John Palfrey

Early life

Palfrey graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1990. He attended Harvard College and graduated in 1994 magna cum laude. Palfrey was co-captain of Harvard's 1994 undefeated national championship squash team, which was the team's fourth straight national title. He graduated in 1997 at Pembroke College, Cambridge with an M.Phil. in history; while there, he was distinguished as a Rotary Scholar. Palfrey returned to Boston and graduated from Harvard Law School in 2001. Palfrey served as finance director in Boston for the campaign of Lois Pines for the position of Massachusetts Attorney General.

Harvard Law School

Palfrey served as executive director of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He studied Internet usage and attitudes; according to his assessment, an important aspect of the digital revolution was the "massive generation gap" between those who were "born digital"—i.e., after 1980—and those who were not. Beginning in 2010, he helped promote a Berkman project entitled the Digital Public Library of America, which is an effort funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and others to enable a large-scale public file-sharing digital library. Palfrey described the online storehouse stocked with millions of digitized books as being one which "will contain everything we can get our hands on." The project began by offering noncopyrighted material but there are efforts to offer copyrighted material in the future with a fee-based arrangement that compensates copyright holders. Palfrey served as the founding chairman of the Digital Public Library of America when it became a stand-alone entity, serving in that role until 2015. Berkman, under his leadership, also initiated efforts to combat malware, spyware and computer viruses with a program called StopBadware.

In 2003, Palfrey was appointed to the faculty of Harvard Law School, partly hired by Elena Kagan, and his research interests included intellectual property issues such as copyright law, Internet law, and international law. He served as a visiting professor of Law and Information at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, from 2007 to 2008. He served as the vice-dean of library and information services at the Harvard Law School's library, and led a reorganization effort in 2009. He was appointed to the vice-dean post in 2008. He was also awarded tenure at the Harvard Law School in 2008.

Andover

In 2012, Palfrey became the head of School at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He is the fifteenth person to serve as the Academy's head of school, and his investiture was celebrated on September 26, 2012. While at Andover, he was elected as the chairperson of the Knight Foundation, a charitable organization which focuses on how information can improve democratic institutions. He was profiled in Town and Country magazine in 2015.

Internet Issues

Palfrey is regarded as an authority about how people use technology, including how they relate to information and engage in politics in emerging digital media such as the Internet. According to Palfrey, digital natives (those born after 1980 and who grew up with the Internet) are more likely to "see relationships differently" as well as access information in new ways from previous generations. He is a supporter of information sharing while maintaining copyrights:

We should figure out how to offer legitimate services that enable people to be accountable to one another online, using innovations like Creative Commons licenses, which make sharing legitimately much easier.

In 2008, Palfrey served as the chair of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a year-long national effort to explore how children could "avoid unwanted contact and content" online. He believes digital literacy should be an important public issue in schools so that kids can "sort credible from non-credible information". Palfrey testified before Congress on child safety issues in the digital age. He advocated flexibility in legal solutions for coping with cyberbullying, which happens when "kids treat one another awfully online", and he recommended that laws not be too tied to specific technologies. He is a fan of Wikipedia:

I would use Wikipedia. I think it's a fabulous, fabulous place to turn. Because some of the information is absolutely credible and really useful.

In his book Born Digital, Palfrey and co-author Urs Gasser argued that solutions to bad behavior online could combine parental oversight, public education, responsible behavior by corporations, and only use punitive laws as a last resort. Born Digital was described as "a landmark sociological study of today's early adults". The book was reviewed in the journal Science and the Washington Post. Reviewer Amanda Henry described the authors as "knowledgeable but never pedantic". Library Journal named Born Digital one of its top Science and Technology books for 2008, the only computer science book named to this list. According to one account, Palfrey urged his fellow Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig to run for Congress. Palfrey was a member of a pro bono legal team that helped defend street artist Shepard Fairey in a "fair use" case involving an Associated Press photograph of Barack Obama in his Hope poster.

Palfrey urged Congress to write legislation to discourage prominent Internet firms such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems from bending to pressure by foreign governments to censor web information or forcing them to reveal the identities of dissidents, as part of the Open Net Initiative. His work on how Internet usage can affect politics within democracies was cited as influential to the dissidents in Iran responsible for the Green Revolution. These references resulted in his being named by the Iranian government, along with colleague Ethan Zuckerman, as a so-called "conspirator" in the trials that took place in Iran in 2009 and 2010. Palfrey commented in the Boston Globe about how political campaigns in the United States were increasingly being carried out in cyberspace.

Family

Palfrey's parents are both professors of medicine with a specialty in pediatrics. His mother is the chief of general pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital and is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. His father is a professor of clinical pediatrics at Boston University Medical School. Palfrey's parents are co-masters of Adams House at Harvard College. Palfrey is a great-great-grandson of United States President Theodore Roosevelt. His family has many connections to Harvard University, including through his ancestor, John G. Palfrey, the first dean of the Harvard Divinity School and prominent historian of the 19th century. Palfrey married Catherine Carter in 1998. In 2003, the Palfrey House in Cambridge, MA, which had been built in 1831 by an ancestor, was relocated to Hammond Street.

Publications by John Palfrey