Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

2025 Technology, Media, & Privacy Law Conference

2025 Technology, Media, & Privacy Law: The Demand for BS and How to Stop It

Friday, February 14, 2025 | 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. ET

About the Technology, Media, & Privacy Law Conference

The annual Technology, Media, & Privacy Law Conference (TMPL) addresses how technological advancements are reshaping privacy and free speech issues in the fields of law, journalism, and public policy.

The 2025 conference will feature speakers from a variety of fields who are considering misinformation as a problem of audience demand, rather than supply. Speakers will discuss click bait, audience capture, trust in hyper-partisan media, and the scale and causes of modern epistemic failure. They will also consider whether there are promising ways to reduce the demand for low quality information. The conference will feature a phenomenal lineup of speakers including Agnes Callard (University of Chicago), who will discuss her forthcoming book “Open Socrates” with Patrick Collison (co-founder of Stripe). The event will end with a keynote session with The Fifth Column, the group of gadflies who provide sometimes-caustic, always humorous media commentary.

The conference is hosted by the Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, the Center for Governmental Responsibility at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education. The conference will be held at the Levin College of Law in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, Holland Hall 180.

Please register to attend here.

This conference has been approved for up to 8.0 General and 1.5 Technology CLEs by The Florida Bar.

2025 Conference Schedule:

Friday, February 14, 2025

9:00 a.m. | Panel 1: Technology and Epistemic Regress?

Jane Bambauer (UF Law and CJC), Welcome. Now Let Me Explain.

Myiah Hutchens (UF CJC), Use vs Trust in Media and How that Relates to Beliefs in Misinformation

Jieun Shin (UF CJC), Click-Bait and Rage-Bait Headlines

10:15 a.m. | Panel 2: Journalism (We’re Gonna Need a Better Audience)

Zach Weissmueller (Reason), The Return of the Gatekeepers: The 2020s

Lyrissa Lidsky (UF Law), The Crumbling Legitimacy of the Fourth Estate . . . And Every Other Institution.

10:55 a.m. | Break

11:10 a.m. | Panel 3: Politics (We’re Gonna Need a Better Voter)

Brandon Warmke (Bowling Green State University), Grandstanding and BS

David Pinsoff (UCLA), Double Standards in Political Ideologies

12:00 p.m. | Lunch Break

12:15 p.m. | Keynote: Agnes Callard (U Chicago) in conversation with Patrick Collison (Stripe, Stripe Press)

1:15 p.m. | Break

1:30 p.m. | Panel 3: Institutions and Culture

Robin Hanson (GMU), BS as Cultural Bluffing: Its Part as a Move in Cultural Evolution

William Inboden (UF Hamilton Center), The Decline of the Liberal Arts: Market Failure or Market Re-set?

Yonathan Arbel (University of Alabama School of Law), The Demand for BS in Law: Three Case Studies

2:45 p.m. | Break

3:00 p.m. | Panel 4: Solutions? (Or Non-Problems?)

Ted Hinchman (FSU), What Do We Need from Testimony?

Bryan Caplan (GMU), Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets (is this the idea?)

Jim Harper (AEI), Lessons From Terrorism Counter-Signaling

4:15 p.m. | Audience Feedback  

4:45 p.m. | Break

5:00 p.m. | Refreshments

5:15 p.m. | Keynote: The Fifth Column 

The speaker lineup is subject to change.

Published: January 16th, 2025

Category: Events

Comments are closed.

Recent News

News Archive

University of Florida Levin College of Law
309 Village Drive
PO Box 117620
Gainesville, FL 32611
(352) 273-0804
Text-Only Version

Tools

Website

Quick Links

The Florida Constitutional Law Endowment in memory of Justice Ben F. Overton was created by Judge Karen Miller in 2013. This fund supports lectures and presentations by Justices of the Florida Supreme Court at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law.

HISTORY

Justice Overton, who earned his B.S. in 1951 and his Juris Doctor in 1952 from the University of Florida, was the first merit appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Throughout his career he was active in legal education and served as an Adjunct Professor at the Levin College of Law through December 2012, the month of his death. Although he resided at Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, a continuing care retirement community developed in cooperation with UF, he also considered the Florida Supreme Court “home.” Among the high points of his later years was hosting Justices of the Florida Supreme Court in Gainesville and taking his class to Tallahassee to hear oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court.
Judge Miller, who earned her B.S. cum laude from New York University in 1974 and her Juris Doctor from New York Law School in 1977, served as Chief Administrative Law Judge of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, New York City’s business regulatory agency, before she retired to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Having accompanied Justice Overton on his excursions to Tallahassee and joined him in welcoming guests to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, she created the endowment in memory of Justice Overton to ensure that the Levin College of Law continues to have the funding necessary to continue and enhance the interaction between its students and the Florida Supreme Court.

 

Judge Miller remembered the event that motivated the endowment.

 

Prior to a dinner at the home of Dean Robert Jerry and Lisa Jerry shortly after Justice Overton’s death, Justice Barbara Pariente and I were discussing a suitable memorial. Justice Pariente, who had been Justice Overton’s colleague on the Florida Supreme Court and who understood the importance to him of the interaction between his students and the Court, suggested the outline of what has become the Overton lectures. Dean Jerry, who has since retired, as has Dean Emeritus Jon Mills, who assumed responsibility for implementing the Overton lectures, were very supportive from the beginning. Since Dean Mills’ retirement, Professor Timothy McClendon, who assisted both Justice Overton and Dean Mills teaching Florida Constitutional Law and who co-authored the recent Florida Constitutional Law casebook, has continued the Overton lectures with the support of Interim Dean Merritt McAlister and CGR director, Professor Danaya Wright.

Justice Overton was a devoted jurist, educator, and ethical leader of the Florida legal profession. The Overton Lecture Series brings Florida Supreme Court Justices to the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and serves to introduce students to the inner workings of the Court. CGR and the students of the College of Law extend our deepest gratitude to Judge Karen Miller for making the Overton Lectures possible in perpetuity.

You can watch an interview for the Florida Historical Society by Mary Adkins, professor emeritus of the UF Levin College of Law, with Justice Overton here.

Justice Overton was also interviewed for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project and a transcript of his interview is available at the Smathers Library, and here.
Justice Overton sat on the Constitution Revision Commission of 1977-78 that proposed a right to privacy in the Florida Constitution. Although it failed as part of the Constitution Revision Commission recommendations, it passed in 1980 when proposed by the legislature. The bill was co-sponsored by our very own Jon Mills. The privacy provision prevailed by greater than 60%. Justice Overton then wrote a concurrence in a critical reproductive rights case in 1989 affirming that the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution included the right to obtain an abortion. That decision was overruled in Planned Parenthood of SW and Central Florida v. Florida. You can read about the role of Justice Overton, Jon Mills – director emeritus of CGR, and the history of the 1989 case here.