25 leaders, 25 moments at 25 years: Danielle Citron

Whenever her name is mentioned, the immediate reaction is always one of admiration. An inspiring, remarkable, thoughtful leader and mentor to many, Danielle K. Citron, who is the Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor of Law, Martha Lubin Karsh and Bruce A. Karsh Bicentennial Professor of Law, and inaugural director of the LawTech Center at the University of Virginia School of Law, writes and teaches about privacy, civil rights and free expression. 

In her work, Citron examines how social attitudes, cultural practices and the law affect how we think about privacy. Conceptually, she has helped evolve privacy from the idea of "information control" to a notion enabling self-knowledge (both physical and mental), intimacy, and the building of close relationships. As she explains, privacy "carves out an invisible space with our bodies and thoughts so we can develop a sense of self and identity." In a world with a seemingly unlimited supply of privacy definitions, hers help us to map out how to maintain dignity, vulnerability and trust within a technology-driven marketplace. 

To describe Citron as a pioneer or innovator would be accurate but falls short; her legal thought is more akin to that of an oracle, soothsayer or seer. She has been writing about cybercrime since the dawn of the Information Age. Her work on the criminalization of revenge porn and regulatory oversight of predictive algorithms have been informing policy debates for well over a decade. She had analyzed the looming legal challenges posed by deepfakes well before most of us had even heard of that term. 

As another example of her foresight, several years prior to the passage of any comprehensive U.S. state privacy laws, Citron's paper, "The Privacy Policymaking of State Attorneys General" examined the centrality of U.S. state attorneys general as “agents of regulatory change” in enforcing U.S. consumers' privacy rights. (Her work here also won the IAPP's award for best paper at the 2016 Privacy Law Scholars conference.) In a foretelling of developments in state-level privacy enforcement that we are seeing accelerate today, she urged state attorneys general at the time "to act more boldly in the face of certain shadowy data practices." 

In her work, Citron blends legal erudition with incisive and pragmatic privacy advocacy. Counterintuitively, she has shown that "intimate privacy…and free speech are not at odds but instead reinforce each other." She has written numerous book chapters and published more than 60 law review articles and essays on issues ranging from the right to sexual and intimate privacy, student surveillance, combatting online harassment and cyberstalking, to reform of Section 230, automated decision-making and government surveillance.  

Her first book, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, was named one of the 20 best moments for women in 2014 by the editors of Cosmopolitan. Citron's latest book, The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age, has been featured and excerpted in The New Yorker, Wired, Fortune, The Guardian, and The Times. In addition to her legal repository, she has written more than 50 opinion pieces for major media outlets, including The New York Times and Slate. Her TED Talk on deepfakes has been viewed more than 3.5 million times, and she has given hundreds more talks at universities, federal and state agencies, foundations, associations, and think tanks. She chats and converses regularly with the IAPP and has appeared on the big stage at our annual conferences. 

Citron is also vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit founded in 2013 that is devoted to fighting for civil rights and liberties in the digital age. She is a MacArthur Fellow, member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Law Institute and has served on advisory boards for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Future of Privacy Forum and the IAPP's Privacy Bar Section Advisory Board.  

In 2024, she won the IAPP's Leadership Award, which "recognizes an individual or organization who demonstrates an ongoing commitment to furthering privacy policy, promoting recognition of privacy issues, and advancing the growth and visibility of the profession." 

Citron has worked for years to help lawmakers design laws that protect intimate privacy and combat online abuse. Her legal scholarship has been cited in state and federal court decisions, federal regulations, and White House reports. She has testified before multiple Congressional committees — on deepfakes, artificial intelligence, and how to define “reasonable” content moderation practices — as well as before the House of Commons in the U.K. She has served as an adviser to the White House's Gender Policy Council during the Biden administration and to then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris' Task Force to Combat Cyber Exploitation and Violence Against Women. Over the years, she has been an advisor to companies such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Bumble and Spotify, among others, on safety and trust issues. 

Danielle Citron has also achieved the recognition of being ranked first amongst the Top 100 Law Scholars, an indicator of scholarly influence; she is the first woman to appear at the top of that list. 

Ryan Calo, Lane Powell & D. Wayne Gittinger Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law and her frequent coauthor, said: "It is hard to overstate Danielle Citron's contributions to the field of law and technology. Her work on internet hate crime, automated decision-making, and privacy has inspired generations upon generations of academics, students, and practitioners. I am in constant awe of Danielle and honored to call her my dearest friend and coauthor." 

"Danielle is an extraordinary human, always eager to mentor, to bring people together, to support junior scholars, to lift her colleagues, and celebrate the achievements of her students," said Ari Ezra Waldman, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and another Citron coauthor. "Danielle's teaching is also second to none."  

Woodrow Hartzog, professor of law and Class of 1960 Scholar at the Boston University School of Law, said: "No one in our field has had such a deep impact across so many areas and in so many ways as Danielle Citron. Simply put, she's the GOAT [greatest of all time]. … This is to say nothing of how great of a colleague, teacher, mentor, and friend she is. I honestly don't know when she sleeps. But what I do know is that we are all better because of her efforts and are so fortunate to have her as such an exceptional leader in our field." 

To the benefit of many, Danielle Citron has long been and remains a privacy optimist. Never failing to spot how laws that protect intimate privacy can be improved, she maintains that privacy "can and should be ours." We will continue to be amazed by her fight for privacy, which remains fierce.