Nabiha Syed to Deliver Northeastern Law Commencement Address

02.25.20 — Nabiha Syed, president of The Markup, will deliver the commencement address at this year’s May 21 graduation ceremony for Northeastern University School of Law. The Markup is a new online publication illuminating how powerful institutions are using technology in ways that impact society.

Before joining The Markup, Syed was vice president and associate general counsel at BuzzFeed, where she counseled on newsgathering, libel and privacy matters worldwide. Under her leadership, the company successfully defended against libel litigations arising out of the publication of the Steele dossier and initiated numerous notable access litigations. Prior to joining BuzzFeed, she was an associate at Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, a leading media law firm, and a First Amendment Fellow at The New York Times. She was named a “40 Under 40 Rising Star” by the New York Law Journal in 2016, a finalist for the Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year Award from the International Bar Association in 2017 and received the Inaugural Rising Star Award from the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press in 2018.

Syed holds a JD from Yale Law School, where she co-founded the nation’s first media access law clinic, and an MSt from the University of Oxford, which she attended as a Marshall Scholar. She earned her undergraduate degree from John Hopkins University.

Syed has been described as “one of the best emerging free speech lawyers” by Forbes magazine.