A strange "intellectual property" tale:

francesco sisci	2:57 AM (4 hours ago)
to nonitaliani, italiani

The project of a harrowing movie on orphans adopted and sold on the internet thanks to a frightening legal loophole of the American system

see

http://www.theorphanclassifieds.com/
The Movie
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Contact
THE ORPHAN CLASSIFIEDS MOVIE
A film about America's underground online child exchange.


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us on
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Based on the true and horrifying stories behind America's online re-homing network.

Learn what you need to know about IP in my webinar next week:

Intellectual Property: A Key Asset Institutions of Higher Learning Can’t Afford to Squander

Best For: Higher Education
Date/Time: 3/05/2015, 1 PM Eastern
Duration: Scheduled for 90 minutes including question and answer session.
Presenter(s): James Ottavio Castagnera, Ph.D. and Attorney at Law
Price: $299.00 webinar, $349.00 CD, $399.00 webinar + CD. Each option may be viewed by an unlimited number of attendees in one room. CD includes full audio presentation, question and answer session and presentation slides.
Who Should Attend? Administrators, faculty, counsel

The 21st Century has heralded dramatic changes in higher education. In the words of Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, universities are “on the edge of the crevasse.” Author of The Innovative University, Dr. Christensen means that those institutions that fail to recognize and adapt to the challenges facing our aging industry will be in bankruptcy by the middle of the next decade.
The tweedy world of Mr. Chips in which colleges could afford to tolerate tenured faculty who taught a few days a week and devoted a few office hours to serving their students is a quaint, arcane memory. The tenured faculty represents the most significant investment of every college and university. And if this asset isn’t being used to maximum advantage, then it is a fiscal millstone dragging the institution down.
In addition to effectively deploying the faculty for teaching; research and grantsmanship are also essential. In areas of teaching and research intellectual property issues are paramount. With regard to delivery of instruction, the new technologies that led Dr. Christensen to make his provocative pronouncement require significant front-end investment and substantial ongoing support from the institution. Consequently, traditional, laissez faire customs concerning ownership of intellectual property are obsolete. The university has a vested interest in owning the IP of instructional delivery methods and content.
In the research realm, the artifacts of the creative process − scientific inventions, business and technology processes, and artistic productions − may be invaluable to the organization − provided the institution has a legally enforceable interest up front and a technology transfer function on the back end.
Please join Dr. James Ottavio Castagnera as he guides you through a discussion of the types of IP faculty members are producing and reviews legal and practical steps for your institution to take to protect its claims of ownership.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

Just a sampling of the many practical tips you’ll take away:

• Review the basics of IP: patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights
• Discuss competing rights of tenured faculty and their institutions
• Consider essential university policies
• Understand contractual considerations and model provisions
• Discuss vehicles of technology transfer
• Review procedures for partnering with third parties for delivery of instruction
• See how to go about protecting the institution’s brand: athletics and beyond
• Review the place of government grants in the IP mix
• AND MUCH MORE!

YOUR CONFERENCE LEADER

Your conference leader for “Intellectual Property: A Key Asset Institutions of Higher Learning Can’t Afford to Squander” is Dr. James Castegnera. Dr. Castegnera holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in American studies from Case Western Reserve University. Jim brings nearly three decades of experience in higher education to this webinar. Prior to law school he served Case Western Reserve as director of university communication. He went on to teach at the University of Texas-Austin, the Widener University Law School, and at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton Business School. Currently, and for nearly the past 18 years, he has been Rider University’s associate provost and legal counsel. His diverse duties include risk management, regulatory matters, faculty and student disciplinary cases, litigation management, governance and institutional policies.
He is the author of 19 books, including the Handbook for Student Law for Higher Education Administrators (Peter Lang, 2010, revised edition 2014) and Al Qaeda Goes to College: Impact of the War on Terror on Higher Education (Praeger 2009).
His teaching experience includes continuing legal education courses, MOOCs on the Canvas Network − including “Risk Management in Higher Education: Student Issues” − and presentations at numerous national forums, including the Annual Conference of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Annual Homeland Defense and Security Higher Education Summit sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School.

EducationAdminWebAdvisor.com QUALITY COMMITMENT

EducationAdminWebAdvisor, a division of DKG Media, LP, wants you to be satisfied with your webinar. If this webinar does not meet your expectations, email us atservice@educationadminwebadvisor.com.

