2025 Stanfield Conversation featured speakers
Asha Rangappa

Asha Rangappa is an Assistant Dean and Senior Lecturer at the Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs and a former Associate Dean at Yale Law School. Prior to her current position, Asha served as a Special Agent in the New York Division of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations. At Yale, she teaches courses on national security law, Russian information warfare, and leadership and ethics. She the author of The Freedom Academy, a bestselling online Substack publication about disinformation and its impact on democracy, and also co-hosts the legal podcast, It’s Complicated, with Renato Mariotti.
Asha graduated cum laude from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study constitutional reform and U.S. drug policy in Bogotá, Colombia. She received her law degree from Yale Law School where she was a Coker Fellow in constitutional law, and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Juan R. Torruella on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Asha is a former legal and national security analyst for CNN and ABC News, and has also appeared frequently on MSNBC and BBC. She is an editor for Just Security, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project.
Emmett Macfarlane

Emmett Macfarlane is a leading scholar of the Canadian constitution. His research focuses on the relationship between rights, governance, and public policy, with a particular focus on institutional relationships surrounding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, constitutional change, unwritten constitutionalism, and freedom of expression. Dr. Macfarlane is the author of Governing from the Bench: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Judicial Role (UBC Press, 2013), Constitutional Pariah: Reference re Senate Reform and the Future of Parliament (UBC Press, 2021), and co-author (with Janet L. Hiebert and Anna Drake) of Legislating under the Charter: Parliament, Executive Power, and Rights (University of Toronto Press, 2023). He is also editor of an additional six books, including Dilemmas of Free Expression (University of Toronto Press, 2022) and Rights and Parliamentary Systems in Canada and Beyond (University of Toronto Press, 2025). Dr. Macfarlane is a frequent commentator in the news media, and has written over 60 op-eds for outlets like the CBC, Globe and Mail, and Ѳ’s. He is also the author of “Defending Canadian Democracy,” an online newsletter with over 5,000 subscribers. He has provided unpaid, non-partisan policy advice to the Government of Canada on Senate reform and reform of the Supreme Court appointments process, and has appeared before multiple parliamentary committees on a variety of matters, including electoral reform and the operation of Parliament during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Macfarlane is currently working on a major book project on unwritten constitutionalism and democratic resilience, as well as a large comparative project on the regulation of hate speech in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom.