This seminar explores the concept of privacy in the modern age, the significance of recent developments in Europe and California, and the prospects for federal legislation in the United States. Among the key concepts, we will discuss the General Data Protection Regulation, the California Consumer Privacy Act, the FTC consent orders concerning Facebook and Google, the need for a US data protection agency, and emerging challenges, including universal guidelines for Artificial Intelligence and limitations on facial recognition.
Marc Rotenberg serves as President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington DC and teaches at Georgetown Law. He is the author or editor of several books including (with Anita Allen) Privacy Law and Society, Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions, Privacy and Human Rights: An International Survey of Privacy Laws and Developments, Information Privacy Law, and Privacy and Technology: The New Frontier. serves on many expert panels, including the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development AI expert group, and frequently testifies before Congress on emerging privacy issues. He has appeared on Bloomberg TV, CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, FoxNews, and National Public Radio and contributes to The Economist, The New York Times, and USA Today. He is a recipient of the ABA Cyberspace Law Excellence Award, World Technology Award for Law, and Berkeley Center for Law and Technology Award for Outstanding Contribution to Law and Technology. A graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School, he received an LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown Law.
This event has been made possible through the generosity of Montecito Bank & Trust.
This seminar considers the “voting wars” that have erupted between the right and left over access to the ballot and concerns about voter fraud, voter suppression, and electoral integrity. It explores whether and how changes in voting rules, election administrator incompetence, foreign interference and occasional domestic “dirty tricks,” and an escalation of the rhetoric surrounding “stolen” elections threaten the legitimacy and acceptance of election results in 2020 and beyond. It examines the role that governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations may play in ensuring the American tradition of peaceful transfer of power after elections.
Richard L. Hasen, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine, is a nationally recognized expert on election law and campaign finance regulation. He is the author of The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown, Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections, and The Justice of Contradictions: Antonin Scalia and the Politics of Disruption. He was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by The National Law Journal in 2013 and one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California in 2005 and 2016 by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal. His op-eds and commentaries have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, and Slate.
This event has been made possible through the generosity of Cliff and Crystal Wyatt.
The seminar provides a contextual overview of the legal, policy, and historical developments – including the persistent influence of gender and racial biases on cultural and workplace attitudes – that have shaped the existing framework of protections against sexual harassment in the workplace. The discussion examines the current challenges to combatting workplace sexual harassment effectively, and identifies potential avenues for progress at the legislative, workplace, and educational levels. These strategies will include exploring ways to remove pre-employment barriers that limit the ability to report harassment, improve harassment reporting structures, reduce retaliation and better empower survivors, elevate bystander intervention and other prevention measures, incentivize greater transparency, strengthen enforcement, and promote workplace equity. The discussion also examines how to counter the misperceptions about sexual harassment that overlook the disproportionate impacts on women of color and low-income women. The seminar concludes with a robust discussion about how best to advance promising policy options to achieve concrete progress in the years ahead.
Jocelyn Frye, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, is a leading authority on women’s economic security and employment issues. She served for four years as deputy assistant to former President Barack Obama and director of policy and special projects for former First Lady Michelle Obama, with a focus on women, families, and engagement with the greater DC community. Previously Frye was general counsel at the National Partnership for Women & Families, where she testified before Congress and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on federal enforcement of employment-discrimination laws. She earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
This event has been made possible through the generosity of Martin and Maureen McDermut.
The seminar outlines the dysfunctional policy decisions that gave rise to an undocumented population that peaked at 12 million persons in 2008. It reviews what has happened to that population in subsequent years, focusing on the changing circumstances in Mexico and Central America and policy decisions taken during the Obama Administration. It concludes with a look at the policies unleashed by the Trump administration and their mismatch with the realities of traffic on the Mexico-U.S. border and the actual security needs of the United States.
Douglas S. Massey is the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His award-winning publications include Climbing Mount Laurel: The Struggle for Affordable Housing and Social Mobility in an American Suburb, Brokered Boundaries: Creating Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times, and Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Age of Economic Integration. Since 1982 he has also co-directed (with Jorge Durand, University of Guadalajara), the Mexican Migration Project that was created to further our understanding of the complex process of Mexican migration to the United States. The recipient of many research grants and awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Massey has also served on the faculties of the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania.
This event has been made possible through the generosity of Montecito Bank & Trust, Mitchell Kauffman and Joanne Moran.
Preview screening of A Towering Task: A Peace Corps Documentary followed by a conversation and reception with its producer and director, Alana DeJoseph, who previously served as associate producer of the award-winning PBS documentaries The Greatest Good (about the U.S. Forest Service) and Green Fire (about conservationist Aldo Leopold). Founded during the Cold War, the Peace Corps stands as an icon of American idealism. From the beginning its mission of world peace and friendship proved to be a towering task. Imbued with the unbounded energy and vision of its charismatic leader, Sargent Shriver, and thousands of vigorous volunteers, the story of the Peace Corps is a uniquely American tale. From the political machinations to establish not just a brand new government agency, but a new concept in international relations, from the growing pains of an agency straining to define its mission, A Towering Task takes viewers on a journey of what it means to be a global citizen.
