For Immediate Release, Revised Press Release
Contact: Gloria Gottschalk, New School University
             (212) 229-5667, ext. 239

(New York, NY – September 5, 2000) A major conference, aimed at exploring the increasingly troubling issue of privacy in America, will be conducted next month under the auspices of New School University’s noted scholarly journal, Social Research.

"Privacy is perhaps the most critical public policy issue facing our democracy at the beginning of the new century," said Arien Mack, editor of the Social Research journal. The three-day event on October 5-7 will include seven sessions involving the perspectives of 24 leading scholars, legal and technology experts, journalists, humanists and other specialists.

For further information or to reserve tickets, call 212/229-2488 or visit the conference web-site at www.newschool.edu/centers/socres/privacy.

The keynote address will be presented by Charles Nesson, William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, on Thursday, October 5 at 6 PM. The Berkman Center is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development.

Arien Mack, who in addition to editing Social Research, is Alfred J. Marrow Professor of Psychology at New School University’s Graduate Faculty, commented that speakers participating in the conference sessions will examine the historical, philosophical and political foundations of the basic concept of privacy, and seek to illuminate the legal and social implications of the current debate.

"The need for reasoned reflection and sustained debate about privacy is critical," remarked Professor Mack. "Look at the confusing avalanche of opinion, much of it uninformed, on our daily talk shows and in the headlines. Look at the incredible speed of advances in electronic technology resulting in more and more access to personal information, online and in shared databases. These increasingly blur the distinction between what is public and what is private, which is always subject to its cultural and historical context, and pose an unprecedented challenge to our long-held beliefs concerning individual freedom and human rights. We are sobered by the thought that where nothing is private, democracy is impossible."

The conference sessions will explore the following topics: "Private/Public: The Evolution of the Distinction"; "Privacy and the Law: The Legal Construction of Privacy"; "Privacy and the Self: The Rise and Fall of Privacy"; "Invasions of Privacy: Violations of Boundaries"; and "Privacy and the State".

The concluding session, to be held on October 7 at 2 PM, will be a round table discussion on the question "Is Privacy Now Possible?" moderated by Kenneth Prewitt, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau. Panelists will include Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center; and Jeffrey Rosen, Associate Professor at The George Washington University Law School and author of The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America (2000); and Maggie Scarf, journalist and author.

Several conference-related events will take place throughout New York City. They will include: "Private Faces/Public Places" a reading of poetry and prose, curated by David Lehman and Robert Polito; lectures on "Celebrity and Anonymity," "Public, Private and the Arts," and "Public Policy and the Internet;" "The Private World of Dutch Art," a lecture and discussion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Walter Liedtke, Curator of the Department of European Paintings; and "Private and Public Use of Ritual Objects" at the Museum of African Art," a tour of the exhibition "In the Presence of Spirits" with discussion about the initiation and ancestral objects of the Chokwe, Luana, and Ngangela peoples.

The conference has been funded by grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Ford Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation.

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The Social Research conference series at the New School was launched in 1988 by Arien Mack with the aim of enhancing public understanding of critical and contested issues by exploring those issues in their broad historical and cultural contexts. The conferences are dedicated to the maxim that "to forget history is to risk repeating it." Rather than simply confronting these difficult issues directly, Social Research conferences present speakers from a wide range of disciplines with many different perspectives and kinds of expertise, who bring the relevant scholarship in their fields to bear on the contemporary discussions. Historians, political scientists, and art historians routinely participate alongside legal theorists, policy makers, and computer scientists. We believe that this approach is a more effective way to illuminate the issues and influence the current public debate.

The six previous conferences in this series have addressed in turn the following contemporary issues: the AIDS epidemic, with the conference In Time of Plague; homelessness and exile, with Home: A Place in the World; the urgencies and complexities of rescue, with Rescue: The Paradoxes of Virtue; the relationship between humans and other animals, with In the Company of Animals; the implications of the new communication technologies, with Technology and the Rest of Culture; and the problems of hunger and sustainable agriculture, with Food: Nature and Culture.