CERTIFICATES OF PARTICIPATION

Will CHina succeed in replacing the US as the sole superpower?

francesco sisci	3:06 AM (4 hours ago)
to nonitaliani, italiani

BOOK REVIEW
China's ambition
not quite a 'plan'
The Hundred-Year Marathon
by Michael Pillsbury
 (Feb 27, '15)
Will China succeed in overtaking the US as the top superpower by peaceful means? Michael Pillsbury, in his book subtitled "China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower", warns that there is such a plan, but is it not, rather, a vague ambition such as is harbored by all states and people alike to one day become great? Still, Pillsbury might have the wrong answers, but perhaps he asks some of the right questions. - By Francesco Sisci 

it continues at

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-270215.html

Sisci
+8613901044877
fsisci@gmail.com
www.sisci.com

http://www.amazon.com/Attorney-At-Large-Columns-Reviews/dp/1453831827/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&qid=1408803528&sr=8-21&keywords=castagnera

Should colleges call the cops?

This article asks why there are few drug arrests on private-college campuses.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/27/how-institutions-handle-drug-violations-varies-greatly

I can tell you that at my institution the normal practice is to bring in the local PD.  But apparently not all private schools see it that way.

http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do;jsessionid=85105782F0DB67AB7E142B0FB74A6303?N=16+4294922239+4294966221+61+4294949511&Ntk=P_EPI&Ntt=9344367867050971981083213667162986711&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial

Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse...

University administrators: Brace yourself for the College Accountability and Safety Act:
http://chronicle.com/items/biz/pdf/Campus%20Accountability%20and%20Safety%20Act%20-%20114th%20Congress.pdf
An outsider might be forgiven for thinking that college campuses are inner-city ghettos.

http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=77271&cid=5&concordeid=312466

But can you take the rank out of college rankings?

Some new entrants in the ranking game focus on how grads make out after they enter the real world.
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Ever-Growing-World-of/190437/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
This makes the most sense to me.

On their national day of protest, many adjunct faculty staged sit-ins or other forms of dissent...

... but few institutions experienced a walk-out en masse.  Still, the organizers are declaring this first-ever event a success.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/26/adjuncts-deem-national-walkout-day-success

http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do;jsessionid=F458CD05DA0ABCBA431D375389FB9A6E?N=16+4294922239+4294966221+61+4294949511&Ntk=P_EPI&Ntt=9344367867050971981083213667162986711&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial

Are students with disabilities being left behind by high-tech teaching?

A new book suggests this may be the case.
http://chronicle.com/article/As-High-Tech-Teaching-Catches/190341/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=77271&cid=5&concordeid=312466

My March Webinars:

Intellectual Property: A Key Asset Institutions of Higher Learning Can’t Afford to Squander

Best For: Higher Education
Date/Time: 3/05/2015, 1 PM Eastern
Duration: Scheduled for 90 minutes including question and answer session.
Presenter(s): James Ottavio Castagnera, Ph.D. and Attorney at Law
Price: $299.00 webinar, $349.00 CD, $399.00 webinar + CD. Each option may be viewed by an unlimited number of attendees in one room. CD includes full audio presentation, question and answer session and presentation slides.
Who Should Attend? Administrators, faculty, counsel

The 21st Century has heralded dramatic changes in higher education. In the words of Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, universities are “on the edge of the crevasse.” Author of The Innovative University, Dr. Christensen means that those institutions that fail to recognize and adapt to the challenges facing our aging industry will be in bankruptcy by the middle of the next decade.
The tweedy world of Mr. Chips in which colleges could afford to tolerate tenured faculty who taught a few days a week and devoted a few office hours to serving their students is a quaint, arcane memory. The tenured faculty represents the most significant investment of every college and university. And if this asset isn’t being used to maximum advantage, then it is a fiscal millstone dragging the institution down.
In addition to effectively deploying the faculty for teaching; research and grantsmanship are also essential. In areas of teaching and research intellectual property issues are paramount. With regard to delivery of instruction, the new technologies that led Dr. Christensen to make his provocative pronouncement require significant front-end investment and substantial ongoing support from the institution. Consequently, traditional, laissez faire customs concerning ownership of intellectual property are obsolete. The university has a vested interest in owning the IP of instructional delivery methods and content.
In the research realm, the artifacts of the creative process − scientific inventions, business and technology processes, and artistic productions − may be invaluable to the organization − provided the institution has a legally enforceable interest up front and a technology transfer function on the back end.
Please join Dr. James Ottavio Castagnera as he guides you through a discussion of the types of IP faculty members are producing and reviews legal and practical steps for your institution to take to protect its claims of ownership.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

Just a sampling of the many practical tips you’ll take away:

• Review the basics of IP: patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights
• Discuss competing rights of tenured faculty and their institutions
• Consider essential university policies
• Understand contractual considerations and model provisions
• Discuss vehicles of technology transfer
• Review procedures for partnering with third parties for delivery of instruction
• See how to go about protecting the institution’s brand: athletics and beyond
• Review the place of government grants in the IP mix
• AND MUCH MORE!

