Five Global Challenges and the Role of University

The talk is introduced and facilitated by Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson, who has been thinking for many years about the role of University in cyberspace and who has inspired Juan Carlos to study the role of University in society.

The world is facing five global challenges: democratic, environmental, technological, economical, and geopolitical. Challenges that will require both enormous amount of knowledge and citizens capable of using such knowledge in scenarios that today are hard to predict. The University is clearly the main institution that could help society on both counts. However, if University truly wants to maximize its social utility, it needs--as argued by De Martin in his book 'Università Futura' (Codice Edizioni, Italy, 2017)--to critically question the last 30 years of its development and re-discover its roots, updating them for the 21st century. 

About Juan Carlos De Martin

Juan Carlos De Martin is a Berkman Klein Faculty Associate and Founder and Faculty co-director of the NEXA Center for Internet & Society at the Politecnico of Torino, Italy.

Juan Carlos De Martin is a computer engineering professor specialized on multimedia who is now focusing on the general theme of the interaction between digital technologies and society. His most recent main research interest is the future of university in the Internet age.

Since Spring 2012 Juan Carlos has been teaching "Digital Revolution", a digital culture course offered to first-year students at the Politecnico di Torino.

In 2012 he edited, together with Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, "The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture" (OpenBookPublishers, UK), with forward by Charles Nesson.

In 2003 he led, together with prof. Marco Ricolfi, the Creative Commons Italy team. Between 2007 and 2011 Juan Carlos De Martin was the coordinator of COMMUNIA, the European thematic network on the digital public domain. Between 2007 and 2015 he was the president of the libraries of the Politecnico di Torino.

Before returning to Italy in 1998, Juan Carlos De Martin was a visiting researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara for two years and, after receiving his Ph.D. in Telecommunications at the Politecnico di Torino, he worked for two years in the research laboratories of Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas.

Juan Carlos De Martin also serves as member of the Scientific Board of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia Treccani and of the Biennale Democrazia. He is a frequent op-ed contributor to "la Repubblica" and he often acts as a commentator in Italian media.

Juan Carlos De Martin is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and is the author, or co-author, of over 100 peer-reviewed conference papers, journal papers and book chapters. 

About Charles Nesson

Professor Nesson charted the early field of Internet law in 1997 when he founded the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Nesson

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