Professional Affiliation

Howard Distinguished Endowed Professor of Media Management and Law and Beaman Professor of Journalism and Electronic Media, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Expert Bio

Stuart N. Brotman is an American government policymaker; tenured university professor; management consultant; lawyer; author and editorial adviser; and non-profit organization executive. He has served in four Presidential Administrations on a bipartisan basis and has taught students from 42 countries in six separate disciplines--Communications, Journalism, Business, Law, International Relations, and Public Policy. He also has advised private and public sector clients in more than 30 countries on five continents. Brotman is the first-ever visiting professor of entertainment and media law at Harvard Law. He also was the first Harvard Law School faculty member to teach telecommunications law. He served as a faculty member in Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy, and in the Harvard Business School Executive Education Program. He held the first concurrent appointment in digital media at Harvard and MIT, respectively at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Program on Comparative Media Studies, and created the first study group on communications policymaking at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. Brotman also serves as an annual visiting lecturer in entertainment and media law at Stanford Law School.

Wilson Center Project

U.S. Digital Data Privacy Protection at the Crossroads: Developing a Workable National Policy and Legal Framework

Project Summary

After almost twenty years of the world following the U.S. lead in minimizing Internet privacy rights for consumers in order to facilitate Internet platforms’ maximal scaling and scoping of their products and services globally (e.g., Google, Facebook), the privacy pendulum has begun to reverse direction. There now is palpable pressure on U.S. policymakers to act, as other countries already have done so (e.g., the EU). There is uncertainty, however, about when any U.S. legislation will pass, and how much control Internet platforms will concede to consumers to prevent the avoidable alternative of inefficient U.S. state data protection legislation for both consumers and businesses. Congress is likely to find itself between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Similar to another current paradox on Capitol Hill--the movement to reduce government spending but wanting to do so without cutting large entitlement programs--digital privacy presents difficult policy and political challenges. How should the right balance be achieved between a seemingly insatiable demand for more widespread online access and a growing anxiety that this access is a primary cause for the erosion of personal privacy?

Major Publications

Privacy's Perfect Storm: Digital Policy for Post-Pandemic Times, Miniver Press, 2020.

Communications Law and Practice(comprehensive treatise, now in its 46th edition)

The Telecommunications Deregulation Sourcebook (book)

Telephone Company and Cable Television Competition (book)