YOUR CONFERENCE LEADER

Your conference leader for “Intellectual Property: A Key Asset Institutions of Higher Learning Can’t Afford to Squander” is Dr. James Castegnera. Dr. Castegnera holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in American studies from Case Western Reserve University. Jim brings nearly three decades of experience in higher education to this webinar. Prior to law school he served Case Western Reserve as director of university communication. He went on to teach at the University of Texas-Austin, the Widener University Law School, and at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton Business School. Currently, and for nearly the past 18 years, he has been Rider University’s associate provost and legal counsel. His diverse duties include risk management, regulatory matters, faculty and student disciplinary cases, litigation management, governance and institutional policies.
He is the author of 19 books, including the Handbook for Student Law for Higher Education Administrators (Peter Lang, 2010, revised edition 2014) and Al Qaeda Goes to College: Impact of the War on Terror on Higher Education (Praeger 2009).
His teaching experience includes continuing legal education courses, MOOCs on the Canvas Network − including “Risk Management in Higher Education: Student Issues” − and presentations at numerous national forums, including the Annual Conference of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Annual Homeland Defense and Security Higher Education Summit sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School.

EducationAdminWebAdvisor.com QUALITY COMMITMENT

EducationAdminWebAdvisor, a division of DKG Media, LP, wants you to be satisfied with your webinar. If this webinar does not meet your expectations, email us atservice@educationadminwebadvisor.com.

CERTIFICATES OF PARTICIPATION

********************************************

Student Handbook: A Crucial Higher Education Risk Management Tool

Best For: Higher Education
Date/Time: 3/12/2015, 1 PM Eastern
Duration: Scheduled for 90 minutes including question and answer session.
Presenter(s): James Ottavio Castagnera, Ph.D. and Attorney at Law
Price: $299.00 webinar, $349.00 CD, $399.00 webinar + CD. Each option may be viewed by an unlimited number of attendees in one room. CD includes full audio presentation, question and answer session and presentation slides.
Who Should Attend? Administrators, faculty, staff, higher education counsel

The 21st Century has heralded dramatic changes in higher education. Among them is the transformation of students and their parents into savvy consumers. They are buying a product − a diploma, a certification, a license to practice a profession − and they have many more options in the marketplace than ever before. The product you offer is expensive and your consumers demand that you deliver. Otherwise, at best they’ll go to another institution. At worst, they’ll sue you. Somewhere in the middle, your disciplinary actions may just be subject to challenge, but, even in this situation, without a well written and defensible student handbook in place your institution may find it difficult to defend its student disciplinary decisions.
This new business environment colleges and universities find themselves in demands that the institution’s handbook be a carefully crafted document, designed to deal with the multitude of unpredictable, but inevitable, issues that arise within a community comprised of bright but mostly young clientele.
The student handbook is a crucial piece of the contractual relationship between the institution and its students. As such, it can be a trap that ensnares the institution in a costly legal net. Or it can be a shield, protecting the school and its trustees, officers and employees from lawsuits, as well as publicity debacles. It all depends upon how thoughtfully and effectively the document is crafted − how well the institution’s faculty and staff are trained to use it − and how thoroughly it is integrated into the campus culture. Please join Dr. James Ottavio Castagnera for a review of both the risks and protections which student handbooks are intended to provide and a review of the policies which your student handbook should include.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

Just a sampling of the many practical tips you’ll take away:

• Review student disciplinary rules and regulations
• Understand the role of residence life in enforcing the rules
• Know the role of security/public safety in enforcing policies
• Discuss the student judicial process: from initial investigation of the charges to appeal of the discipline imposed
• Discuss special, highly sensitive topics: harassment, bullying and sexual assault
• Understand how academic standards and standing come into play
• Discuss academic integrity and honor systems
• Consider students’ roles in university governance
• Find out how student organizations and activities come into play
• Understand how financial obligations and financial aid issues may be affected
• AND MUCH MORE!

YOUR CONFERENCE LEADER

Your conference leader for “Student Handbook: A Crucial Higher Education Risk Management Tool” is Dr. James Castegnera. Dr. Castegnera holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in American studies from Case Western Reserve University. Jim brings nearly three decades of experience in higher education to this webinar. Prior to law school he served Case Western Reserve as director of university communication. He went on to teach at the University of Texas-Austin, the Widener University Law School, and at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton Business School. Currently, and for nearly the past 18 years, he has been Rider University’s associate provost and legal counsel. His diverse duties include risk management, regulatory matters, faculty and student disciplinary cases, litigation management, governance and institutional policies.
He is the author of 19 books, including the Handbook for Student Law for Higher Education Administrators (Peter Lang, 2010, revised edition 2014), which is available at Your text to link… and Al Qaeda Goes to College: Impact of the War on Terror on Higher Education (Praeger 2009).
His teaching experience includes continuing legal education courses, MOOCs on the Canvas Network − including “Risk Management in Higher Education: Student Issues” − and presentations at numerous national forums, including the Annual Conference of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Annual Homeland Defense and Security Higher Education Summit sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School.

