Harvard Woos Information-Law Scholar from Yale; Media-Studies Star Leaves NYU for UVa

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By SIERRA MILLMAN and SCOTT CARLSON

LURED AWAY: Yochai Benkler, a renowned expert in information law and policy, has ditched Yale Law School to join the tenured faculty of his own alma mater, Harvard Law School.

Mr. Benkler, class of 1994, will serve as a professor of law and as a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a research center that focuses on cyberlaw.

"I am thrilled to be able to reconnect with old friends, and look forward to building new friendships, starting new conversations, and opening a new chapter in life in Cambridge," he said in a written statement.

Before joining the Yale faculty, Mr. Benkler taught for eight years at the New York University School of Law and at Harvard in 2002 as a visiting professor. His books include The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press, 2006), in which Mr. Benkler defends collaborative online projects such as Wikipedia, which he says encourage autonomy, democracy, and financial and social profit.

Mr. Benkler is the "leading thinker in the world right now concerning peer production of information," says William W. Fisher, the Berkman center's director and a professor of intellectual-property law. The center "desperately needed" an expert on telecommunications regulation, he says, but it is Mr. Benkler's imagination that may be most valuable. "Even more important than the specific bodies of knowledge he brings right now is likely to be the innovative projects he pursues in the future," he says.

Mr. Benkler is the 20th tenured or tenure-track professor hired by the law school since 2003.

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MORE SPACE: Siva Vaidhyanathan is moving from New York University to the University of Virginia, where he will be an associate professor of media studies and law.

Mr. Vaidhyanathan, 41, has been a star in academe ever since he wrote Copyrights and Copywrongs (New York University Press, 2001), which gave readers a guide to the complicated history of American copyright and its future in a file-sharing age. He has also established a reputation as a left-wing pundit through his blog, Sivacracy. He has been profiled in The Chronicle and appeared as a guest expert on a segment about social networks on The Daily Show.

Mr. Vaidhyanathan has been courted by Virginia for more than a year. "They made it clear that they were going to create a top-notch media-studies department out of what was already an impressive program," he says. Last year, when the university hired Andrea Press, a well-known sociologist in media studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to direct the program, he "knew it was time to take it seriously."

To sweeten the deal, the University of Virginia offered a position to Mr. Vaidhyanathan's wife, Melissa Henriksen, 39, who is now an assistant professor of biology at Fordham University. Mr. Vaidhyanathan says that Illinois was also trying to recruit him but could not offer a position to Ms. Henriksen.

Mr. Vaidhyanathan says that various frustrations with New York University made Virginia even more attractive. Mr. Vaidhyanathan and Ms. Henriksen live in a one-bedroom apartment subsidized by the university, which has felt a little cramped since their daughter was born a year and a half ago. The university would not give him a larger apartment to accommodate his growing family, so he is looking forward to the wide-open spaces of Charlottesville.

New York University also put down a graduate-student unionization drive "with all the dignity and delicacy of a bunch of Wal-Mart managers," he says. He has also been turned off by what he sees as the university's obsession with its brand — a counteroffer letter from the university included a "branding clause."

"I am not a billboard," he says. "I am a scholar. 'Branding' is not my job."

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MOVING ON: The chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, Judy G. Hample, 59, announced that she planned to leave the post no later than July 31, 2008. Ms. Hample, who has held the job since 2001, did not offer a reason for her decision.