Robert Dunne Receives DeVane Medal

Robert Dunne, who was recently named Senior Lecturer, has been voted recipient of the undergraduate PBK DeVane Medal. Each year the Alpha of Connecticut confers the DeVane Medal on members of the faculty who have distinguished themselves as teachers of undergraduates in Yale College and as scholars in their fields.

Todd Schneider (left), Julia Pudlin, and Robert Dunne.

Below is the speech given by Schneider and Pudlin during the Awards dinner, held on February 20th.

Julia: “Invite all who have taken this class, or anyone who just loves Professor Dunne as much as we do, into this group. Celebrate the most glorious teacher at Yale.” I quote from our technophile generation’s most reliable forum of student opinion – thefacebook.com – where Professor Dunne has inspired a group devoted to airing his praises. It is no coincidence that an instructor who has been known to stop on the street to conduct an impromptu lesson in response to passing students’ queries, a sort of modern-day Socrates in the agora, has roused such a following among Yale students. Professor Dunne, who assumes the load of teaching upwards of 600 students a year, in one lecture and two seminars each semester, embodies unmatched accessibility and enthusiasm for teaching at the undergraduate level. His alacrity for ensuring that each student has the most constructive individual learning experience is truly remarkable.

Professor Dunne knows most of his students by name, and he reads each and every one of the 300 or so papers that students submit in his lecture courses. He routinely sits down for lunch with students after class, and often extends his office hours because they are so overpopulated. It is because students detect his palpable interest in both the subject matter and in their intellectual pursuits that they respond to his fervor and his high standards of excellence with their own. Exchanges with Professor Dunne, whether in lecture or in the one-on-one meetings that he manages to have with almost all his pupils, are simultaneously comfortable and exhilarating. As he seeks to bring clarity to the nebulous field of technological law, where doctrines are constantly evolving and solutions are never clear-cut, Professor Dunne is willing to acknowledge the fallibility of his own thought. His teaching then becomes an exchange in which both student and teacher learn from one another. Because Professor Dunne so genuinely respects his students’ ideas, we internalize his trust and are empowered to take risks in our interpretations. Such stimulation is at the core of what has elevated Professor Dunne to celebrity status on campus and on the internet.

Todd: The model Yale professor is the one who presents material that students find so intriguing that they continue to study it after having completed the necessary coursework. Professor Dunne’s classes leave a lasting impact on his students, witnessed by this past summer’s MGM versus Grokster Supreme Court decision, concerning our same student body’s other favorite online pastime, file-sharing. In the days after the decision was released in late June, his inbox was flooded with messages from former students seeking his reaction. Undoubtedly many of these students, and I count myself among them, would not have been following so closely had it not been for Professor Dunne’s lectures. Additionally, class discussions never shy away from the newest developments, for example BitTorrents, that sometimes even courts have yet to adjudicate. Professor Dunne does more than provide facts to his students; he sows the seeds of curiosity so that everyone who leaves his class remains engaged in the subject matter for years to come.

Robert Dunne and wife, Marguerite.

It should be noted that Professor Dunne also serves the Yale community by advising students who have created copyrightable material. A group of people as motivated, creative, and intelligent as Yale undergraduates will certainly produce a wide range of audiovisual, literary, or other “original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium,” to quote from the Copyright Act of 1976. Without Professor Dunne’s guidance, we students would have less of an idea how to deal with our own developing legal issues.

Professor Dunne, as a result of your impeccably well-organized, informative, and understandable lectures and seminar discussions, the students who leave your classes can consider themselves at the forefront of legal developments in the technological world. Perhaps this is most remarkable, as the “Computers and the Law” course description explicitly states: “No previous experience with computers or law necessary.” We now see that what seemed like common items we previously understood – VCRs, videogames, TiVo, iPods, and so on – are in fact subject to a host of legal complications. Because of your dedication to teaching us about the legal issues surrounding the technologies that we love and crave, we are proud to award you this year’s William Clyde DeVane Medal.