EducationAdminWebAdvisor.com QUALITY COMMITMENT

EducationAdminWebAdvisor, a division of DKG Media, LP, wants you to be satisfied with your webinar. If this webinar does not meet your expectations, email us atservice@educationadminwebadvisor.com.

CERTIFICATES OF PARTICIPATION

Former students of the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges are conducting a debt strike

They are demanding relief, following the DOE's torpedoing of the company.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/24/student-activists-call-%E2%80%98debt-strike%E2%80%99-against-federal-loans-they-incurred-embattled

http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do;jsessionid=53F7E6BC7A50713559818AB7DC19F155?N=16+4294922239+4294966221+61+4294949511&Ntk=P_EPI&Ntt=9344367867050971981083213667162986711&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial

A state-by-state Breakdown of college graduation rates from the National Student Clearinghouse

http://chronicle.com/article/State-by-State-Breakdown-of/145379/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=77271&cid=5&concordeid=312466

A study shows that the people with the most clout in education are not the people with the greatest expertise.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/do-the-loudest-expert-voices-on-education-have-the-least-expertise/94441?cid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

Apparently wealthy donors want to have a big impact and be a big name on campus.

This report concludes that mega-gifts are on the rise but gifts over $1 million are getting to be fewer in number.
http://martsandlundy.com/reports-commentaries/ml-special-reports/2015/02/1m-gifts-to-higher-education-a-look-back-at-2014

http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do;jsessionid=8764AD1F82C00E50BB9A099C5B4F0711?N=16+4294922239+4294966221+61+4294949511&Ntk=P_EPI&Ntt=9344367867050971981083213667162986711&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial

A sting operation involving a quid pro quo proposition

According to law enforcement authorities, this guy was advertising on Craig's List for students who would give sex in return for scholarships.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/20/financial-aid-director-north-idaho-college-arrested-offering-scholarships-sex

After he lawyers up, he might want to subscribe to my "Termination of Employment" book and bulletin.  He will need it.

http://legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/law-products/Treatises/Termination-of-Employment/p/100000480

This writer contends that concealed handguns are ineffctive in combatting campus rape:

http://chronicle.com/article/Concealed-Handguns-Mainly-Miss/190233/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

http://www.amazon.com/Attorney-At-Large-Columns-Reviews/dp/1453831827/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&qid=1408803528&sr=8-21&keywords=castagnera

Jim Castagnera: What we learned from Kent State

What we learned from Kent State:

Legal liability for the Virginia Tech massacre: lessons of earlier mass shootings?

Jim Castagnera

Part 1 in a series

The April 16^th Virginia Tech massacre sent editors and writers scurrying to their microfiche and video vaults, and lawyers to case law.

Jim Castagnera

The very day of the tragedy, CBS News recalled the mother of all campus mass-murders – the August 1, 1966, slaughter of 16 by a sniper from the top deck of the University of Texas Austin’s landmark tower.
But arguably America’s most notorious campus killing spree was the May 4, 1970 shooting of 13 students in about as many seconds on Kent State’s campus.  It has retained the public eye into the new millennium, thanks chiefly to a 2001 Emmy-winning documentary and Reporter-Novelist Philip Caputo’s 2005 book.
In the lingo of American tort (that is, personal injury) law, Virginia Tech more closely resembles the University of Texas. Both campuses were victimized by an unexpected and entirely unwanted intruder. If either institution, its officials and safety forces are legally liable, then the basis must be negligence – some common-law sin of omission. University executives should nonetheless familiarize themselves with the range of civil liabilities they may face in such dire circumstances.
Kent State legally different than Texas or Virginia Tech
Kent State’s shootings implicated higher levels of legal liability … on both sides of the gun barrels. First, contrary to the clear innocence of the shooters’ victims at U.T. and V.T., an argument could be (and, in fact, was) made for student culpability in the tragedy of the K.S. Commons. Likewise, state officials from the governor of Ohio down to the president’s office at the university shared in the decisions that led to four dead and nine wounded students.
On May 1, 1970, students demonstrated against Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. On May 2, a mob burned the Army ROTC barracks on campus. The following day, the Ohio Riot Act was read and tear gas fired, before the students abandoned the campus Commons. A day later, the Ohio National Guard fired into the reconstituted campus crowd.
Immediately after the shootings, officials attempted to blame the protesters. On May 15, the Portage County Prosecutor displayed a shotgun, a pistol, machetes, cap pistols, slingshots and BB guns confiscated from dorm rooms. The ACLU labeled the search illegal and its fruits “meager.”
On June 6, the Ohio legislature enacted a campus riot law, which took effect in the fall.

