Enhancing child safety
HLS Professor John Palfrey ’01, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and vice dean, library and information resources, chaired a task force of academics, child safety experts and executives of technology companies—including Microsoft and Google—to assess the risks faced by youth on social networks. Created in February 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking, the task force issued a report this January, “Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies,” with recommendations for helping keep minors safe on the Internet.
Sander CLEO award
During its 40th anniversary celebration, the Council on Legal Education Opportunity celebrated Professor Emeritus Frank E. A. Sander ’52 and his efforts to increase minority students’ presence in law schools. In the mid-1960s, Sander and former Dean of Admissions Louis Toepfer ’43 organized a summer seminar program for minority students interested in law. The seminar led to the formation of CLEO and Sander became CLEO's first chairman. More than 7,000 students have since participated in CLEO programs nationwide.
Best books of the year
Two books by HLS professors were included on The Economist magazine’s list of “Books of the Year” for 2008: Noah Feldman’s “The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State” (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Cass Sunstein’s “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness” (Yale University Press, 2008), with Richard Thaler. An essay by Feldman, “Orthodox Paradox,” published in the July 22, 2007, edition of The New York Times Magazine, was also selected for inclusion in this year’s “The Best American Spiritual Writing” anthology. In its Jan. 5 issue, in an article titled “The Power of Ideas,” Newsweek magazine named Sunstein one of four thinkers “whose philosophies seem to have captured the intellectual moment.”
Student participates in Leaders Summit
Andrew Klaber J.D./M.B.A. ’10 attended the Asia Society’s third annual Asia Young Leaders Summit in Tokyo in November. Chosen from among nearly 1,000 nominees, Klaber was one of 160 emerging leaders from 30 Asia-Pacific countries and the U.S. who met with leaders from business, government, academia, media, civil society and the arts to address crucial issues facing the Asia-Pacific region. Klaber is the founder of Orphans Against AIDS, a nonprofit that provides academic scholarships and basic healthcare for children orphaned or affected by HIV/AIDS throughout seven Asian and African countries.
Immigration work honored
Clinical Law Professor Deborah Anker LL.M. ’84, director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, was recognized by the Central American Refugee Center in New York for her pioneering work on behalf of immigrants and refugees. The author of “Law of Asylum in the United States,” Anker has focused much of her work on gender and gender-related violence as a basis for asylum.
Urs Gasser joins Berkman Center
Urs Gasser LL.M. ’03, an associate professor of law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, has been named executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He succeeded John Palfrey ’01, who was appointed vice dean, library and information resources, at HLS. In 2005, Gasser was a faculty fellow at Berkman, where he worked on topics ranging from digital institutions to interoperability to youth and technology, including the creation of the annual “Learning a Foreign Language” seminar. From 2002 to 2004, Gasser was a research fellow at Berkman, where he worked primarily on the Digital Media Project.