Carleton Convo with Joel Simon | April 17, 2026

hen people take to the streets, the press plays an essential role, documenting events, deepening understanding, and ensuring that fundamental rights are protected. But are the rights of journalists secure?

Joel Simon — who gave convocation at Carleton on Friday, April 17, from 10:50 to 11:50 a.m. in Skinner Chapel — began his career as a correspondent in Latin America. There, he cut his teeth covering demonstrations before becoming a leading press freedom advocate with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). During his Carleton convo address, “Protests and Press Freedom: From Mexico City to Minneapolis,” Simon will trace the evolution of protest coverage, showing how the erosion of press rights undermines the broader legal protections for assembly and speech enshrined in international law and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

Simon served as executive director of the CPJ, an independent nonprofit dedicated to advocating for the safety and rights of journalists around the world, for 15 years, from 2006 to 2021. While at CPJ, Simon played a key role in the establishment of the Emergencies Department, which provides safety information and direct support for journalists under threat. These services include placement for journalists at leading journalism schools. Simon’s work traveling the world and defending the rights of journalists has effectively saved lives and gotten innumerable people out of harm’s way.

Simon is the founding director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and 2022 a fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and a senior visiting fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute, also at Columbia. He writes on press freedom issues for The New Yorker and produces a regular column for Columbia Journalism Review. 

 

Simon is also the author of four books, with a fifth approaching publication. His most recent book, co-authored with Robert Mahoney, is titled, The Infodemic: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free (2022). Simon has also published We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of Kidnapping, Hostages, and Ransom (2019); The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom (2014); and Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge (1997), which was named one of the best 100 books of the year by the LA Times. 

Simon began his journalism career in the 1990s covering Guatemalan conflict, while also conducting forays into El Salvador and Cuba, before shifting to cover Mexico. In Mexico, he covered the Zapatista uprising, the peso devaluation, and the assassination of the presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta. He returned to his hometown of New York City after leaving the CPJ to teach journalism, while continuing to write and speak widely about press freedom and media issues.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations