Newsroom Stories

Privacy lawsuits in the United States usually seek damages for revealing embarrassing but true facts by the media— the so-called “disclosure tort” — but this is a “poor vehicle for grappling with the problems of privacy and reputation in the digital age,” says Neil M. Richards, JD, privacy law expert and professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “The disclosure tort has never really worked successfully,” he says. “It’s largely unconstitutional.” Richards notes that there are two existing privacy law concepts that may be good supplements or even replacements to the disclosure tort.

Charles F. Kennel, PhD, chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ Space Studies Board, will deliver the fourth annual Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, in Room 100, Whitaker Hall, at Washington University in St. Louis. Kennel will discuss “Managing Climate Risk: Precarious Decades Ahead” during the free lecture that is open to the public.

Faculty and administrators are invited to submit proposals for program initiatives that strengthen and promote diversity and inclusion at Washington University. Projects aimed at improving the university environment for women and members of underrepresented minority groups can receive up to $30,000 through Washington University’s Diversity and Inclusion Grant program. The deadline for submission of 2011-12 proposals is Saturday, Nov. 5.

The White House announced Sept. 27 that Lan Yang, PhD, assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science of Washington University in St. Louis has been named a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers.The early career award is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

Following the Sept. 6 death of James E. McLeod, vice chancellor for students and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton has announced a transitional leadership plan for the College of Arts & Sciences. Sharon Stahl, PhD, associate vice chancellor for students and dean of the First Year Center, and Wayne Fields, PhD, the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Professor of English in Arts & Sciences, have agreed to take on the additional responsibilities of leading the College of Arts & Sciences on an interim basis.

It was an historic afternoon for the No. 2 volleyball team as the Bears picked up a 3-0 victory over New York University at the first University Athletic Association (UAA) round robin of the season at the Washington University Field House Oct. 2. Updates also available on men’s and women’s socer, women’s tennis, cross country and swimming and diving.

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With its poodle skirts, bouffant hairdos and withering irony, John Waters’ Hairspray (1988) feels almost timeless. It could be set at any point after which the 1950s had ceased to be cool. It is actually set in 1962, the year James Meredith became the first African-American admitted to the University of Mississippi. That historical grounding is at the center of a new staging of Hairspray: The Musical, the 2002 Broadway extravaganza based on Waters’ film, by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts has announced the recipients of its 2011 Faculty Creative Activity Research Grants. Four art and architecture faculty members will each receive between $1,000 and $8,000 to support a variety of projects. These range from research about the Elizabethan “Lost Colony” of North Carolina and a monograph on Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck to a mobile art studio traveling the Gulf Coast and new methods of architectural fabrication in Jakarta, Indonesia.