreach to promote progressive family policies and to propel the Women, Peace and Security agenda at UN Women.

Previously, she served as director of communications at the International Women’s Health Coalition and at Eisenhower Fellowships, after fighting corruption as the media and public relations manager at Transparency International’s secretariat in Berlin. She served on the boards of the Human Impacts Institute and Friends of Transparency International. Guillén Kaiser returned to CPJ after heading the organization’s advocacy and communications department from 2010 to 2013.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from New York University and a master’s degree in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. A native of the Dominican Republic who grew up in New York City, Guillén Kaiser is fluent in Spanish and German.

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulz is the Director of the Leibniz Institute of Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI). He is also a professor for “Media Law and Public Law including Theoretical Foundations” at the Faculty of Law at Universität Hamburg. In 2012, he was also appointed director at Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin.

Prof. Dr. Schulz works on questions of communications constitutional law, media law and internet governance (with a focus on intermediaries), legal problems of algorithmic decision-making, and the ethics of digitalization. He often works at the interface between law and other disciplines such as communication science and computer science and with a focus on the dimension of knowledge. He uses the functional comparison of different national approaches to solve problems. The transfer to politics at all levels (state, federal, EU, Council of Europe, UNESCO) plays an essential role in his work.

He was a member of the German Bundestag’s Enquete Commission “Internet and Digital Society” (2010 to 2013), Chairman of the Committee of Experts on Internet Intermediaries (MSI-NET) of the Council of Europe (2016-2017) and is Chairman of the Expert Committee “Communication and Information” of the German Commission for UNESCO (DUK) and thus also a member of the DUK Board. He also coordinates the Content Contact Group of the Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network (INJ). Wolfgang Schulz is a member of the Executive Committee of the Global Network of Internet and Society Research Centers (NoC). He is also head of the Board of Directors of the Hamburg-based citizens’ and educational channel TIDE and a member of the Board of Trustees of the #UseTheNews initiative.