Business & Entrepreneurship

WUSTL employees interested in going back to school are invited to attend a joint information session for graduate evening programs at Olin Business School and the Henry Edwin Sever Institute. Free and open to all employees, the event is at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 12, in the Danforth University Center, Room 276.

Leading privacy law experts from around the world will gather in Cambridge, England, on June 26 and 27 for the first International Privacy Law conference, a joint effort between Washington University in St. Louis School of law and the University of Cambridge. “Every modern society is confronting novel issues of privacy, and our conference brings together some of the smartest thinkers about privacy in the world to compare notes and come up with new solutions,” says Neil M. Richards, JD, conference co-chair and professor of law at Washington University. Conference topics will include intellectual privacy, the conflict between privacy and free speech, the psychology of privacy, public access to court records, and privacy reform in Australia.

Gregory P. Magarian, JD, professor of law, and Timothy D. McBride, PhD, professor of public health, both at Washington University in St. Louis, are available for expert commentary on the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act decision.

Ideas are all around us — helping solve problems, develop new products, and make important decisions. Good ideas are rarely created in a vacuum, however. They often emerge when people refine their ideas in response to suggestions and comments received from colleagues.Having strong bonds to an idea can make that necessary collaboration challenging, finds new research from Washington University in St. Louis. The study suggests that psychological ownership — the extent to which people feel as though an object, or idea, is truly theirs— may be at the root of this phenomenon.

With the ballot nearly set for the November election, Mitt Romney looks to become the first Mormon to secure a presidential nomination for a major party. His membership in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints assures that religion — and the separation of church and state — will play a significant role in this presidential election, says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, free speech and election law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “In general, I think it’s appropriate to consider a candidate’s religion as a part of their persona, but the candidate should get a lot of leeway in setting the terms of their religion’s role in political debate,” he says.

The economic model of law schools is broken, says Brian Z. Tamanaha, JD, JSD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and author of the new book, Failing Law Schools, published by the University of Chicago Press. “The best example to demonstrate this is that in 2010, the average debt of law students was $100,000 and the median salary was $63,000 — so a person who obtains the median salary cannot make the monthly payments on the average debt,” he says. “This involves thousands of law students. For the majority of law students, the cost of obtaining a law degree and the economic return on a law degree are out of whack.”

The Washington University in St. Louis-Fudan University Executive MBA program, ranked second in mainland China by the Financial Times, will celebrate its 10th anniversary May 25. Established in 2002 at Olin Business School, the program was among the first U.S.-China joint MBA degree programs.

Rising senior Justin Blau is on a mission. Blau, a finance major at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, is more widely known by his stage name, 3LAU. He plans to use his status as a rising star in the electronic music world to raise money for schools for underprivileged children in developing nations.

President Barack Obama recently announced the establishment of an Atrocities Prevention Board as part of his comprehensive strategy to prevent genocide and mass atrocities. “For the first time, the National Intelligence Council will prepare an estimate on the global risk of mass atrocities and genocide,” says Leila Nadya Sadat, JD, international law expert and director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “By sensitizing the diplomatic and intelligence communities to atrocities risk and systematizing responses to potential crises, the policies of the Atrocities Prevention Board could significantly change in U.S. foreign policy,” she says.

Individuals interested in addressing the relationship between crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression are invited to participate in the inaugural Benjamin B. Ferencz Essay Competition hosted by the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law. Contestants are encouraged to register for the competition at the competition’s website as soon as possible. The deadline for submission of entries is Friday, Aug. 31, 2012, at 5 p.m. (Central Daylight Time).