Andrew R. Randall Chair Investiture Ceremony and Lecture

Monday, February 9th
4:30 – 6:00pm
Boston University School of Law
Barristers Hall, First Floor

Please join us on Monday, February 9th, at 4:30pm for a reception in Barristers Hall for the Investiture of Woodrow Hartzog as the Andrew R. Randall Professor of Law.

Introductory remarks from Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Associate Dean Jessica Silbey, and Professor Stacey Dogan will begin shortly after 4:30pm, followed by the Inaugural Lecture from Woodrow Hartzog.

Please RSVP Here.

What If We Were Wrong About How to Protect Privacy? 

U.S. privacy law rests on three ideas: individuals should control their informational destinies; rules should target how others handle our data; and we should protect our most intimate, secret details from exposure. These concepts of individual control, limits on data processing, and privileging sensitive information are the backbone of modern privacy frameworks. But, as you may have noticed, things aren’t going great. Companies and governments now collect more information from more sources than ever, and lawmakers’ familiar responses haven’t helped. We have a record number of privacy rules and yet we have never been more exposed. Social media and artificial intelligence have pushed our privacy to the brink. This talk asks whether lawmakers missed the mark by prioritizing individuals, data processing, and sensitivity. More of the same will only dig us deeper into the privacy hole. A better approach looks to collective well‑being, design, and, perhaps counterintuitively, the ordinary and mundane.

Professor Woodrow Hartzog is internationally recognized for his work in privacy and technology law. His research focusing on personal data and the design of technologies has been published in numerous scholarly publications such as the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and California Law Review and popular national publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. He has testified multiple times before Congress on data privacy issues and served as a commissioner on the Massachusetts Special Commission on Facial Recognition.

Professor Hartzog is the author of Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies, published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, and the co-author of Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It, published in 2022 by Oxford University Press (with Daniel Solove). Professor Hartzog is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a Non-resident Fellow at The Cordell Institute for Policy in Medicine & Law at Washington University, an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and an External Affiliate of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University. He serves on the advisory board for the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Future of Privacy Forum.

Boston University strives to be accessible, inclusive and diverse in our facilities, programming and academic offerings. Your experience in this event is important to us. If you have a disability (including but not limited to learning or attention, mental health, concussion, vision, mobility, hearing, physical or other health related), require communication access services for the deaf or hard of hearing, or believe that you require a reasonable accommodation for another reason please contact Elizabeth Clancey (lawevent@bu.edu), please note that the Office of Disability Services requests 10 days notice to provide services.