Media Mentions

The issue of climate change played almost no role in the 2012 presidential campaign. President Obama barely mentioned the topic, nor did the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. It was not raised in a single presidential debate. But as Mr. Obama prepares to leave office, his own aggressive actions on climate change have thrust the issue into the 2016 campaign...However, experts said, a new Republican president could simply stop implementing the regulations. “We’ve had lots of administrations that just stopped rules from previous presidents dead in their tracks — the Reagan administration did that with rules from the Carter administration,” said Jody Freeman, director of Harvard University’s environmental law program and a former counselor to Mr. Obama. “They could delay the rule, or withdraw it indefinitely,” she said. “They’d get sued, but they could drive a delay through a whole first term. It’s a rope-a-dope strategy.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry travels to Egypt on Sunday to renew the “strategic dialogue” between the countries that was cut off in 2009. From the standpoint of long-term U.S. national security interests, the renewal is a mistake. Leave aside Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi’s bad and worsening record on human rights and the trumped up convictions of Muslim Brotherhood leaders and rank-and-file. Forget the tragic message that the short-lived American support for Egyptian democracy is now thoroughly dead. What’s really troubling about the U.S.’s cozying up to Sisi is that it robs the American side of any leverage it might have with Egypt to pursue regional security goals, such as the creation of a stable Sunni coalition to defeat Islamic State.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The Taliban's smooth and rapid transition after their acknowledgment of Mullah Omar's death sends a strong message: They are afraid of the potential rise of Islamic State in Afghanistan if they fail to project unity. That reality should be useful to the U.S. government as it tries to negotiate a transition deal with the Afghan government and the Taliban. It's still true that the Taliban can demand something close to de facto control as part of the deal. But now, the Taliban have an incentive to talk that didn't exist before the rise of Islamic State. They have something to lose if the country devolves into congeries of competing warlord-controlled territories.

International boundaries in oceanic areas are often ambiguous and disputed, particularly in locations that are loaded with oil and gas reserves. This problem is beginning to hit close to home for the Texas energy sector as oil and gas exploration and production continue to advance into deeper waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Currently, both the United States and Mexico are trying to work out how to effectively find and exploit the prolific oil and gas reserves that sprawl beneath the complex international border located on the ocean floor, while honoring the other country's ownership interests. Dr. Richard McLaughlin, Endowed Chair for Marine Policy and Law at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, has collaborated with the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law at the University Law Center focusing on this issue. Guillermo J. Garcia Sánchez, a doctorate candidate at Harvard Law School, worked with McLaughlin researching this complex topic. The two authors recently released the first binational study examining the legal issues involved with exploring and exploiting transboundary offshore oil and gas deposits in the Gulf of Mexico.

David Grossman’s trifecta of Harvard diplomas — undergraduate, divinity school, law school — never saw the light of day. They might be lost somewhere in his sister’s basement, which was fine with Mr. Grossman, who had no taste for flaunting anything. “I once asked him if we could find his diplomas and hang them up and he said absolutely not,” recalled his wife, Stacy. “He was against self-praise of any kind. Whenever someone was bragging about themselves he would say to me or the kids ‘SPS,’ which means: ‘Self-Praise Stinks.’ ” Though he made his living through his Harvard Law School education, Mr. Grossman was guided on a social justice path by his faith and the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam — the shared responsibility to repair the world.

