Category Archives: U.Miami

On of the things I have to do as a result of serving as Director of Faculty Development for the law school is act as head cheerleader for the faculty's scholarly activities (another is to nag folks to put their writing on SSRN – an uphill struggle). We had our annual 'Celebration of Faculty Scholarship' reception yesterday, and I was told I would have to give a speech. Here's more or less what I said:

I'd like to thank Raquel Matas, Amy Leitman, and especially Robin Schard for all their work in making this event, and this brochure, possible.

The Dean Search Committee members can't be here as they have yet another meeting – just another example of the many demands on people's time that might draw them away from writing, conflicts that each of you listed here have overcome.

It's worth looking at this list of publications: it includes many things you might otherwise not know about – indeed a very substantial number of things that are not on SSRN…you know who you are, and you'll be hearing from me.

I mourn the death of our former custom of putting every offprint in every faculty mailbox – I understand why, for environmental reasons, this practice went out of fashion, but I wish people would more frequently at least put the abstract, or the intro, in a memo so we wouldn't have to wait until this list comes out to see what so many people have been up to.

More generally, as long as I'm wishing for stuff, I think that we as a community could probably stand to do more celebrating of achievements. But if we are still celebrating too few things, too infrequently, I am glad that this is one of the things we do celebrate: today we are celebrating our community's scholarship, which has a very special, very central place in our collective enterprise.

This afternoon, I was talking to Ben Depoorter, who's at that Dean Search meeting right now. I was urging him to drop by later if the meeting breaks up in time. Economist that he is, Ben went straight to the point: “At what time do they give out the prizes?”

I had to confess that, as far as I know, we will not be giving out prizes today.

But that's because those of you who are writing have in some sense already had the prizes: I mean of course the 50 free offprints.

No, more seriously, you have already had the prizes:

• the time to think,
• the time to write,
• the chance to speak truth to power (or, as the case may be, to shout “power” to truth),
• the chance to take part in a national or a global conversation,
• the chance make a difference in the world

You do this by your contributions to doctrine, to discourse, to law reform, to clarity of understanding and, yes, to truth, and in so doing you justify our claim to be in a university rather than a trade school, and to take our place in the great invisible college of thoughtful citizens and intellectuals.

I leave you with the immortal words of Oliver Twist, “More, please”.

I much prefer giving academic papers – it's so much easier.

Looks like I missed all the excitement. This all happened about three blocks from my house, but seeing this posted at Habla Mierda was the first I heard of it:

Even though it happened a month ago.

UM health ethics programs get global nod – 03/18/2008 – MiamiHerald.com The University of Miami has been name a World Health Organization Collaborating Center on ethics and global health policy, a prestigious designation that raises the school's profile on ethics research.

The decision by the Geneva-based WHO is a recognition of the school's Ethics Programs research on public policy in Latin America and the Caribbean, among other places.

“The WHO collaborating centers are institutions such as research institutes, parts of universities or academies, which are designated by the director-general to carry out activities in support of the organization's programs,” according to the WHO website.

There are more than 900 WHO collaborating centers in 99 member countries, working in areas ranging from chronic diseases to nursing. But only two other collaborating centers in the world specialize in ethics. UM's ethics programs are directed by [UM Business School] law professor Anita Cava and ethics professor Kenneth Goodman.

I'm currently involved in a project on ethical and legal issues relating to medical devices that communicate health data to and about patients with these folks. I would claim credit for having good taste in my choice of collaborators, except that they found me…

We hired three people out of the entry level pool this year, and I for one am very pleased with our haul:

• Caroline Corbin, JD 2001 Columbia University; Teaching Fellow, Columbia University
• Osamudia James, JD 2004 Georgetown University, Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin
• Markus Wagner, erstes juristisches Staatsexamen 2002 University of Giessen, JSM 2006 Law Stanford

Geniusofdespair confesses in Blogger hits University of Miami President Donna Shalala with a chair.

Note that I had nothing to do with this incident: We here on campus are still marveling at the $1.4bn President Shalala has raised for the “U”, so we're more likely to hit her with outstretched palms than anything else…

At Giving Papers at Miami, Visiting Professor John Flood has a description of what we're like in seminar.

We had fun. I'm glad he did too.