I'm quick to call out my employer when it does something bone-headed, so I should be willing to give praise when it does something right. This is the latter.
In 28 years of university teaching, I've consistently had to persuade deans that internationalism matters. Some, not always nor wholly to their discredit, have been so absorbed by the burdens of making the world better locally that they have not had the bandwidth to think about other cities and states, much less countries.
Some have just been fools. Like the one in Arkansas who told me that "our students don't care about that" to reject my proposed partnership with a Mexican school when Arkansas had the fastest growing per capita Latino population in the country, a new Mexican consulate was opening in Little Rock, and we supposedly cared about diversity.
It was a shock, then, to find that the new top dean this academic year at UMass Law, Sam Panarella, believes that international engagement is a vital component of being a good law school. Thanks to his leadership in just his first year as dean, 10 students from UMass Law will journey to Lisbon this very year to study the comparative law and policy of U.S. and EU data protection.
Rhode Island and the south coast of Massachusetts, where UMass Law is located, are home to the largest Portuguese-American population in the United States by a wide margin. So the program is a welcome and logical fit for 14-year-old UMass Law School. The program is made possible, especially for students, by generous support from the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture at UMass Dartmouth, which does important work in its cultural niche.
We plan to repeat the Lisbon program in future years, in other areas of comparative focus, taking advantage of the varied expertise of law faculty at UMass and UCP. There are hurdles to overcome. But I'm hopeful that this is just the beginning of UMass Law's portfolio on international engagement.