The legal tide seemed to turn on June 10, when the parent of a dead student filed suit in federal court, asking $6 million against the governor and the guard commanders for “intentionally and maliciously disregarding” students’ safety. On June 23, a U.S. Department of Justice report concluded the shootings “were not necessary and not in order.” Wrongful death suits followed from the other three decedents’ families.
Meanwhile, the pendulum took another swing, as a special grand jury indicted students and faculty for riot, assault and incitement. After unsuccessfully fighting the charges all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, a number of these defendants were eventually fined and imprisoned.
All four of the wrongful-death actions were dismissed on the ground of Ohio’s sovereign immunity from suit. But in 1974 the U.S. Supreme Court held in Scheuer v. Rhodes, an action by the family of one victim, that  Governor Rhodes and other individual state actors, including Kent State’s president, could be sued.  State immunity, said the Supremes, is “no shield for a state official confronted by the claim that he had deprived another of a federal right under color of law.” Meanwhile, eight guardsmen were indicted on civil rights charges by a federal grand jury; all were eventually acquitted.
In 1975’s Krause v. Rhodes, which consolidated all four decedents’ wrongful death claims, a federal jury found the defendants not liable by a 9-3 vote, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new trial. As legal wrangling over campus construction that would obliterate the scene of the shootings dragged on, the parties settled for $675,000 in 1979. The four families had sought a grand total of $46 million.

While the settlement amount was relatively small, the cost to Kent State was enormous in terms of legal costs, distraction from the core mission, faculty imprisonment and damage to the school’s reputation.

 http://www.todayscampus.com/articles/load.aspx?art=218

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When is it cheating and when is it collaboration?

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/19/u-illinois-urbana-champaign-backs-down-legal-threat-against-code-repository

If you too wrestle with this issue, consider signing up for my April webinar on this topic:

Cheating and Plagiarism in the New Age of Texting, Tweeting, Googling and Mash-Ups: Guidance for How to Respond to This Pervasive Higher Education Problem

Best For: Higher Education
Date/Time: 4/23/2015, 1 PM Eastern
Duration: Scheduled for 90 minutes including question and answer session.
Presenter(s): James Ottavio Castagnera, Ph.D. and Attorney at Law
Price: $299.00 webinar, $349.00 CD, $399.00 webinar + CD. Each option may be viewed by an unlimited number of attendees in one room using one unique login. CD includes full audio presentation, question and answer session and presentation slides.
Who Should Attend? Administrators, faculty, staff, higher education counsel

The sub-culture of cheating remains the most pervasive problem confronting institutions of higher learning today. A 2012 survey of 23,000 students revealed that 51% of college students admitted cheating on an exam and/or other assessment one or more times during the preceding academic year. Common methods of cheating included:

• Downloading papers from the Internet
• Using a smart phone to browse the web during a test
• Texting answers back and forth
• Saving notes on a phone for use during a test
• Photographing test papers for posting on line
• Hiring a surrogate to take an online test
• Cutting and pasting materials from websites

Today’s smart phone savvy students mistakenly believe the “if your smart phone lets you do it, it must be all right.” Such practices threaten the academic integrity on which our education system is based, and represent infractions which colleges and universities are continuously battling to control. A strong defense, however, begins with strong policies and techniques for preventing and detecting plagiarism and cheating, as well as a program for covering due-process requirements for investigating, adjudicating, and sanctioning violations of academic integrity. At the same time effective enforcement must be balanced with risk management and litigation avoidance. Responding to a charge of cheating or plagiarism can be difficult, but getting it wrong can not only impact a student’s rights, but also result in possible lawsuit for the institution. Please join Dr. Jim Castagnera, managing director of K&C HR Enterprises and legal counsel at Rider University. Dr. Castagnera is highly experienced in issues of academic integrity, being the long-time chair of Rider’s Academic Integrity Committee as well as the school’s responsible official for research integrity. He will offer guidance for making sure that your academic integrity policies and practices are up to today’s challenges.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

Just a sampling of what this webinar will cover:

• The most popular methods used by cheaters
• How to detect and how to prevent violations
• Best practices and policies in the realm of academic integrity
• Due process requirements for investigation, adjudication and sanctioning of violations
• The latest lawsuits involving Academic Integrity issues and how to prevent them at your university
• AND MUCH MORE!