...Held on July 21st, Media Day at HarvardX brought together local reporters, internal media, colleagues from edX and MITx, and others interested in, well, what was new...The assembled cast of presenters, in addition to the edX CEO, included Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School...Fried, who wrapped v1 of his ContractsX course about six months ago, said he was “utterly mystified” by their high-level of engagement. His HarvardX course, featuring animated case studies on contact law, was designed for “anyone interested in one of the most fundamental human relationships, the contract, and definitely not for lawyers and especially not for law students.” Fried has taught at Harvard since the 1960s and has never experienced anything quite like teaching through edX, calling the entire process “utterly marvelous.” He hinted that he almost doesn’t want to know why 20,000 students signed up and about 20% of them completed his course (“one of the highest completion rates I have been told of any MOOC”). I suspect those of who know Fried from his MOOC and for those in the room listening to him revel in a few example cases, would agree that his dynamic presence and passion might be the draw that not only gets learners inside the tent but keeps them enraptured.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The upcoming decision by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on whether to break ties with the Boy Scouts of America over the admission of gay scoutmasters matters to the Scouts because, as of 2013, LDS-affiliates make up 17 percent of its membership. But the decision matters much more for the Mormon church itself. Throughout its history, the church has striven to integrate into American society while simultaneously preserving its distinctness. Scouting has been an important vector for LDS integration into mainstream American life. Replacing it with a church-run global substitute would mark a watershed turn away from integration and toward separation.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. I’m relieved that the nightmare of Jonathan Pollard’s imprisonment is about to be over. Not because I feel any sympathy whatsoever for the convicted spy who will be paroled in November after spending 30 years in prison. No, what relieves me is that, once he’s freed, we’ll be spared the spectacle of respectable American Jewish leaders calling for his early release. Those requests have been harmful to the principle that American Jews can be totally loyal Americans and also care about Israel. The end of this whole shameful episode is therefore cause not for celebration, but for relief.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Boston’s world-class universities and hospitals make it a globally significant metropolis. But its residents have rejected the cosmopolitan dream of hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics, causing the U.S. Olympic Committee to cut ties with the city Monday. The public intransigence wasn’t just an expression of fiscal caution. It was something deeper, a self-conscious embrace of provincialism as a value. And that raises a fascinating question: In a globalizing world, is there a place to be proudly provincial?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s been almost a century since T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt kicked the Ottomans out of Syria. Now the Turks are coming back, this time with U.S. air support, in a plan to establish a 60-mile-long buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border between the two countries. If the creation of a new mini-state within the borders of a Middle Eastern state seems worrisome, that’s because it is.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In 2010, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron began an experiment that he knew might not succeed. He created a new office, the Behavioural Insights Team, which would try to apply new understandings of human behavior to the work of agencies throughout government -- with the goal of saving 10 times as much money as the project cost. If BIT failed, it would be shut down within two years...Many people were skeptical about the idea. It seemed like a potential waste of taxpayers' money on a new research institute, and, to some, the very notion of using "behavioral insights" seemed vague and somewhat scary. Who wants government to be manipulating people's behavior? In five years, however, BIT has silenced the skeptics.

The state of Florida has declined to investigate a complaint from a mother whose baby died after heart surgery at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, which CNN found had a high mortality rate for pediatric open-heart surgeries from 2011 to 2013....I. Glenn Cohen, a bioethicist at Harvard Law School, said inspections like these are not meant to directly assess whether patients received the appropriate care, or try to find the cause of bad outcomes. He said site visits evaluate the systems around the care, such as whether doctors and nurses are licensed and whether operating rooms are cleaned properly. "The analogy would be to driving a car. Let's say you get into a lot of accidents, they would come and certify that the signals work and you've taken your driver's license test, but they don't actually look at your driving record," he said.

Law schools don’t prepare graduates for the financial realities they’ll face when their student loans come due, an American Bar Association task force has concluded after a year spent examining legal education costs. Next week, the House of Delegates will take up a proposal to fix that...Ken Lafler, assistant dean for student financial services at Harvard, said the law school boosted its financial programing in 2007 and continues to look for ways to educate students about personal finance. All graduating students must attend an hourlong small-group session on loan repayment, and one-on-one counseling is available, Lafler said. The school holds voluntary sessions on borrowing, budgeting and investing, and discusses loans during its admitted-students weekend. Convincing law students to pay attention presents a challenge, however. Many are preoccupied with classes, grades and career development, worrying about their loans only after they’ve taken the bar exam. “If you’re talking about a student with a free hour during the day, is attending a financial-planning session really what they’re choosing to do?” Lafler said. “Our students are extremely busy, and we want to be sensitive to that, which is why we’re loath to make sessions mandatory.”

Iran has the potential to be a boom market for American tech companies. The majority of the population is under 30 and well educated, and over half the country has access to the Internet. Many businesses have to wait until more sanctions are lifted, but certain tech companies can already go into Iran legally because the U.S. has lifted sanctions on various communication technology. They just aren't sure they want to...So, last year the Obama administration lifted sanctions on American tech companies that sell personal communication technologies. "It is fully legal to sell cellphones, laptops, tablets, modems, Wi-Fi routers and most of the software that most people use every day," says Vivek Krishnamurthy, who teaches at Harvard Law School. But, Krishnamurthy says, that hasn't meant that American tech companies have jumped into Iran — there's still no Apple Store there. "Doing business with Iran is extremely difficult today because of the comprehensive financial sanctions," he says. "It's really hard to get money in or out of the country."

