'Deep Capture: Psychology, Public Relations, Democracy, and Law' Conference Saturday April 13, 2013 at Harvard Law School

This Saturday, April 13, 2013 at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA: "Deep Capture: Psychology, Public Relations, Democracy, and Law"

"Deep Capture: Psychology, Public Relations, Democracy, and Law" is an conference Saturday April 13, 2013, at Harvard Law School organized by the Harvard Law School National Lawyers Guild & The Project on Law and Mind Sciences

Public relations firms, working on behalf of both governments and market actors, manage public opinion for their clients through all of those channels, effectively capturing the institutions important to our democracy and tilting the playing field in favor of a more stratified distribution of wealth and power.

Through a series of speakers and discussions, we hope to illuminate some of the phenomena at the heart of "deep capture," from the
psychological tendencies and assumptions that render humans vulnerable to manipulation to the history of public relations in the U.S. and the industry's strategies and tactics. The conference will also highlight some examples of how those processes and actors shape various institutions and policies.

Presenters include:

• Noam Chomsky, the Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT.
• Stuart Ewen, the Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College.
• Francesca Gino, associate professor of business administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School.
• Sut Jhally, Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF).
• Jon Hanson, the Alfred Smart Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of The Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School.
• Susan Linn, an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has written extensively about the effects of media and commercial marketing on children.
• Thomas McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is a leading scholar in the fields of administrative law, environmental law, and torts who has written numerous influential books.
• Michael Niman, a Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Buffalo State College and a syndicated columnist whose work has earned him two Project Censored awards.
• John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry and Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq.

The conference is organized by the Harvard Law School Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and The Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School. The National Lawyers Guild seeks to unite the lawyers, law students, legal workers and jailhouse lawyers to function as an effective force in the service of the people, to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests.

The Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School is devoted to identifying, inventorying, archiving, blogging, and otherwise
promoting research, writing, conferences, and presentations directed toward understanding the implications of social psychology, social cognition, and other mind sciences for law, policymaking, and legal theory.

Website: <https://deepcaptureconference.wordpress.com/>