Biography

Tim Wu is an American attorney, professor at Columbia Law School, and contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is known legally and academically for his enacted “Carterfone” proposal and other significant contributions to antitrust and wireless communications policy, and popularly, for coining the phrase network neutrality in his 2003 law journal article, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination.

Wu is a scholar of the media and technology industries, and his academic specialties include antitrust, copyright, and telecommunications law. Wu was named to The National Law Journal’s “America’s 100 Most Influential Lawyers” in 2013, as well as to the “Politico 50” in 2014 and 2015. Additionally, Wu was named one of Scientific American’s 50 people of the year in 2006, and one of Harvard University’s 100 most influential graduates by 02138 magazine in 2007. His book, The Master Switch, was named among the best books of 2010 by The New Yorker magazine, Fortune magazine, Publishers Weekly, and other publications.

Wu was formerly a contributing writer at NewYorker.com and  contributing editor at the New Republic. He has twice won the Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing and in 2017 he was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Wu has worked in academia, federal and state governments. From 2011 to 2012, Wu served as a senior advisor to the Federal Trade Commission, and from 2015–2016 he was senior enforcement counsel at the New York Office of the Attorney General, where he launched a successful lawsuit against Time-Warner cable for falsely advertising their broadband speeds. In 2016, Wu joined the National Economic Council in the Obama White House to work on competition policy. He was a law clerk for Judge Richard Posner and Justice Stephen Breyer. He graduated from McGill University (B.Sc.), and Harvard Law School.

Articles, Publications, and Appearances

Books

Columns: Tim Wu is currently a contributing writer for The New York Times and has been a contributing writer in The New Yorker Online, Slate, and The New Republic.