Skip to main content
 

For Scholar of Global Distinction Educators and Students




February 7, 2025 via Zoom @11:00

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m

The webinar is free, but registration is required.


Sponsored By:

Center for European Studies



 

The 4th annual Scholar of Global Distinction student and educator program will feature a talk from UNC Professor Tori Ekstrand. Professor Ekstrand will explore the evolving landscape of AI in Europe and the USA, highlighting key differences in their approaches to AI development, regulation, and societal impact. Attendees will gain insights into the unique challenges and opportunities that AI presents on both continents and how these differences could influence global AI leadership and collaboration. Scholar of Global Distinction students will have an opportunity to earn 4 hours towards the 8-hour international activity requirement of the Scholar of Global Distinction program. The program is open to Scholar of Global Distinction students and educators.


Welcome Speakers

Hazael Andrew is the Associate Director of UNC World View. As part of his role, Hazael plans and administers professional development programs for K-12 and community college educators. He collaborates with 36 community colleges in North Carolina and Florida on the Scholar of Global Distinction program, a program where community colleges and their faculty commit to develop and offer globally intensive courses and activities through which students can earn a global distinction credential from UNC World View.

Prior to joining UNC World View, Hazael directed the student affairs experience of 4,200 first-year residential students at UNC-Chapel Hill. Beyond domestic educational engagement, Hazael has extended his strategic global engagement, where he worked in China, piloting a large-scale summer academic enrichment program for Chinese, Indian and American students at Duke Kunshan University. Similarly, Hazael created an inaugural program for UNC Chapel Hill that cultivated a new collaborative relationship with the University of the West Indies, exposing students in the United States to the British education system, and fostering increased cultural awareness through travel and engagement in Trinidad and Tobago.

Hazael’ s educational background includes a Ph.D. in Educational Studies with a concentration in Cultural Foundations from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, an MBA in Finance from Mississippi State University, and a dual bachelor’s degree in Managerial Economics and Finance from Fayetteville State University.

 

Grace Evans is a UNC World View Intern, who graduated from the Scholars of Global Distinction program at Wayne Community College in 2023. At UNC, she is in the Russian Flagship program and is pursuing a double major in Russian and Peace, War, & Defense, as well as a minor in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

 
 
 
 
 

Presenter

Victoria “Tori” Smith Ekstrand has been a media law and free expression scholar for more than two decades. Before that, she worked as a senior executive for The Associated Press at its headquarters in New York City. She recently completed a three-year term at the UNC Graduate School as the Royster Distinguished Professor for Graduate Education, where she led UNC’s premier doctoral fellows program and its annual Royster Global Conference with UNC’s strategic global partners.

Ekstrand began her research career exploring conflicts between copyright law and the First Amendment. Her interest in that subject was spurred by the copyright wars of the late 1990s and early 2000s and in her role as director of corporate communications for The Associated Press at a time when news organizations were grappling with the emerging online infringement and misappropriation of their intellectual property. She is an expert on the hot news doctrine, a part of unfair competition law that protects the facts of news for a short period. Her revised book on the subject, “Hot News in the Age of Big Data: A Legal History of the Hot News Doctrine and Implications for the Digital Age” (2016), looks at the history of the doctrine and its impact on protections for discrete bits of information in the age of Big Data and the European Union’s move to protect data privacy and regulate artificial intelligence.

More recently, her research has focused on critical and interdisciplinary perspectives in media law and free expression, with research on anonymous speech, campus free expression debates, the trademarking of social movement hashtags, online accessibility issues for people with disabilities and problems with regulating online political advertising. At the heart of these inquiries is her interest in who has – and who doesn’t have — access to the First Amendment’s marketplace of ideas, a central tenet of all U.S. free expression case law.

She has published articles in top communications journals and law reviews, including Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal and Communication Law & Policy. Along with Caitlin Carlson and Erin Coyle, she is the new lead editor for The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication, one of the top media law texts for schools of media and journalism in the U.S., and the first media law textbook with all-female scholars. The eighth edition was published in 2023. She received her MA from New York University and BA from Syracuse University.

 

Closing Speaker

Brett Harris is International Education Program Coordinator for UNC’s Center for European Studies. He received a BA in Comparative Literature and European Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill, and MAs in Political Science from UNC-Chapel Hill and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Harris entered TAM in the fall of 2021 in the European Governance Track and spent two semesters abroad in Berlin, where he also worked with SEEK Development, a global development consulting firm. While abroad, he received fellowships from the US Department of Education, the DAAD, and the Erasmus+ Program of the EU. Harris returned to work full-time for CES in May 2023 and coordinates K-16 educator outreach and administers the Foreign Language Area Studies fellowship program for European languages.

 

Program Materials

The student activity sheet will be available soon.

 

Program Policies

To review UNC World View’s program policies (including photography, social media, refund, and cancellation policies), click here.

 

With Support From:

CES at UNC