UMass Amherst’s Ethan Katsh Selected as Fulbright in Israel in 2011

March 18, 2010

Contact:

Ed Blaguszewski 413/545-0444

AMHERST, Mass. – Ethan Katsh, professor emeritus of legal studies, has been selected as the 2010-2011 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Haifa School of Law in Israel from January to June 2011. He will be conducting research and teaching a class during his stay.

Katsh, who retired from the department of legal studies at UMass Amherst last May, is currently serving as principal dispute resolution consultant for the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), a new federal agency mandated to provide mediation in Freedom of Information Act disputes.

At UMass Amherst, Katsh was one of the first legal scholars to recognize the impact new information technologies would have on law and has written three books on law and technology.

He has chaired the U.N. International Forums on Online Dispute Resolution held in Geneva in 2002 and 2003, Melbourne in 2004, Cairo in 2006, Liverpool in 2007, Hong Kong in 2007, Victoria (Canada) in 2008, Haifa, Israel in June 2009 and is scheduled to chair the forum scheduled to be held in Buenos Aires in June 2010. He has been visiting professor of Law and Cyberspace at Brandeis University, is on the Board of Advisors of the Democracy Design Workshop, the legal advisory board of the InSites E-governance and Civic Engagement Project, the Board of Editors of Conflict Resolution Quarterly, and is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Katsh was also a co-principal investigator, with Lee Osterweil and Norman Sondheimer of the UMass Amherst department of computer science, of a National Science Foundation funded project to model processes of online dispute resolution. This work was coordinated with the United States National Mediation Board. In 2007, this project received a second grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct further research on ODR processes.

Katsh received the Chancellor’s Medal and gave a Distinguished Faculty Lecture in October 2006.

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