An op-ed by Mark Roe. Do shoppers suffer too much in bankruptcy, or should they be expected to share the pain? Brick-and-mortar retailing is in upheaval. The Internet is changing the way people shop and buy, in case any brick-and-mortar retailer hasn’t yet noticed. Traditional retailers that can’t adjust quickly enough will end up in chapter 11. When one does, customers can face problems with their gift cards, warranty claims, return-if-not-satisfied privileges and assurances of privacy protection regarding their customer information.

It was a remarkable week for President Obama: On Monday he commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders; on Tuesday he called for sweeping criminal justice reform in an address to the NAACP; and on Thursday he became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison...“It’s shocking and surprising to see this kind of vision coming from the White House,” said David Harris, managing director of Harvard’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. “I can’t imagine any other president having the breadth of knowledge that he displayed. … To the extent that other presidents have used crime as a code for race, this president actually named some of the racial disparities that impact our communities in ways that others haven’t.”

The complaints that flooded into Texas Auto Center that maddening, mystifying week were all pretty much the same: Customers’ cars had gone haywire. Horns started honking in the middle of the night, angering neighbors, waking babies. Then when morning finally came, the cars refused to start...a check of the dealership’s computers suggested something more sinister at work: Texas Auto Center had been hacked...Physical injuries would make cases against manufacturers of connected devices far stronger, said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard law professor who is faculty director for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He predicted a coming wave of litigation relying on tort law, a foundational legal principle that can lead to large damage awards when the action of one person or company can be proved to have caused harm to another.“If my heart monitor fails and I die as a consequence, the company can’t say, ‘Oh, it was only software,’ “ Zittrain said. “That’s no defense. That’s not going to fly.”

After spending more than $50,000 in legal bills trying to win custody of her daughters, Amy Andrade ran out of money...“A presumption of joint physical custody is a bad idea,” Robert Mnookin, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-author of Dividing the Child: Social and Legal Dilemmas of Custody, told Boston.com. “It’s fine if the parents agree to it, but is terrible if they don’t.” In his book, Mnookin argues that shared parenting agreements where there is “substantial parental conflict” invite more legal conflict, not less, and children often feel even more caught in the middle of parental conflict than they do already.

If it seems like your airplane tickets cost too much this summer or your bank is overcharging you at the ATM, you might think about blaming your mutual fund. That is the startling—or maybe head-scratching—contention of some recent research that argues the top money-management companies have grown so large that they are indirectly stifling competition in other areas of the economy. In a paper posted online earlier this month, Einer Elhauge, a professor at Harvard Law School, asserts that concentrated shareholdings by such giant fund managers as BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, State Street and Vanguard Group “are likely to anticompetitively raise prices when the owned businesses compete in a concentrated market.”

Protesters who hijacked a presidential forum in Arizona last Saturday demanding that the candidates spend more time addressing problems in the black community left feeling dissatisfied. But a week later, what at the time felt like a disastrous disruption has supercharged the Black Lives Matter movement — and pushed Hillary Clinton and her rivals for the Democratic nomination to speak to the concerns of an African-American community that is enraged by high-profile incidents of police misconduct and is demanding that its voice be heard...It’s something [Martin] O’Malley seems to have realized. On Wednesday, he released a statement saying his “heart breaks for Sandra Bland and her family” and called for a “thorough and independent investigation of the traffic stop, the arrest and Ms. Bland’s tragic death in custody.” He also called Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree on Wednesday to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement and topics important to the African-American community, as part of a series of discussions ahead of unveiling his criminal justice platform.

So you want an escape from the city? One Harvard University-based startup, called Getaway, is looking to help city dwellers realize that goal by giving them the opportunity to rent a tiny house in the middle of nowhere. The startup, run by Harvard MBA student Jon Staff and Harvard Law student Peter Davis, officially launched today.