Special Event: Jonathan Zittrain Interviews Lawrence Lessig: “What I Learned Running for President:  The Ethics of Citizenship,” Mon., Nov. 23rd at 5 pm

The Harvard Law School Library staff invite you to attend an interview of Professor Lawrence Lessig by Professor Jonathan Zittrain entitled, What I Learned Running for President:  The Ethics of Citizenship.  Professor Lessig recently ended his presidential campaign with the release of a YouTube video with the title,  The Democrats have changed the rules.  This special event also celebrates the 2016 edition of Professor Lessig’s book titled Republic Lost: The Corruption of Equality and the Steps to End It  (Oct. 2015, Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group).

Monday, November 23, 2015 at 5:00 pm followed by a 6:00 pm reception 


Harvard Law School Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall (Directions)


1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge

Co-sponsored by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and was formerly the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. Lessig serves on the Board of Creative Commons, MAPLight, Brave New Film Foundation, The American Academy, Berlin, AXA Research Fund and iCommons.org, and is on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association, and has received numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation’s Freedom Award, Fastcase 50 Award and being named one of Scientific American’s Top 50 Visionaries. Lessig holds a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.

Jonathan Zittrain is the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Director of the Harvard Law School Library, and Faculty Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.  His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture, human computing, and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Board of Advisors for Scientific American.  He has served as a Trustee of the Internet Society, and as a Forum Fellow of the World Economic Forum, which named him a Young Global Leader, and as Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Federal Communications Commission, where he previously chaired the Open Internet Advisory Committee. His book The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It is available from Yale University Press and Penguin UK — and under a Creative Commons license.

More about Republic Lost: The Corruption of Equality and the Steps to End It

“In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government-driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission-trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature.

With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic-and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left-Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted-but redeemable-representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness.

While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In “Republic Lost,” he not only makes this need palpable and clear-he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it.” — Hachette Book Group