Upcoming Events

Sexual Misconduct on College Campuses: Justice and Due Process

A discussion with Cynthia Grant Bowman, Ph.D., J.D., Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Law, Cornell University Law School and Howard Kallem, J.D., Director of Title IX Compliance, Duke University.

Wednesday September 16, 2015, 4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m., Moot Courtroom, Case Western Reserve University School of Law, 11075 East Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44106-1769. Sponsored by the Office of the President, Office of Government and Community Relations, Department of Political Science, Center for Policy Studies, and School of Law. A reception will follow at The Law School.

Our annual Constitution Day program addresses one of the most controversial issues on university campuses. In response to many reports that universities did little to help victims of sexual assault on campus and to sanction perpetrators, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights in 2011 established new standards for how universities should respond to complaints. The Department has made making college campuses safer through this effort a major priority. As of August of this year, the OCR had 129 outstanding investigations, having already settled others. But the effort has been challenged by faculty who say universities' new policies manifestly abuse standards of due process. The critics have included some of the best-known legal scholars of women's issues in the country.

Join us as a prominent participant in the enforcement effort and a prominent critic discuss the issues, responding to questions from a panel of CWRU students.

The Revenge of the Nerds, and Other Dispatches from the Intellectual Property Wars

A Global Currents Lecture Discussion with Susan K. Sell, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, The George Washington University.

Monday October 5, 2015, 4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m., Case Western Reserve University, Tinkham Veale University Center, Senior Classroom A, 11038 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH. This program is made possible by the generosity of Ms. Eloise Briskin and sponsored by the Center for Policy Studies.

In the 1980s the United States government made negotiation and enforcement of strong “intellectual property” rights one of the guiding principles of its foreign policy. It was backed by major corporations and in many cases governments from developed nations. One stage was the 1994 Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), but TRIPS, as Susan Sell argues, in retrospect was only a step in a much more extensive series of restrictions that have been achieved in a series of forums since.

Yet this campaign has met major setbacks. In 2001 the WTO Doha Declaration underscored countries’ rights to put public health before patents. In 2012, legislation to restrict downloading, streaming, and file-sharing on the internet was breezing through Congress, until it was suddenly swamped by a tidal wave of net-based protest.

The newest battle in the now nearly Thirty-Years War about intellectual property involves the Trans-Pacific Partnership. What might we learn from the past about what could happen next? To help us understand the battle and the war, we will be joined by Professor Susan Sell, one of the leading scholars of the conflict.