Morgan N. Weiland
Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communication, Advertising and Public Relations
Moorman-Simon Interdisciplinary Career Development Assistant Professor of Communication Law
By courtesy, BU School of Law
- Office: 640 Commonwealth Ave, B37E
- Email: mweiland@bu.edu
- Personal Website: https://www.mweiland.com/
About Morgan N. Weiland
Morgan N. Weiland is the Moorman-Simon Interdisciplinary Career Development Assistant Professor of Communication Law in the College of Communication at Boston University and holds a courtesy appointment at Boston University School of Law. She is an Affiliate Scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society and an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project.
Her dissertation, Making Internet Law: How Cyberspace Was Socially Constructed as a First Amendment Speech System, traces the social and cultural processes by which the internet was transformed into a speech system protected by the First Amendment. The project, which she is preparing to develop into a book, explains how we ended up with a system in which private, for-profit social media firms have power over—but not responsibility for—public speech, and argues for a critical approach to understanding and shaping the legal regulation of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence.
This project won the Best Dissertation Award from the Philosophy, Theory and Critique division of the International Communication Association in 2026. Weiland published an article based on her dissertation research in Internet Histories, also in 2026, “Technologies of Participation: A History of the Symbolic Framework for Networked Computers as a Speech System.”
She is the first graduate of the joint degree program that she proposed and helped design between Stanford Law School, where she graduated with a JD in 2015, and Stanford’s Department of Communication, where she graduated with a PhD in 2025. She clerked for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals during the 2018-19 term, served as the Executive Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center from 2021 to 2025, and is admitted to the California Bar.
You can read more about her publications, speaking engagements, and awards on her website at https://www.mweiland.com/.
Communication Law Scholar Urges a Reconsideration of Online Speech
The way we conceptualize the internet and social media—as a sort of “printing press” protected by the First Amendment—is widely…
Education
- Ph.D., Communication, Stanford University
- JD, Stanford Law School
- BA., Political Science - Cinema & Media Studies, Carleton College
