I love the First Amendment (and I can still deplore hateful speech).

Of course I'm angered and saddened about the increase in hateful speech across campuses (see today's latest story here).  I don't respect the people who say such awful things.  But I respect their right to say them.  Such speech reveals their darkest instincts, and acts as an early warning sign for me ("don't get too close to this person").

Someone asked me last week if I was going to interfere with hate speech.  I don't think it's appropriate to do so.  We could act on hateful actions that threaten other people's safety.  (Don't forget, though, that some actions are protected speech.)  We can act on actions that are against the law.  But sunlight is still the best disinfectant to reveal those people whose internal thought processes demonize others in an apparent, and probably unsuccessful, attempt to improve their own self-image issues.  And I refuse to demonize those whose political views are different from mine.

I'm getting a bit tired of being told that I have no idea what it's like to be yelled at, cursed, spit on, etc.  I actually do know quite a lot about what that's like.  I grew up in deep East Texas as a Jew.  I got hit, shoved, spit on, yelled at, cursed....  So I know that such actions are horrible to experience and very, very frightening.  But I love the First Amendment (and the rest of the Bill of Rights) so much that I don't want to see it curtailed.  I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU.  I can recite parts of this speech almost from memory.  And I believe that we can provide succor to those who are hurt and frightened without sacrificing our Constitutional rights--especially the right to say stupid things.

Shameless self-promotion over at our Law School Survival Manual blog.

Here.

So proud of Rice University and of Rice's Jewish Studies Program.

See here.  I'm really glad that this program is thriving and that Dad, Jeff, and I have the opportunity to support its growth!

R.I.P., Malcolm Gillis

So sad to hear about President Gillis's passing.  He served Rice exceedingly well.

Great way to start the day.

Sent to me by my wonderful colleague Linda Edwards (here).  Enjoy!

The power of a great teacher.

This lovely WSJ essay about a great teacher (here) triggered a couple of thoughts:

(1) I still believe that it's possible (and more common than people might think) to be a strong scholar and a strong teacher, but I'm glad that people who have particular strengths can get rewarded for doing what they love.  The essay reminded me about one of my favorite teachers at Rice, Dennis Huston, who took my breath away when I was a student.  First, he intimidated me; then he challenged me; then he encouraged me.  So many students loved him, in fact, that when he needed blood transfusions, several alumni lined up for the privilege of helping.  Want to get a glimpse of this marvelous professor?  See here.

(2) We need to remember that great teaching can have the same ripple effects as great scholarship.  Yes, great scholarship can live on long after the author has died; but great teaching gets carried on, person to person, as well.  (The opposite is also true:  weak scholarship doesn't even make a ripple, and weak teaching does nothing to enrich students' lives after the course is over.)

What a great opportunity for us to thank the great teachers in our lives!

A good reason to be proud of the University of Houston Law Center (10th anniversary of doing something very good).

See here.

Proudest moment of my time at UHLC.

I had so many good times at UHLC, including (surprisingly enough) the post-Tropical Storm Allison time, when everyone at the law school -- including those inside the school and our alumni and other supporters -- pulled together to rebuild just under $50 million in damage.  But probably the high point was working with UH's then-president Art Smith, with Sondra Tennessee, and with Seth Chandler on the decision to move Loyola-New Orleans's law school INTO UHLC after Katrina.  Loyola's community became wonderful neighbors and friends.  As we remember Hurricane Katrina, it's a chance for me to thank again all those who made that temporary arrangement seamless.

So proud of UNLV's Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering!

If you ever want to see the value of research in action, watch this clip.  Thanks to Professors Brendan O'Toole and Mohamed Trabia and their team, Hailey Dawson now has her "special hand."

I'm not a ConLaw person, but ...

I'm really not a ConLaw person--you can tell that from my law school transcript--but I think that there is a difference between saying something where people can walk away from the speaker and saying a lot of things where people are stuck listening to that person.  It's a hard issue, though.  I get that.

The tough issue that the Salaita case raises is that no one knows if what he says outside of class (hateful, but entirely his right, and I'd be first in line to defend him--and then first in line to meet his speech w/different speech) would also affect how he'd treat students inside class (where he would have to create a learning environment in which students would be treated fairly).  I'm glad that Prof. LeRoy is part of this debate.  I'm glad that others are, too.  What I hope is that everyone understands the complexity of the issue.

Too often, unfortunately, people say that there's only one side of a particular issue and that anyone on the other side is wrong-headed, or discriminatory, or dumb.  And that's no way to debate a peer.

BRAVO, Team DRC-Hubo @UNLV!

Taken directly from our announcement--couldn't have written it better myself:

On behalf of Dean Rama Venkat, the Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering is proud to announce that our team DRC-Hubo @UNLV finished in eighth place among the world’s best robotics teams competing in the 2015 U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Challenge Finals, just a few points below universities such as Carnegie Melon and MIT.

Launched in response to a humanitarian need that became glaringly clear during the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011, the DARPA Robotics Challenge consisted of three increasingly demanding competitions over two years. The goal was to accelerate progress in robotics and hasten the day when robots can enter areas too dangerous for humans and mitigate the impacts of natural or man-made disasters.

UNLV’s team, led by Lincy Professor of Unmanned Autonomous Systems, Paul Oh, performed six of eight tasks in 57 minutes and 41 seconds, giving the team the eighth place spot. The team performed better than competitors from Lockheed Martin, Virginia Tech, University of California, Los Angeles, Seoul National University and more. Joining UNLV on the team are students and one professor from Kookmin University in Seoul, Korea, as well as professionals from robotics company Praxis Aerospace.

