CHAMPION STORIES

ADVANCING ‘RIGHT TO RESEARCH’

L to R: Michael Carroll (Faculty Director), Matthew Bowers (Senior Finance & Grant Manager), Tumelo Mashabela (LLM student), Michael Palmedo (Post-Doctoral Research Fellow), Tahniat Saulat (Senior Program Coordinator), Christine Haight Farley (Faculty Director), Sean Flynn (Director, PIJIP), Meredith Jacob (WCL rep from Creative Commons) The internet’s promise of global access to information has fallen short in crucial areas. American University Washington College of Law’s pioneering Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) is determined to correct that.

A three-year, $3.8 million grant from Arcadia, a high-profile U.K. philanthropic fund, is entrenching AUWCL as a leading voice in the global push for the right to research.

Arcadia calls access to knowledge “a fundamental human right” that is “vital to achieving greater equality and justice.” The fund created by historians Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin partnered with PIJIP to ensure materials that “should legally and morally be free for anyone to access” are not constrained by paywalls and restrictive regulations.

Copyright laws in many countries block researchers, academics, or libraries from remotely accessing, using, or sharing materials. The laws may also limit the type of “text and data mining” research of copyrighted materials that helped flag the spreading coronavirus and contributed to the creation of the first vaccines.

PIJIP envisions an international right to cross-border research that could allow a scholar in Europe to send a database to a colleague in the United States without worrying whether copyright law in either country expressly allows the exchange. Research freedom like that would open the way for broadcasts to be data-mined to create speech translation tools and for scholars to track hate speech on social media platforms around the globe.

With the Arcadia grant, PIJIP set up the International Right to Research in Copyright Law initiative. Funding in the grant’s first year is allowing PIJIP to review the copyright laws of 190 countries, solicit research proposals, and launch the Arcadia Fellowship in International Copyright, which provides a fulltuition WCL scholarship for an LLM in Intellectual Property and Technology.

“Our big, hairy, audacious goal is that every country in the world would have an open, flexible research exception [to copyright restrictions] and there would be an international law that allows cross-border use of research material, no matter what domestic laws say,” said PIJIP Associate Director Sean Flynn, the principal investigator on the project.

Flynn teaches courses on the intersection of intellectual property, trade law, and human rights. He said existing copyright law has not kept pace with consumer needs, digital media, or the global technology platforms through which information is accessed. Even more, there is no worldwide rule or universal standard that governs researchers’ access to information stored or distributed via the internet.

“What we’re doing at PIJIP is future-proofing copyright,” Flynn said. “Copyright is a barrier to doing the kind of research that people want to do. PIJIP is advancing the human right to research … and to have access to information.”

The urgent need to harmonize copyright law around the world intensified during the pandemic as countries scrambled for online classroom materials, access to virtual medical care systems, and even the ability to track COVID-19.

“COVID has revealed the inequity of access,” said Andrés Izquierdo LLM ’19, a PIJIP senior research analyst whose work is funded through the Arcadia grant. “Let’s say you have developing countries in Latin America or Africa or Asia. They have huge debt because of the COVID emergency. These governments then face an additional toll because they are charged full prices to access online educational materials or technology for schoolchildren.”

PIJIP, a prominent voice in debate before the World Trade Organization, the main forum for negotiation on global e-commerce issues, is working to strengthen a worldwide openresearch network of researchers, libraries, museums, archives, and digital rights activists. With the Arcadia funding, it will host two international training academies, one in Washington, D.C., and the other in Amsterdam, in 2022 and 2023.

Izquierdo said it is not possible to overestimate the importance of open access. “The digital world has become the world,” he said. “We’re advocating for changes that are going to improve the quality of life for billions of people around the world.”

THE POWER OF PRESENCE

Forging a shared legacy to fight for justice

BY ERIKA HARTINGS

When the Honorable Gerald Bruce Lee ’76 graduated from American University in 1973 he planned to be a journalist. He changed course when learned about law school’s potential to “impact society and make a difference in the lives of others.” After several years of teaching high school, Edna Ruth Vincent ’89 made a similar decision, putting her on a path that ultimately brought her together with Judge Lee.

“The Washington College of Law faculty taught us to be concerned about justice and social responsibility and how to be impactful through the law,” said Judge Lee.

