Students for Free Culture is proud to announce the inauguration its board of directors for the upcoming academic year.

It’s our pleasure to introduce the five members of the board:

• 
  Kevin Driscoll
  Kevin is the most senior member of the board, having served two prior terms. This month, he will finish his first year as a Ph.D. student at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in the University of Southern California.

• 
  Andrea Fassina
  Andrea is currently in his third year of study doing a Master in Electronics at the University of York in England. Andrea recently started a chapter at U of York, and is leading an effort to bring SFC to the UK.

• 
  Adi Kamdar
  Adi is a rising junior at Yale University, where he is pursuing a Science, Technology, and Society major. He initiated the Yale chapter of SFC, which has garnered national attention for several of its campaigns. He is an undergraduate fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and will be working at the Berkman Center this summer.

• 
  Parker Phinney
  Parker is a rising junior at Dartmouth, majoring in Computer Science. Parker has founded two SFC chapters (one at his high school and another at Dartmouth), and has led the freeculture.org web team. He interned at Creative Commons last summer and worked this past Winter with SFC alumni on OpenHatch.org.

• 
  Aditi Rajaram
  Aditi is a rising senior at NYU, double majoring in Journalism and Political Science. She has served as Secretary and Vice President of Free Culture @ NYU, and will be serving as President next year.

Special advisors
2009-2010 board members Kevin Donovan and Ben Moskowitz will stay with SFC leadership as special advisors to the board of directors.

Next steps
Please keep an eye out, or join our discussion list, as we share the next steps for SFC and its expansion in the 2010-2011 school year! If you are interested in starting a chapter, or supporting the organization, please be in touch with board@freeculture.org.

We recently unveiled the first members of the Students for Free Culture Faculty Advisory Board: Larry Lessig, Mike Nelson, Ed Felten, and Gabriella Coleman. As I mentioned in that post, formalizing ties with academic leaders is an important step as SFC continues to mature and grow. Today, we’re honored to announce four additional members of the FAB!

Pat Aufderheide, University Professor @ American University; Director, Center for Social Media

Professor Aufderheide examines the effects of the law on artists and the public interest. She is the author of Communications Policy in the Public Interest and Documentary: A Very Short Introduction. In recent years, she has promoted fair use through a series of important best practice guides for various industries. She is closely tied to the artistic community through past and present positions with Kartemquin Films, Sundance Film Festival, and Independent Television Service. Her tweets are here.

Wendy Seltzer, Fellow, Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship; Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Wendy Seltzer has played an influential role in promoting freedom in the digital world for more than a decade. She has taught courses on the intersection of technology, commerce, and law at American University, Oxford, Brooklyn Law School and Northeastern. As the founder of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse she brought attention to the unfounded legal threats dampening free speech online. She serves on the board of the Tor Project to support privacy online and on the board of the World Wide Web Foundation to advance the web for human empowerment. Her prolific activities are chronicled on her Twitter account here.

James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law @ Duke Law School; Co-founder, Center for the Study of the Public Domain

Professor Boyle is a teacher and writer studying the rising conflict between the intellectual ecology of the public domain and the movement that seeks to enclose it through private means. His books include The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind and Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and Construction of the Information Society. Additionally, he co-founded both Science Commons and ccLearn to bring the work of Creative Commons to the specific domains of science and education. He is a frequent commentator in the media, notably through his regular FT column. The blog for his most recent book is here.

Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts @ the University of Southern California;

Professor Jenkins moved to USC in 2009 after a decade as the Director of MIT’s influential Comparative Media Studies program. He has written or edited twelve books that examine media, culture and the interplay between creators and consumers, such as Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. He is a highly-respected researcher, receiving grants from the MacArthur Foundation and testifying before the American government. His blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, is available here.

[Aufderheide photo licensed CC BY by (fittingly) Wendy Seltzer; Seltzer photo licensed CC BY-NC-SA by foxgrrl; Jenkins photo licensed CC BY by deneyterrio.]