YOUR CONFERENCE LEADER

Your conference leader for “Cheating and Plagiarism in the New Age of Texting, Tweeting, Googling and Mash-Ups: Guidance for How to Respond to This Pervasive Higher Education Problem” is Dr. James Castagnera. Dr. Castagnera holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in American studies from Case Western Reserve University. Jim brings nearly three decades of experience in higher education to this webinar. Prior to law school he served Case Western Reserve as director of university communication. He went on to teach at the University of Texas-Austin, the Widener University Law School, and the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton Business School. Currently, and for nearly the past 18 years, he has been Rider University’s associate provost and legal counsel. His diverse duties include risk management, regulatory matters, faculty and student disciplinary cases, litigation management, governance and institutional policies.

He is the author of 18 books, including the Handbook for Student Law for Higher Education Administrators (Peter Lang, 2010, revised edition 2014), which is available at Your text to link… and Counter Terrorism Issues (CRC Press 2013).

His teaching experience includes continuing legal education courses, webinars and presentations at numerous national forums, including the Annual Conference of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Annual Homeland Defense and Security Higher Education Summit sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School.

EducationAdminWebAdvisor.com QUALITY COMMITMENT

EducationAdminWebAdvisor, a division of DKG Media, LP, wants you to be satisfied with your webinar. If this webinar does not meet your expectations, email us atservice@educationadminwebadvisor.com.

CERTIFICATES OF PARTICIPATION

Four examples of colleges coping with crises...

...compliments of the Chronicle of Higher Education:

1.  How a whole campus rallied behind a budget-cutting exercise
http://chronicle.com/article/How-One-Campus-United-Behind-a/190027/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

2.  Another school puts its students to work to help them and themselves
http://chronicle.com/article/A-College-Puts-Students-to/190175/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

3.  An Historically Black University rebounds from recent disasters
http://chronicle.com/article/Its-Future-in-Doubt-South/190179/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

4.  And a judge orders San Fran City College's accreditor to go back and take a second look
http://chronicle.com/article/Its-Future-in-Doubt-South/190179/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

China at the crossroads?

francesco sisci	3:05 AM (6 hours ago)
to nonitaliani, italiani

SINOGRAPH
China at rule-of-law turning point (Feb 18, '15)

Establishing the rule of law is one of the pillars of Chinese President Xi Jinping's reform program and surely one of the most important, for without confidence in the legal system many other things will go wrong. The new emphasis on the rule of law implies a deep cultural shift, from traditional reference points of clan and emperor to the Western concept of a public entity. China cannot go back from there. - Francesco Sisci

Establishing the rule of law is one of the pillars of Chinese President Xi Jinping's reform program, and surely one of the most important, for without confidence in the legal system, many other things will go wrong. Private capital markets depend on the rule of law, but the problem goes deeper: if ordinary citizens do not believe in the fairness of the legal system, they will feel less like citizens and more like imperial subjects. Social cohesion depends on the rule of law.

For China, the rule of law is a modern concept and to a great extent a Western import. In the Western model, the efficacy of law requires a sense of responsibility towards the state on the part of ordinary citizens. It is not simply a matter of the state providing justice from the top down, but rather a complex of mutual obligations between state and citizens.

Precisely this sense of responsibility for the state is difficult to identify in traditional Chinese culture. The obligations of traditional China were compelling: the Chinese had a strong sense of duty to family, to friends, to the emperor, to the boss. The modern concept of "state" itself is an innovation for the Chinese. The standard Chinese translation of "state," namely guojia, does not capture the meaning of a term derived from the verb "to be." Instead, the term guojia derives from the words for families/clans (jia) and walled territory (guo).[1]

The new Chinese emphasis on the rule of law (yi fa zhi guo) implies a deep cultural shift, from the traditional reference points of clan and emperor to the Western concept of a public entity (res publica), or public state of being (state), with its attendant rights and duties and civic responsibilities. In Western history, civil responsibility is the other side of the coin of civil rights. This notion of civic responsibility is critical to China's future success, and challenges the way Chinese have thought of society for millennia.

In the mainland Chinese view, the law is a formality and often a hindrance: doing things according to the law is inefficient, slow, and uncertain in its outcome. The law is something to be circumvented through power relationships that cut through hindrances. Yet the Chinese look to other societies where the rule of law prevails as exemplars of what they hope China might become.

Survey data suggest that the "Chinese dream" for many Chinese is to live in a land like America, that is, a country where citizenship is filled out with rights and responsibilities. By contrast, many Chinese have no sense of belonging with respect to China's state. They have a strong sense of Chinese identity, to be sure, and strong roots in Chinese culture, but their attachment to the Chinese state is marginal.

