Business & Entrepreneurship

Charlottesville, Va. recently became the first town in the U.S. to pass an anti-drone resolution, calling for a restriction on the use of the unmanned surveillance vehicles. “For drones, I think the problem is that they do have some legitimate law enforcement purposes, but they raise massive problems of invasion of privacy and government surveillance that we need to think through before we deploy drones in vast numbers in our skies,” says Neil Richards, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Lawyers recently have gained attention by seeking restitution from individuals convicted of viewing or downloading exploitative photos of children. “This ‘pay-per-view’ system further commodifies victims,” says Cortney Lollar, JD, clinical faculty at Washington University in St. Louis. She says that two key changes are in order: move from the current restitution system to the creation of a child pornography crime victims’ compensation fund, and devote more resources to preventing child sexual abuse.

Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School, in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel, and Onward Israel, is launching an Israel Summer Business Academy, aimed at providing students an opportunity to learn firsthand about business in Israel, one of the most vibrant hubs of entrepreneurship in the world.

If that headline doesn’t grab your attention, new research from Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School on the “Psychological and Sexual Costs of Income Comparison in Marriage”should. The study, by Lamar Pierce, PhD, professor of strategy at Olin, shows that men married to women with higher incomes are more likely to use erectile dysfunction medication than their male breadwinner counterparts.

Three teams, including the first all-undergraduate team to place, earned a total of $140,000 during the annual Olin Cup commercial business plan competition finals Jan. 30 in Simon Hall.

Attorney and women’s rights activist Sandra Fluke, who last February testified before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on the need to provide access to contraception, will kick off the spring lecture series sponsored by the Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 12, in Simon Hall’s May Auditorium.

The Public Interest Law and Policy Speakers Series continues Thursday, Feb. 7, with Arlie Hochschild, professor emerita of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, on “The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times ” at noon in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom (Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 310).​

As the financial crisis in America persists, government positions are being cut, causing motivation to spiral downward. How can worker motivation in government positions not hit bottom? Jackson Nickerson, PhD, the Frahm Family Professor of Organization and Strategy at Washington University’s Olin Business School, suggests employee motivation comes from three different sources: economic, social and emotional and ideological.

The widespread flu reports are a harsh reminder of the importance of influenza vaccines. This is particularly true for healthcare workers, says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “One-third of healthcare providers fail to protect themselves, their patients, and the public from influenza.” Sepper says that it is time for a national flu vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.

Many gun rights advocates have asserted that the Second Amendment – which protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms – serves a collective interest in deterring and, if necessary, violently deposing a tyrannical federal government. “The strength of this assertion is significantly weakened by the power of the First Amendment,” says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “We have spent almost a century developing the First Amendment as the main vehicle for dynamic political change. Debate and political expression is preferable to insurrection as a means of political change and our legal culture’s attention to the First and Second Amendments reflects a long-settled choice of debate over violent uprising.”