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Andrew McLaughlin

Andrew McLaughlin is Head of Global Public Policy and Government Affairs for Google Inc., based in San Francisco. He is an Emeritus Fellow of the Berkman Center.

Working at the intersection of law, politics, economics, and technology, Andrew's Berkman Center work has principally taken the form of projects to expand Internet infrastructure in developing countries. He has assisted governments, NGOs, and private sector actors to understand and analyze Internet and communications technologies; to reform their laws, policies, and regulations; and to foster favorable environments for local technology entrepreneurship.

Background

Andrew is Head of Global Public Policy and Government Affairs for Google Inc., based in San Francisco. He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, where his work has focused on the law and regulation of Internet and telecommunications networks. In recent years, he has focused primarily on developing countries, including Ghana, Mongolia, Kenya, Afghanistan, and South Africa. Since joining Google, Andrew has continued that work as a member of the Board of Directors of Bridges.org, an international non-profit organisation based in Cape Town that promotes the effective use of information and communications technology in the developing world to reduce poverty and improve citizens' lives.

Andrew first joined the Berkman Center in 1998 as an Associate Director and Fellow, studying the Internet's technical administration and self-regulation and on the application of constitutional law doctrines to cyberspace. He worked on online mechanisms to facilitate democratic consultation in cyberspace using the model of Deliberative Polling. In 1999, Andrew taught The Law of Cyberspace with Prof. Jonathan Zittrain. He returned to the Berkman Center in 2002, to lead the Berkman Center's initiatives in developing countries. In 2003, he taught Digital Democracy with Prof. Charles Nesson.

From 1999-2002, Andrew helped to launch and manage the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), serving as Vice President, Chief Policy Officer, and Chief Financial Officer. ICANN is the global non-profit organization responsible for coordinating the Internet's systems of unique identifiers, such as domain names and IP addresses.

In 2000, Time named Andrew one of its Digital Dozen. In 2001, he was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

After graduating from the Harvard Law School in 1994, McLaughlin clerked for Judge Gerald W. Heaney of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. From 1995-97, he worked as an associate at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C., where he was a member of the team that successfully litigated the challenge to the Communications Decency Act, culminating in the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Reno v. ACLU, 117 S.Ct. 2329 (1997). From 1997-98, he served as Counsel to Congressman Henry Waxman of Los Angeles, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives' campaign finance investigation.

A native of Minnesota and North Dakota, McLaughlin graduated from Yale University in 1991 with a B.A. in history. As a law student, he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.

A number of Andrew's ICANN-related presentations are posted here.

Some photos.

Recent Projects

Where Andrew's been lately:

Teaching @ HLS

Fall 2003 - Digital Democracy.

  • Description: Over the past 15 years, digital information and communication networks have spread rapidly across the globe, bringing with them hopes for, and claims of, fundamental change in the dynamics of power and influence across a range of political, economic, social, and semiotic dimensions. With a global scope, this course will take a close look at the possibilities, achievements, and failures of digital technology to decentralize and democratize. Topics to be covered include political democracy (transparency and the rule of law; digital electronic voting and online elections; e-government and the provision of online government services; Internet-based campaigning and activism; the emergence of global digital constituencies and online protest movements; government efforts to control access to information); economic democracy (the "digital divide"; ICT development strategies; digital entrepreneurship; privatization and liberalization of communications infrastructure; network interconnection; new definitions of property rights and protections; open source vs. proprietary software); social democracy (education and e-learning; the formation of coherent political and other interest groups); and semiotic democracy (meaning the decentralization of the power to make cultural meaning, i.e., peer-to-peer file sharing, digital music, blogging and other personal publishing, network filtering and censorship).
  • Led by Professor Nesson and Andrew McLaughlin, the course was taught collaboratively, colloquium-style, by a Berkman Center team of experts in Internet law, policy, technology, and development: Michael Best, Geoffrey Kirkman, Colin Maclay, James Moore, John Palfrey, and Ethan Zuckerman.
  • Course work included a paper, participation in an online forum adjunct to the class, and several written assignments over the term.
  • Syllabus.

Andrew's PGP public key.

Last updated June 03, 2009