China for many is an opportunity to make their fortune. But apart from a strong sense of a common culture and the opportunity to build wealth, they have little affection for, or a sense of protection from the Chinese state or its laws. In China there is a perception often that power without impartial laws and without responsibilities is capricious.

On the other hand, a population accustomed for centuries to the unrestrained exercise of imperial power will have little sense of responsibility or duty towards the common good of the country represented by the institutions of the state. There is no fabric of civic rights and responsibilities which delimit the action of the state, so that the risk always remains present that the state can run amok with the exercise of naked power.

Without a popular sense of civic responsibility, the state must use unlimited power to restrict the unrestrained power of individuals to act in ways harmful to others (for example through corruption). But the same unlimited exercise of state power suffocates the lives of ordinary people, who respond by undermining it or running away from it. That is the vicious circle of state power that the "rule of law" reform proposes to break. But perhaps to have a glimpse of the complexity of this issue we have to take a big step back into Western tradition, and the Chinese ancient culture.

In China's reading of Western history, rule of law derives from Roman law; one may differ with this view, but it provides a clear basis for contrast with China. The study of Roman law has been central to China's reform efforts since the 1980s. The specific mix of rights and responsibilities is expressed in the relationship between the Roman state and the pater familias ("father of the family" or "owner of the family estate/assets"), the model Roman citizen.

The pater familias had a series of rights related to the members of his family and the state, but he also had a series of obligations toward his family members and the state. From that came the modern conception of a citizenry with rights and responsibilities, a word that comes from "response": in response to one's rights, one has to do something. The pater familias with his rights and responsibilities made up the basic building-block of the res publica, the public/common thing, the name of the Roman state, where its ancient citizens shared a sense of equality, were all the same before the law as they were all the same in the battlefield arrayed in the ancient phalanx.

The principle survives even today: you do something you are required to as a citizen and thus you are entitled to your rights. Rights do not come gratis; they are a kind of "compensation" for performing your responsibilities, obligations, and duties. However, once you perform your duties you are entitled to your rights, and if you do not get them there is a kind of "breach of contract," and you are entitled to protest and claim your due.

Roman laws were conceived around these principles, that is, regulating rights and duties. Moreover, laws were conceived in Rome as derived from the customs of the older/better people (mores maiorum), possibly against the challenges to those customs posed by the new additions to the res publica, the plebeians and their allies (socies), a growing part of the Roman state. Leges (laws) derives from the word legare, to bind the res publica together with a form of equality before the law, in keeping with the understanding of the state as a "public thing."

In classical China, there were no citizens. Everything started from the concept of state (guo or bang), which at the beginning was a walled city, later extended to a walled-in territory, managed in a very strict manner to maximize social and political order, tax revenues, and military service. The unified empire of Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor, started with the annihilation of all other competing states and the superimposition on their former territories and people all the norms and standards of the Qin state (guo). Conquered people and territories were managed according to Qin's principles.

Within the state there were the emperor, his officials (senior or minor), and the common people, small and large farmers and the like. Notably, nothing was fixed. Through a system of exams or merit-based selection, common people could be elevated to higher positions and become officials. Moreover, periodic revolutions and invasions would topple emperors and their aristocracy, which would routinely change the top ruling class, bring social mobility, and grant stability for a few years or centuries.

But in this system, no-one had rights and responsibilities. Subjects were to do what they were ordered to do; they might hope to be rewarded in some way for obedience. Or if they were not satisfied, they could try to stage a revolution and hope to be successful and become emperors or imperial aristocracy. If they didn't obey the orders or failed to succeed in a revolution, they would face stark punishments.

Laws were in substance simple punishments - xing (penal law) is cognate with xing (shape), i.e. reshaping a person with mutilation (cutting the nose or ears) or tattoos - and rules for administration of the state. Therefore, since Confucius' time, punishments were for common people (xiao ren); the people above, gentlemen (junzi), were dealt with according to codes of courtesy (li). The word law (fa) in Chinese originates from the concept of standard for measurement: Qin's original standards and norms applied to all conquered people and territories, used together with "punishments" (xing). These were ways to enforce a norm, but included nothing that binds people together with some form of equality.

That is, there was no principle of responsibility in classical China, as there was no idea of rights, much less a structural link between responsibilities and rights.

The idea of rights and equality before an authority came to China in the early 20th century. Communist Party doctrine spoke of the rights of workers and peasants; after this came the broader (Western) idea of human rights. However, rights were structurally de-linked from responsibilities. The words rights (quanli) and responsibilities (zeren) do not have the meaningful linguistic link we find in their Latin counterparts.

