Digital Privacy Expert to Deliver Tresolini Lecture

Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the public policy Cato Institute and expert on digital privacy, will deliver this year’s Tresolini Law Lecture at 8 p.m Thursday, April 6, in Packard Auditorium. The event, which is titled “The Fourth Amendment and Electronic Surveillance,” is free and open to the public.

Assistant Professor of Political Science Sean Beienburg, who is organizing this year’s Tresolini Lecture, said he is thrilled to have Sanchez come to Lehigh to speak on this important issue.

“With Congress investigating allegations of political wiretapping and Russia reportedly considering whether to return Edward Snowden to the U.S. government, it has become an even more timely conversation,” he said. “I could think of no one better to have it.”

The Rocco J. Tresolini Lectureship in Law was established in 1978, in memory of one of Lehigh’s most distinguished teachers and scholars, Rocco Tresolini (1920-1967), who served as professor and chair of the department of government.

Sanchez will be the latest in a long line of luminaries to deliver the Tresolini Lecture, including Cornel West—one of the country’s most provocative public intellectuals—who delivered last year’s lecture to a packed house in Baker Hall.

Previous speakers include veteran journalist Bill Moyers, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, former Vietnam War-era strategic analyst Daniel Ellsberg, Presumed Innocent author Scott Turow, the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, former Watergate-era White House Counsel John Dean, Bush v. Gore attorney David Boies and Innocence Project founder Barry Scheck.

Sanchez’s primary area of focus is the intersection of technology, privacy and civil liberties, with a particular emphasis on national security and intelligence surveillance. Before joining the Cato Institute, Sanchez served as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, where he covered surveillance, intellectual property and telecom policy. He has also worked as a writer for The Economist’s blog Democracy in America and as an editor for Reason magazine, where he remains a contributing editor.

Sanchez has written on privacy and technology for a wide array of national publications, ranging from the National Review to The Nation, and is a founding editor of the policy blog Just Security. He studied philosophy and political science at New York University.

Julian Sanchez can be followed on Twitter @normative.