Central Virginia Times

What Do Cyber Civil Rights, a Tuxedo Cat and Skittles Have in Common? These Mismatched Items Distinguish Danielle Citron as a Law Professor, Mentor and Friend

Danielle Citron is a global powerhouse in the cyber abuse arena. Given a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a “Genius Grant,” the University of Virginia law professor has explored new, groundbreaking territory in the legal field, highlighting and combating the scourge of online abuse, most of it impacting women and minorities.

In June 2019, she testified before Congress about the national security and privacy risks of deepfakes. She is an adviser to the dating app Bumble, the music streaming service Spotify, and video sharing platform TikTok. Citron also was a member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council before CEO Elon Musk dissolved it in December.

Luckily for the University, Citron joined the faculty at the School of Law at the end of 2020, cancelling planned visits to Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

All along, Citron said her heart lay with UVA. She’d been in discussions to come for years after a long stint at the University of Maryland and then a short-lived one at Boston University as the pandemic hit.

“My ideal was to be at UVA because there’s so many colleagues that I admire here,” she said. She’d have come sooner, she said, but her husband’s work and travel required that the family live near a major airport. COVID changed all that as more and more people, including her husband, worked from home.

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