In fact, despite the official use of of the concept of rights in modern China, we have a situation something like that of ancient China: there are two classes of people, one above the law and one below the law. Those above the law can negotiate the law and the law can be bent for them; the ones below the law are at the mercy of the ultimate law enforcer - not unlike the xing and li for the xiao ren and junzi of ancient times.

This creates two problems. The first is a contradiction between the social practice of these two layers of the population on one hand, and the official rhetoric claiming equality, and thus only one class of people (no xiao ren and junzi) with equal rights. The second problem, as noted, is that rights have no link to responsibilities.This decoupling, to be sure, has advantages for totalitarian states.

The link between rights and duties means that common people must obtain what is theirs if they perform their duties. If rights are given without a request for duties, then they can become privileges to be granted or denied based on the whims of power. Power has no duty to grant the duties it promises.

It was the communists who broke with China's traditional conception of the Chinese state and society, by promulgating the concept of rights for workers and peasants, according to Marxists tenets. Their vigorous campaign for such rights helped the communists gained popularity, and contributed to their victory in the Civil War against the Nationalists. Without the complementary idea of civic duties, however, the concept of rights introduced by the Communists remained a foreign Western import. The result was a perverse form of social contract, in which the people have rights but no responsibilities, and the state in consequence retains the old, arbitrary power of the imperial system.

Until the late 1980s, if for whatever reason I were unhappy with my office or how I was treated, I could fake all kinds of sickness and refuse to go to work. As long as I did not directly fight the state, the state did not bother about me. This led to immense inefficiencies that were addressed by "bribing" people, that is, giving them monetary rewards to perform what would otherwise, in a duty-rights system, be simply their duties.

This is no longer the case on such a large scale, but the problem is still there. Money is still the main motivator for actions in China, not responsibility towards one's job or the public welfare.

This also creates a situation where no law is paramount, and the law does not give a sense of protection to the people "below the law," who also have no sense of responsibility. Common people do not feel they belong to a "public entity," and the state largely has no obligation to common people. The absence of responsibility works two ways: common people have no sense of duty to the res publica, and the res publica is not common/public at all - in fact, it is the res, the thing of a few privileged people.

Again, this clash of old and modern state principles creates a number of problems. Common people have no sense of identification with the state that issues the laws, which are not yet laws of a res publica, but no longer the xing or li of ancient times.

To create such a sense of national responsibility would change the dynamic of power and the sense of the state in China.

People would be responsible to the state, and the state would be responsible to the people. That is the key to the "Chinese dream," which in crucial respects is not much different than the American dream. A deep implication is that this expression of the rule of law would structurally limit power, a crucial problem for present China. That is: the introduction of the conception of a sense of responsibility de facto would limit the concept of total power of the present Chinese State.

The trouble is that if power is without limit, in order to challenge this boundless power, one might not work for small changes but rather for total revolution - which is in fact the logic of past revolutions in Chinese history. On the other hand, to limit power with laws creates a broader base for state power, because it gives people hope that changes can occur, and that one can hope for the protection of the law from the errors committed by the state itself. Then the state becomes stronger.

This may explain why the Roman state, for all its deviations and occasional degeneration, persisted in one form or another for over 2000 years, from the fouding of the Republic in the 6th century BC to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Chinese dynasties, with their absolute power, lasted at most two or three hundred years.

It goes without saying that flourishing capital markets and a hospitable environment for Chinese investment overseas as well as foreign investment in China require the rule of law. Corporations as well as individuals need clarity about their rights and responsibilities with respect to the state.

The sanctity of contracts and the freedom of decisions to deploy capital also impose de facto limits on arbitrary intervention by the state in economic life - which is a necessary condition for freedom in any part of life. Corporations have rights (to be heard by fair courts and enjoy the protection of the law) as well as responsibilities (payment of taxes, honest dealings, and fair treatment of employees).

China, as I indicated earlier, made the leap away from the traditional Chinese conception of the state and its laws into the modern world at the time of the Communist revolution. Although communism may be a distorted expression of Western legal concepts, it nonetheless put China on the other side of a great divide between the traditional Chinese world and the Western system. China cannot go back from there: its economy cannot flourish without reforms, and all the reforms ultimately stand or fail on the rule of law.

Note:
1. The following article was first suggested by talk with Mu Chen. However, in the course of the years I have talked about the subject with many people but particularly with Mr Huang Feng, Mr Xu Guodong and Ms Fei Anling. To all of them I am grateful. All mistakes are in any case mine.

Francesco Sisci is a Senior Researcher associated with the Center for European Studies at the People's University in Beijing. The opinions expressed are his own and do not represent in any way those of the Center.