From the archives: Negotiation Conference at Texas

Date: 4/19/2002
Title: Coping with international conflict: From El Salvador and Ecuador to Jerusalem and Taiwan
Speaker(s): Roger Fisher
Location: University of Texas
Presentation type(s): Streaming video (Real Player)
From the announcement:

The lecture, entitled “Coping with international conflict: From El Salvador and Ecuador to Jerusalem and Taiwan”, will take place at 10:10 a.m. in the Townes Hall Charles I. Francis Auditorium and is open to the public. Seating capacity is limited, so please arrive early.
Fisher, the director of the Harvard Negotiation Project and the Williston Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, has 30 years of experience dealing with international conflict as an advisor and strategist. He advised both the Iranian and U.S. governments in negotiations for the release of the American hostages in l98l and helped design the process for the successful Camp David negotiations between President Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Begin of Israel. He met with the presidents of three of the five Central American countries in advance of the l987 Esquipulas II treaty on a regional peace plan and also was present in Guatemala City during the negotiations at the request of President Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala.

“Roger Fisher is a world-renowned expert on international law and international conflict, and has dedicated his career to analyzing and improving the way that organizations and governments deal with their differences,” said Jan Summer, executive director of UT Law’s Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution. “The Center is deeply honored to present Fisher, a Professor Emeritus of Harvard Law School, co-author of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In and the director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, as our keynote speaker.”

Fisher, who has taught at Harvard since l958, also worked for the U.S. Government in Paris, practiced law in Washington, D.C., and served as an assistant to the Solicitor General in the U.S. Department of Justice.

The lecture is sponsored by the UT Law’s Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution and is part of an annual symposium for the graduates of the Portfolio Program in Dispute Resolution. The Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution promotes the appropriate use of alternative dispute resolution by Texas governmental entities and provides ADR education and research to the UT community and the citizens of Texas.

From the archives: Alan Bersin @ Yale

Date: 4/16/2002
Title: Urban Public Education: Separate Again, Still Unequal (1:26:28)
Speaker: Alan D. Bersin
Location: Yale Law School
Presentation type: Streaming video (Real Player)

Alan Bersin delivers the Harper Fellowship lecture at Yale. Here’s the announcement:

Alan D. Bersin ‘74, the superintendent of public education for the San Diego Unified School District, will deliver the 2002 Harper Fellowship Lecture on “Urban Public Education: Separate Again, Still Unequal,” at YLS on Tuesday, April 16, at 4:30 p.m. in Room 127. The talk is free and open to the public, and a reception will follow in the Alumni Reading Room.

The Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in the case of Brown v Board of Education has become the basis of civil rights policy in the United States. But the case was originally brought to challenge a regime of segregation and inequality in the public schools. In his speech on Tuesday, Alan Bersin will describe his perspective–as a superintendent of a large urban school district, as well as a former U.S. attorney and YLS graduate–of “where the desegregation effort has left [the schools] after forty-eight years.”

Bersin’s talk, titled “Urban Public Education: Separate Again, Still Unequal,” will range from Supreme Court jurisprudence to actual applications in the classroom. He will describe a process since the Brown decision, by which many whites have fled urban districts, leaving concentrated poor and minority communities. Various efforts and initiatives have “tried to overcome the achievement gap,” he says, but we are still faced with resegregation and inequality of outcomes in education.

One trend in education that Bersin will discuss is the shift from the bell-curve view of education–expecting a spectrum of performance from students in a class–to a standards-based model, in which “every student in every grade is compared to a fixed standard.” And to measure how students are performing, school districts have developed detailed lists of standards. The problem, according to Bersin, is that “virtually nothing that goes on in the classroom has to do with standards.”

The biggest issue in public education is urban public education, says Bersin, and he’s involved in a “vigorous effort . . . to bring quality instruction into those schools where it is most needed.” He was appointed superintendent in San Diego in 1998, and brought an emphasis on reading and writing instruction and on teacher training. He recently received a four-year extension of his contract, but the daunting nature of his task is highlighted by the fact that, after 45 months in the job, he is the longest serving superintendent of a large urban district in the nation.

From the archives: George Ryan @ Yale (4/16/02)

Date: 4/16/2002
Title: Until I Can Be Sure: Reflections on the Administration of the Death Penalty
Speaker(s): George H. Ryan
Location: Yale Law School
Presentation Type(s): Streaming video (Real Player)
Knight Journalism Fellow Lecture, introduced by Marcia Chambers.

From the archives: Albie Sachs @ Yale

Date: 4/12/2002
Title: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1:41:07)
Speaker(s): Justice Albie Sachs
Location: Yale
Presentation Type(s): Streaming video (Real Player)

From the archives: Media and Society at Brooklyn

Date: 4/8/2002
Title: Media & Society: “Public Opinion in the News”
Speaker: Kathleen A. Frankovic
Location: Brooklyn Law School
Presentation type: Streaming video (Real Player)

From the archives: Tabb Investiture @ Illinois

Date: 4/5/2002
Title: Alice C. Campbell Investiture and Presentation of Medallions
Speaker: Charles J. Tabb
Location: University of Illinois
Presentation type(s): Streaming video (Real Player) high bandwidth, low bandwidth, Streaming audio (Real Player).

From the archives: Karlan @ Illinois (Baum)

Date: 4/1/2002
Title: Disarming the Private Attorney General
Speaker: Pamela S. Karlan
Location: University of Illinois
Presentation type(s): Streaming video (Real Player) high bandwidth, low bandwidth, Streaming audio (Real Player)