This event made possible through the generosity of the Juliane Heyman, Dan Meisel and Amy Wendel, and Union Bank.
The Internet was once seen as a democratizing force, but today social media platforms have become exploitable intermediaries of political discourse. The velocity of online information and viral communication can easily create dysfunction in campaigns and within democracy. And for a relatively small investment in resources, a country’s media can be infiltrated by bots, trolls, hackers and leakers, without leaving much evidence of who sponsored the attack. In addition, through the use of algorithms that create “filter bubbles” and echo chambers, the Internet is further polarizing public opinion. How should governments, institutions, tech companies, communities, and individuals respond? How do we repair polarization created by the Internet?
Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and co-director of the Stanford Project on Democracy and the Internet. A nationally recognized constitutional law expert, frequent media commentator, as well as award-winning educator, he is the editor of Solutions to Political Polarization in America, a contributor to The Washington Post and The New York Times, and the author of a work-in-progress that explores the Internet’s impact on U.S. democracy. A sought-after nonpartisan voice on voting rights, Persily has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. and M.A. in political science from Yale; a J.D. from Stanford where he was President of the Stanford Law Review, and a Ph.D. in political science from UC Berkeley.
This event made possible through the generosity of George Gelles and Christine Garvey.
What does it take for the most venerable, stable, and free government in the world to undergo a genuine Constitutional crisis? Jeff Greenfield argues that such a crisis would not emerge overnight, nor would it be the consequence of any one election or leader. Rather, it would take a steady erasure of beliefs and assumptions held across political and ideological lines, as well as an erosion of trust not just in politics, but in major institutions as well. Are there signs that we are moving toward such an atmosphere? If so, what can be done to alter that course?
Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network correspondent and best-selling author who, during a career spanning more than three decades, has served as senior political correspondent for CBS, senior analyst for CNN, political and media analyst for ABC News, and contributing correspondent for PBS’ “News Hour Weekend.” Best known for his coverage of domestic politics and media, he has been a floor reporter or anchor booth analyst for every national convention since 1988. He was formerly a columnist for Time, Yahoo! News, and the New York Observer and is currently one for Politico and The Daily Beast. Greenfield has authored or co-authored 14 books, including a national bestselling novel (The People’s Choice: A Cautionary Tale) and several alternate histories of American politics (Then Everything Changed, 43*: When Gore Beat Bush, and If Kennedy Lived). Greenfield graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin where he was editor-in-chief of The Daily Cardinal. He graduated with honors from the Yale Law School where he was a Note and Comment Editor of the Yale Law Journal.
This event made possible through the generosity of the Poomer Fund, Santa Barbara Foundation, courtesy of Anne Smith Towbes.
Elaine Kamarck gives a history of the presidential nomination system in the United States and how it differs from the nomination system in almost every other democracy in the world. In particular she discusses how and why the system changed dramatically from Eisenhower to Trump and what it means for the kinds of choices we get in November.
Elaine Kamarck is Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies program as well as the Director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution and Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She is an expert on government innovation and reform in the United States and countries around the world. In addition, her research focuses on the presidential nomination system and American politics and she has participated actively in four presidential campaigns and ten nominating conventions. Kamarck is the author of Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates (updated edition, Brookings Institution Press, 2016) and Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again. Her other publications include How Change Happens—or Doesn’t: The Politics of US Public Policy and The End of Government… As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work. She makes regular media appearances (ABC, CBS, NBC, the BBC, CNN, NPR, and Fox News Now) and writes articles on current political affairs, most recently “Reforming Government First Requires Understanding It,” The Atlantic (March 28, 2017). Kamarck received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
James Madison and the Framers of the Constitution designed not a direct democracy but a representative republic that would filter public passions to promote thoughtful deliberation and the public good. Today, the rise of new populist movements, fueled by new media technologies and structural changes in the Constitution, have unleashed the popular passions that the framers feared. In this seminar, Jeffrey Rosen asks what Madison and the framers would think of our current Congress, presidency, courts, and media, asking how we can resurrect Madisonian values of thoughtful deliberation and reasoned public discourse today.
Jeffrey Rosen serves as President & CEO of the National Constitution Center, Professor at The George Washington University Law School, Contributing Editor of The Atlantic and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is a highly regarded journalist whose essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, on National Public Radio, and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the 10 best magazine journalists in America and a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times called him “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.” He is the best-selling author of Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet, The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America, The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America, and The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America, which The New York Times called “the definitive text on privacy perils in the digital age.”
Inaugural event made possible through the generosity of Juliane Heyman.
