Derigan Silver, PhD is an associate professor and chair in the Department of Media, Film and Journalism Studies and the former Director of the Center for Innovation in the Creative and Liberal Arts (CILCA). He has published in peer review journals and law reviews on government secrecy and national security law, originalism, defamation, social architecture theory, access to the judiciary (including access to terrorism trials), copyright law, commercial speech, and student expression. He is the co-author of the popular media law textbook, Mass Media Law, with Dr. Clay Calvert and Dr. Dan V. Kozlowski. Silver received his doctoral degree in mass communication in 2009 from Hussman School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked at the North Carolina Center for Media Law and Policy. Silver is a member of Kappa Tau Alpha, the national honors society for journalism, and a former Chair of the Law and Policy Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).