UW professor rejects GOP accusations that she colluded to 'censor Americans'

A University of Washington professor at the center of a congressional investigation says Republicans have mischaracterized her work.

UW Center of an Informed Public Director Kate Starbird published an extensive blog post Wednesday to "provide key context that is missing" from a report that accused her and others of trying to "censor Americans" — particularly conservative voices.

This is the first time Starbird has publicly commented on the investigation.

"Rather than addressing all of the report’s many falsehoods and inaccuracies ... I’ll focus on particularly egregious mischaracterizations that directly reference me and my work with an external advisory committee for CISA," Starbird said in a statement provided to KUOW.

CISA is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It was established and signed into law by then-President Donald Trump in 2018. In 2020, it launched efforts to address elections mis- and disinformation. Starbird was asked to chair a subcommittee meant to ensure the integrity of federal and state elections.

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government has been investigating those efforts, however, the subcommittee chaired by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan was formed in January, after Republicans took control of the House.

In a report released in late June, the Subcommittee alleged CISA, Starbird, and her colleagues colluded with tech companies to subvert Americans' First Amendment rights.

Starbird rejected that accusation in her blog post.

"To create this false impression, the report cherry-picks emails and selectively portrays notes from our MDM [Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation] Subcommittee’s deliberative process — often obscuring and in some cases intentionally distorting the original context," she wrote. "The MDM Subcommittee gave significant consideration to the First Amendment in all of our work, and explicitly did so in our recommendations to Director [Jen] Easterly. ... The recommendations were intended 'to protect critical functions from the risks of [mis- and disinformation], while being sensitive to and appreciating the government’s limited role with respect to the regulation or restriction of speech.'"

Starbird addressed seven core accusations in her blog, including the claims that her committee tried to subvert the First Amendment and that they participated in "censorship."

"The MDM Subcommittee did not orchestrate, participate in, or even recommend that CISA take part in activities that could be construed as 'censorship,' even in the strategically loose conceptualization pushed within The Committee’s interim report," she wrote.

Republicans have particularly taken issue with communications between CISA and social media companies to flag content containing false information about elections.

Starbird broadly disagreed with Republicans' characterization of such activities as evidence of censorship, but she did acknowledge "legitimate criticism, invoking discussions about what the guardrails for collaboration between government and social media platforms should be."

Read Starbird's full blog post here.

Correction: This article originally stated that Starbird was accused of colluding to "censure" Americans. It has been corrected to state "censor."