Driving was arguably the most challenging task in the completion, but Oh hoped that UNLV would emerge as a leader in that area.  Metal Robot drove in less than 60 seconds, ranking among the top teams in the competition.

In case you missed it, please check out this UNLV slideshow, highlighting some of the most exciting aspects of the competition.  

During the competition, Oh and members of the team were featured in Computer World, U.S. News & World Report, Armed with Science(the U.S. Department of Defense science blog) and Popular Science.

You can see a play by play of the event on the COE Facebook and Twitter feeds.

We also worked with several other media outlets on larger projects that will be aired in the near future. Outlets include NOVA on PBS, The Economist, GQ Magazine, Daily Planet/Discovery Channel Canada,  Inside Unmanned Aerial Systems Magazine,  RAI Italian National TV, Robo Nation TV, Tech Biz Geeks blog and more.

Oh and team members also will be featured in several documentaries including “My Life with a Robot,” by French company Belotta films, a project by screenwriter Michael Bacall and a move production by To the Stars media.

Thousands of spectators visited the two-day competition, which also featured a large technology exposition. UNLV’s College of Engineering had a booth in this expo, attracting hundreds of people to follow us on social media, as well as hundreds of prospective students who filled out cards seeking additional information on our robotics programs.

Overall, it’s an epic success for our Engineering Program to be featured with the likes of Carnegie Melon, MIT, Lockheed Martin and more. We couldn’t be more proud of our team.

Wishing Professor Paul Oh and his team the best of luck in the DARPA Robotics Challenge!

Not that very long ago, UNLV was lucky enough to persuade Professor Paul Oh to join our faculty.  He and his team are about to compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, and I'm rooting for Hubo (now the "Metal Rebel") to win.

I've been fascinated by Hubo ever since Jinger Zeng of Skyworks Aerial Systems told me about how amazing Professor Oh was and how well he mentors his students.

Here's an excerpt from UNLV's official announcement about the finals:

The Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering robotics team is just a week away from the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) June 5-6 at the Fairplex in Pomona, California.  UNLV will compete against 24 of the world’s top universities and research agencies in an attempt to show how robots could assist first responders in disaster relief – with millions in prize money on the line.  

UNLV’s “Metal Rebel” – a 5 ft. 5 in., 175-pound humanoid robot - will test its mettle against the likes of MIT, NASA and Lockheed Martin in simulated disaster courses where it may have to:

·       Drive a vehicle

·       Climb stairs

·       Traverse rocky and/or debris-filled terrain

·       Turn valves and use power tools

Our student/faculty team is led by Dr. Paul Oh, Lincy Professor for Unmanned Aerial Systems and a renowned expert in robotics and autonomous systems. Oh is a former program director for robotics at the National Science Foundation and is helping UNLV and Nevada become a national leader in the booming autonomous systems industry.

We'd love to see you in Pomona cheering for our team in the grandstands and representing UNLV in scarlet and gray, but if you can't make it out to Pomona, we'd still appreciate your support.

Teams will compete both Friday (6/5) and Saturday (6/6), and the competition will stream live at roboticschallenge.org The competition schedule will be finalized just before the competition, and we’ll follow with details next Thursday afternoon on when to you can see Team UNLV in action.

Interesting new scholarship on academic freedom and social media.

See here.  My buddy Michael LeRoy, who does very cool work, wrote it. 

Best managerial advice ever (UPDATED).

There's a great article by Paula Krebs in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education's Vitae section (here).  In it, she talks about the importance of working on difficult issues by first imagining why the person sitting across the table from you has formed her views.  The idea of assuming that the other party to a negotiation has principled reasons for her position is a good way to see any difficult issue as an issue to be solved collaboratively.

Here's my favorite quote from her essay:

Since transitioning out of the faculty and into administration, I've had to work hard to learn how to shut up and listen.  My job, I've discovered, isn't to solve the problems.  It's to understand them and then work with the people affected to come up with ways to solve the problems.

Every time I have tried to solve a problem when it's presented to me, I've created more problems.  So I'm learning to talk to more people, to ask more questions, to listen to the answers.

That's darn good advice for us all.

UPDATE (5/4/15):  This post also gives good advice, as does this article.

Want to change a student's life?

One way to do it is to fund awards like this one, this one, or this one.

Congrats to Randy Gordon and Maks Del Mar!

Maks's new book (co-edited with William Twining), which has an essay by my buddy Randy Gordon in it.  You can get the book here.

Bravo to Steve Lubet for keeping this UCLA story front and center.

Hat tip to the Faculty Lounge for this post.

Brava, Jean Sternlight!

My wonderful colleague Jean Sternlight just won a prestigious award from the ABA (see here).  Brava, Jean!

Best line in today's NYT op-ed about the value of college.

The op-ed is here.  And my favorite bit?

That brought [Professor] Hall to her own answer about college’s mission: “It is for developing the muscle of thoughtfulness, the use of which will be the greatest pleasure in life and will also show what it means to be fully human.”

R.I.P, Marvin Chirelstein.

Just heard the sad news.  Marvin Chirelstein made Federal Income Tax comprehensible for me when I was a lost law student, trying to figure out how "philosophy of tax" (interesting, and the bulk of the course that I took) meshed with "actual Federal Income Tax" (which is what I knew would be on the exam).  I read his Federal Income Tax paperback (now in its 12th edition) and made a vow to myself that if I made it through the course with a decent grade, I'd name a child after him. (That little factoid probably explains part of the reason that Jeff and I don't have kids:  Marvin Rapoport Van Niel?  Chirelstein Rapoport Van Niel?  See--that's quite a burden to put on a little tyke.)  Lighthearted remembrance aside, I just wanted to go on record to say that Professor Chirelstein was one of the greats, and I know he'll be missed.