During his time at AUWCL, Judge Lee interned at area law firms. His first job was clerking for Gwendolyn Jo Carlberg ’66 in Alexandria, Virginia. He went on to be a trial lawyer for 15 years before being elected on his third try as a state judge for the Fairfax Circuit Court in 1992. In 1998 he was unanimously confirmed as a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, where he served for two decades.

Vincent co-founded a boutique firm in 2002 and was featured in Washingtonian Magazine’s Top Lawyers. A family attorney, she came to appreciate how the law is applicable to every aspect of life—and how a new set of facts may allow for a more malleable approach to it. She was in the courtroom until retiring in 2017.

“American University changed my life,” affirmed Judge Lee. Notably, it is where he and Vincent began dating during her final semester at AUWCL. Knowing his dedication to uplifting others might be a marital burden, he asked her, “Can you go the distance?” Drawn to his “heart for people, commitment to service and fight for justice,” Vincent readily said “yes.”

For more than three decades, they have shared this commitment. In addition to their sustained philanthropy to AUWCL, they host reunions with former law clerks and interns. In 25 years, Judge Lee estimates that he trained 150 interns, with a one-third becoming judicial law clerks. He credits the “power of presence,” saying the time and effort spent mentoring young lawyers to succeed will pay off as they collectively change the world for the better.

“My time at AUWCL opened so many doors, and its lasting impact spans three generations, including our son and grandson,” he reflected. “I have a real desire to give back, empower others, and shape the next generation to work for justice and social responsibility.”

In 2010, Judge Lee became a trustee, helping to oversee academic affairs, campus life, and the stewardship of AU’s funds. For 23 years, he served on the WCL Dean’s Advisory Council. He remains involved with the AUWCL Black Alumni Association and AU’s Black Alumni Alliance.

“I think that each of us as alumni have an opportunity to seed the ground for the next generation,” said Judge Lee, who sees incremental online giving as the key to impactful philanthropy. “We give so that the next generation may have the opportunities we did not—scholarships, competitions, clerkships.”

Edna Ruth Vincent, left, and the Honorable Gerald Bruce Lee, participate in the Tenley Campus groundbreaking.

GLOBAL COMMUNITY ADVOCATE

Alumna Nabila Aguele draws strength, inspiration from AUWCL ties

BY DEBORAH TAYLOR

Truly a citizen of the world—she has lived in seven countries on four continents—Nabila Aguele ’05, née Isa-Odidi, was attracted to American University Washington College of Law because the institution shares her belief in the importance and power of “community.”

“When I started at AUWCL, there was a lot of discourse around human rights, constitutionality, immigrant identity, and a strong focus on humanity and using law as a tool for good. I felt encouraged to be conscious of my own humanity. I felt a sense of social justice,” she said.

“So many of the faculty who taught me and with whom I’ve had the pleasure of teaching—including those in the clinical program and the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP)—are still friends to this day. And that experience is not unique to me. A lot of my classmates felt that sense of family.”

These teachers-turned-friends have celebrated each of Aguele’s impressive accomplishments that have marked success in her unique career trajectory.

Aguele has worked in positions of increasing responsibility for Nigeria’s national government since she left the AUWCL community to earn her MBA at INSEAD and return to her native country in 2016. Currently she serves as special adviser to Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, where her work focuses on financing for sustainable development, and she provides support on international development cooperation as well as performance monitoring and evaluation. A strong advocate for women’s rights and gender equality, she supports the ministry and its agencies on interventions to make public financial management systems more gender responsive. She is also a member of the INSEAD Board of Directors.

“Wherever I am, I seek connection to other people to give back and add value. It drives me both personally and professionally,” she said.

As a student at AUWCL, Aguele received the Elizabeth F. Reed and Earnest E. Salisbury Endowed Scholarship, served as a teaching fellow in the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project. She was also a leader in the Black Law Students Association and accepted two student government appointments. After practicing law in two firms following graduation, she returned to the school as a practitioner-in-residence in the Glushko Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic. During that time, she served as a member of the PIJIP faculty and introduced the school’s first patent litigation elective.

Aguele acknowledges that, in legal circles, she falls into the “alternate careers” category, but she urges AUWCL students to embrace disciplinary intersectionality, which she defines as the convergence of multiple disciplines, and to use that frame to craft solutions that impact the world.

“You don’t have to give up who you are as an attorney,” she said. “Research and writing skills, negotiation skills, speaking, public speaking, being able to quickly ramp up on an unfamiliar area—so much of what I did when I transitioned to this new career built on my foundation as a lawyer, first and foremost. I use my legal training every day.”