Featured Speakers

Upcoming Speakers:

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Past Speakers:

• April 1, 2008: Jonathan Zittrain: "The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It"
• April 16, 2008: Reed Hundt: "The Future of Telecommunications"
• April 23, 2008: Michael Sandel: "The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering"

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Jonathan Zittrain
Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University
Co-founder of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society

"The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It"

Tuesday, April 1, 2008
2:10p - 4:00p
Yale Law School
Room 127

Jonathan Zittrain holds the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University and is a principal of the Oxford Internet Institute. He is also the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Visiting Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, where he co-founded Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in 1996.  With students, he began Chilling Effects, a web site that tracks and archives legal threats made to Internet content producers. Google now sends its users to Chilling Effects when it has altered its search results at the behest of national governments.

His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture, and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education. He was co-counsel with Lawrence Lessig in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which challenged the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.  The case lost 7-2 at the Supreme Court.

He performed the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia in 2002, and now as part of the OpenNet Initiative he has co-edited a study of Internet filtering by national governments, "Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering."

His book about the future of the now-intertwined Internet and PC will be available in spring 2008 from Yale University Press and Penguin UK -- and under a Creative Commons license. Papers may be found at <http://www.jz.org>.

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Reed Hundt
Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Company
Former Chairman of the FCC

"The Future of Telecommunications"

Wednesday, April 16, 2008
4:10p - 6:00p
Yale Law School
Room 120

Reed Hundt is a senior advisor on information industries to McKinsey & Company, a worldwide management consulting firm in Washington, D.C. He serves on the board of Intel Corporation and other high-technology start-ups and is former chairman of the FCC. He is the author of You Say You Want a Revolution (Yale University Press, 2000) and In China's Shadow, The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship (Yale University Press, 2006).

As Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Reed Hundt was guided by two principles: first, that the FCC should make decisions based on the public interest and second, that the FCC should write fair rules of competition for the communications sector. In his first two years as Chairman, he was recognized for his leadership on issues ranging from spectrum auctions to children's education and programming to access for people with disabilities. (more)
 

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Michael Sandel
Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government
Harvard University

"The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering"

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
4:15p - 6:00p
Yale Law School
Room 127

Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature--to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature?

The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda.

In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America's preeminent moral and political thinkers.

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