Students interested in privacy, technology regulation and digital rights will soon have a new academic home at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. The school has launched the Center for Technology and Justice, a research and advocacy hub designed to give students hands-on opportunities to tackle some of the most pressing issues in the information economy.
The center’s work will focus on challenges that increasingly shape the lives of young people and future lawyers: pervasive surveillance, data-driven harms, digital abuse and the loss of privacy in a tech-saturated world.
Through partnerships with advocacy groups and policymakers, the center aims to put students at the table where new laws and regulatory frameworks are being shaped.
“The law school has long been a hub for studying issues impacting law and society, as well as the changing impact of technology on law and our society,” said Austin Parrish, dean of UCI Law.
Professor Ari Waldman, the center’s director and a longtime scholar of privacy and digital power structures, emphasized the student-centered mission.
“Our goal is nothing short of developing a better way to understand and address the ways in which some technologies are doing harm to our kids, our freedom and our democracy,” Waldman said. “Our students will work closely with faculty to change the world.”
The center is structured around three core goals, all involving student participation for developing workable frameworks for regulating the information economy, nurturing cutting-edge scholarship and advocacy on information policy and re-imagining privacy in an era of ubiquitous surveillance.
