When Thompson stepped down after 20 years as director, Lawrence Lessig, a prominent scholar of Internet law at Stanford, was appointed to lead the center. He had been a fellow in the center in 1996-97 where he developed his ideas on Internet law. As director, Lessig led the center in a campaign against institutional corruption (also a theme in the early work of the center). He took the campaign to the public, and ran for President of the U.S. in 2015. In 2011, the center announced a partnership with InnoCentive "seeking innovative systems to monitor institutions for potential signs of corrupting forces."
