Rebooting Our Democracy

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig
Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics,
Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
Thursday, May 27th

Co-Sponsored by the Department of Film and Media Studies, the Dartmouth College Library, the Rockefeller Center, Dartmouth Computing Services and Research Computing, and ISTS

Abstract

Our democracy is broken. Reform has been stalled. In Washington, millions of dollars in campaign contributions continue to have influence in the halls of Congress. Professor Lawrence Lessig illustrates the connection between special interest money and critical policy decisions, explaining why past attempts at reform have gone nowhere. Professor Lessig then presents a way forward that brings together citizens of all backgrounds—left, center, and right—who are fed up with lobbyists’ influence in Washington. His lecture will show how this movement of united citizens can finally achieve an electoral system in which our leaders are accountable to no one but the People.

Bio

Lawrence Lessig is the director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Prior to returning to Harvard, he was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

For much of his career, Professor Lessig focused his work on law and technology, especially as it affects copyright. His current work addresses “institutional corruption” — relationships which are legal, even currently ethical, but which weaken public trust in an institution.

He has won numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation’s Freedom Award, and was named one of Scientific American’s Top 50 Visionaries. He is the author of Remix (2008), Code v2 (2007), Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). He is on the board of Creative Commons, MAPLight, Brave New Film Foundation, Change Congress, The American Academy, Berlin, Freedom House and iCommons.org, and the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. He has served on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, Free Press, and Public Knowledge. He was a columnist for Wired, Red Herring, and the Industry Standard.

Professor Lessig earned a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.