Muhlenberg becomes first US College to offer Harvard Law partner course

It’s that time of year again—scarves and boots dominate everyday wardrobe, picturesque photo opportunities lie around every street corner, and Thanksgiving break is almost upon us. But November also means Muhlenberg students will soon be choosing their courses for the Spring semester.

While some students know the courses they’d like to take, others may still be in the process of picking and choosing classes. Either way, a new Harvard Law-modeled course has been integrated into Muhlenberg’s course list, and students of varying majors and disciplines can add this class as one more option for the upcoming semester.

“The name of the course is CopyrightX: Muhlenberg College. This is modeled after a course that is taught at Harvard, but it’s very much a Muhlenberg course and that’s what I wanted to mainly emphasize,” said Professor Kelly Cannon, the Outreach and Scholarly Communication Librarian at the Trexler Library and CopyrightX course instructor.

“We’re incorporating some Harvard material, but half the course will be in person, lessons here, discussion here.

The other half of the course will be online lectures by a Harvard professor,” added Cannon. “The in-person meetings will be sort of unpacking: what did we see in those online Harvard lectures, how does that apply to the major themes that we’re talking about, what are those major themes, and what are some legal cases that relate to those themes?”

The idea to incorporate the course into the Muhlenberg academic repertoire actually began with President John

Williams after he took the class himself through edX.org, a website that offers online courses to scholars of all types.

“I took the course years ago, maybe four or five years ago, and as a result, I actually got to know Professor William (Terry) Fisher through a series of talks that he gave,” said Williams. “When I came to Muhlenberg, he let me know that he was starting up this affiliate program and wanted to know if there might be any potential interest and I said ‘sure!’ because I saw that this was a potentially very interesting thing for us to do.”

While Fisher and Harvard Law are partnering with colleges and universities worldwide, Muhlenberg is currently the only school offering the partnership course in the United States.

“It’s a really, really well done digital course in the online framework and in the affiliated framework, I think it can’t be anything but even better to have that in-person dimension with Professor Cannon,” said Williams. “This is a terrific deal for Muhlenberg College to be able to offer to our students the opportunity to see what actual Harvard Law students are seeing.”

As Cannon said, the course will be titled “CopyrightX: Muhlenberg College,” and it will fall under the Innovation and Entrepreneurship discipline. Students can find it as in the course listing as INE 380 CopyrightX: Muhlenberg College.

While there are no prerequisites “other than an interest in the material,” Cannon plans to meet with each student individually in order to gauge their “interest and aptitude.” The course’s focus will rest on a range of topics concerning copyright law, from fair use policies, to secondary liability, to distribution rights, and many others, all according to Harvard Law Professor Terry Fisher’s course syllabus.

“A lot of the material in the course deals with art objects, creative writing pieces, sculpture, photography, and music; perhaps not surprisingly, the arts are very much a focus for what we’re doing with copyright,” explained Cannon. “This course I could see appealing to anyone in pre-law across the disciplines, people interested in other aspects of government, media and communication, and especially in any of the arts and arts production.”

Both Cannon and Williams suggest the course for anyone on the pre-law track, as the course should help students prepare and become accustomed to the writing style that they’ll face in law school.

Students enrolled in the course will be fully utilizing Fisher’s course materials, ranging from videotaped lectures to readings, along with Cannon’s additional readings or assignments.

“I think it’s intimidating when we say we’re incorporating Harvard material, but this is very much a Muhlenberg version of the course. There’s going to be a lot of opportunity for one-on-one interaction with me and with other students,” said Cannon.

“We’re really going to be talking through the material and that’s the whole purpose of the weekly discussion sessions, to talk through the material and make sure that we understand it well, so when the final comes, we’ll be fully prepared and we’ll feel like we really have a grasp on this complex subject.”

Photo courtesy of Harvard University