Technology Law as a Vehicle for Anti-Racism – Nov. 12-13

Student editors of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal have organized a remarkable symposium on “Technology Law as a Vehicle for Anti-Racism.” The two-day event, Nov. 12-13, is open to all and free of charge. Keynote speakers will be Cong. Ro Khanna and former FCC commissioner and acting chair Mignon Clyburn. Academic speakers include Bennett Capers, Anupam Chander, Kami Chavis, Colleen Chien, Maurice Dyson, Brandon Garrett, Elizabeth Joh, Safiya Noble, and Olivier Sylvain. They will be joined by practitioners from the Legal Aid Society of NY, Salesforce, Facebook, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the Federal Public Defenders Office, Hogan Lovells, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the USPTO according to Executive Director Berkeley Center for Law & Technology Jack Dempsey.

The preface for the agenda to the symposium adds:

“The nexus of technology and the law has played a major role in amplifying racial injustices in many of society’s institutions. The killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake, and many others by police just this past summer alone precipitated a new era of reckoning with the egregious treatment that Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color are subject to in the United States, including the ways modern technology has aided in this treatment. Even as demonstrators and social reformers took to the streets and the Web to protest these injustices, technologies were further weaponized to quell their voices.

But technology and the law can also be instruments for structural change. As future lawyers, the student leaders of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal (BTLJ) are eager to dissect the roles of technology law and policy and investigate how they can be channeled to serve the interests of racial justice.

We have invited leading and rising legal academics, policymakers, and activists to share their research and perspectives on the intersection of technology, law, and race. In conversation with one another, they will help us explore and propose options for anti-racist paths forward for the field of technology law. “

The agenda for sessions include:  “On Algorithmic Bias and Its Consequences for People of Color”; “On Net Neutrality, Communications Policy, and Their Impact on Minority Populations”; “On Online Speech, Online Harassment, and Section 230”; “Expanding Access to the Intellectual Property Ecosystem”; “On the Criminal Justice System; Evidence, Expert Testimony, and Race”; “On the Potential Conception of Privacy as a Civil Right”; “On Surveillance, Law Enforcement, and Race” and other sessions to be announced.

CLE (Continued Legal Education) credit is offered for this free event.

To register for one or both days, November 12 and 13 from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. log onto:  Technology Law Symposium