2026 Annenberg Lecture: Timothy Wu

Please join us for a conversation with Timothy Wu, Julius Silver Professor at Columbia University

The 2026 Annenberg Lecture will feature a conversation between Columbia University Professor Timothy Wu and Annenberg Professor Victor Pickard.

Event Schedule:

• 5:00-5:30 p.m. Opening Reception

• 5:30-7:00 p.m. Annenberg Lecture

• 7:00-7:30 p.m. Closing Reception 

RSVP to attend the Lecture and Reception 

Please note: This event is open to Annenberg/Penn community members only.

About the Speakers

Timothy Wu is the Julius Silver Professor at Columbia University and a former White House official who has also served at the Federal Trade Commission and the National Economic Council. His work focuses on communications, technology, media, and the political economy of information. He is best known for coining the term “net neutrality” and for his writing on the power of communications networks and technology platforms. Wu is the author of several books, including "The Master Switch," "The Attention Merchants," "The Curse of Bigness," and "The Age of Extraction," and is a longtime contributing writer for The New York Times.

Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the Annenberg School for Communication, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. Pickard has authored or edited six books, including the award-winning monographs "Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society" and "America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform." His research on media history, media activism, and journalism’s normative role in democratic societies has been published in more than 200 articles, essays, reviews, and book chapters in leading scholarly journals, anthologies, and popular magazines.

About the Annenberg Lecture

The annual Annenberg Lecture, hosted by the Annenberg School and the Annenberg Public Policy Center, brings to Penn leaders in academia, politics, public policy, or the media. It combines two previous lectures, the Walter and Leonore Distinguished Lecture in Communication, which started in 1992, and the Leonore Annenberg Lecture in Public Service and Global Understanding, which began in 2006. Both series, and the subsequent single lecture, honor Ambassador and Mrs. Annenberg, without whose vision and support the Annenberg School and Annenberg Public Policy Center would not exist.