University News

Accolades: Citron Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

May 5, 2023 • By Dan Heuchert, danh@virginia.edu Dan Heuchert, danh@virginia.edu

Danielle Citron, center, an internet privacy expert, became the 11th current UVA Law faculty member to be elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. (Photo by Julia Davis, UVA Law)

University of Virginia School of Law professor Danielle Citron, an expert in privacy law who has advanced the idea of intimate privacy as a civil right, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Founded in 1780 during the American Revolution, the academy elects members “who discover and advance knowledge and those who apply knowledge to the problems of society,” according to its website. Members join with other experts to produce studies “that inform public policy and advance the public good.”

Citron is the 11th current UVA Law faculty member to be elected and joins an entering class that includes songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda, novelist Zadie Smith and poet Ilya Kaminsky.

“I’m so honored to be included alongside our great colleagues who are members,” Citron said. “Just to be with them – luminaries all – is really something.”

Citron is the Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law and Caddell and Chapman Professor of Law. She is the inaugural director of the school’s LawTech Center, which focuses on pressing questions in law and technology, and a co-host of the Law School podcast “Common Law.” Her latest book, “The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age,” is about the “central role that intimate privacy plays in our lives,” and the need to protect it. The book was named by Amazon among its top 100 books of 2022.

Citron has collaborated with lawmakers, law enforcement and tech companies to combat online abuse and protect intimate privacy. In recent months she has been involved in efforts to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Designed to encourage online companies to self-monitor online abuse and “offensive” material, Citron has said the law instead resulted in immunizing websites that traffic in nonconsensual porn.

From 2014 to 2016, Citron served as an adviser to then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris and as a member of Harris’ Task Force to Combat Cyber Exploitation and Violence Against Women. Citron has also testified before Congress about deepfakes and before parliamentary officials in the United Kingdom about misogynistic cyber hate speech.

Citron is the vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit devoted to fighting for civil rights and liberties in the digital age. She also serves on the board of directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Future of Privacy, the Advisory Board of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Technology and Society and the Center on Investigative Journalism.

From 2009 to 2022, she served as an adviser to Twitter. She was an adviser and member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council from 2016 to 2022. Currently, she is an adviser to the dating app Bumble, the music streaming service Spotify, the video-sharing platform TikTok and video-streaming service Twitch. She also serves on Facebook’s Nonconsensual Imagery Taskforce.

The publication of Citron’s first book, “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace,” was named one of the 20 Best Moments for Women in 2014 by the editors of Cosmopolitan magazine.

She has published more than 50 articles and essays for law journals and written more than 50 opinion pieces for major media outlets. She has appeared on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” National Public Radio and gave a TED talk, “How Deepfakes Undermine Truth and Democracy,” which has garnered more than 3 million views.

Virginia Quarterly Review Earns ‘Ellie’ for Illustrated Ukraine Journal

The American Society of Magazine Editors presented Virginia Quarterly Review with an “Ellie” award for “Best Illustrated Story” for artist George Butler’s self-illustrated journal of life in Ukraine in the spring of 2022.

The story, “Drawn to War: A Ukraine Journal,” appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review’s fall 2022 issue. VQR, edited by Paul Reyes, is a literary journal published by the University of Virginia.

The award was presented March 28 during a ceremony in New York City. First presented in 1966, the National Magazine Awards are sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Winners receive “Ellies,” elephant-shaped statuettes modeled on Alexander Calder’s stabile “Elephant Walking,” created in 1942. Virginia Quarterly Review has won eight Ellies since 2006.

VQR was also a finalist in the “Columns and Essays” category for “Reality Marble: Build a World Any Way You Can,” by Joseph Earl Thomas, published in its spring 2002 issue.

UVA Health Earns WebMD Patient Choice, Medscape Physician Choice Awards

UVA Health has been named by WebMD and Medscape as a “best in class” health system in Virginia for its cancer, heart, orthopedics, neurology and digestive health care.

The 2022-23 WebMD Patient Choice and Medscape Physician Choice awards are based on surveys of consumers and physicians in Virginia, who were asked “to select the health system they believe provides the best overall quality and treatment capability,” according to the WebMD methodology. UVA Health was selected as a leading Virginia health system in all five specialties surveyed: oncology, cardiology, orthopedics, neurology and gastroenterology.

WebMD and Medscape recently honored UVA Health for its all-around care. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)

“Our mission is to transform health and inspire hope for all Virginians and beyond, and providing high-quality, specialized care is elemental to that mission,” said Dr. K. Craig Kent, chief executive officer for UVA Health and UVA’s executive vice president for health affairs. “I am proud to see so many teams across UVA Health recognized as a destination for care by WebMD and Medscape.”

English Professor Earns Danish Honorary Doctorate

Jahan Ramazani, the Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English, received an honorary doctorate on April 21 from Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark, which lauded him as “one of the world’s most original, influential and important lyrical researchers.”

Every year on the anniversary of its founding, Aalborg confers five honorary doctorates. Ramazani was nominated by the university’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

In its announcement, Aalborg wrote (translated from Danish): “Jahan Ramazani’s research area is the lyrical genre as well as world literature, postcolonial theory and critical race theory. In this connection, he is particularly known for his new thinking of poetry as a historical, dynamic and hybrid genre, and he has over the decades with books such as ‘Poetry in a Global Age’ (2020), ‘Poetry and Its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres’ (2014) and ‘A Transnational Poetics’ (2009) cemented his status as one of the world’s most original, influential and influential lyric scholars.”

English professor Jahan Ramazani traveled to Copenhagen in April to receive an honorary doctorate from Aalborg University. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

Urologist Elevated to National Leadership

Dr. Kirsten Greene, chair of the Department of Urology in the School of Medicine and associate chief medical officer at UVA Health, has been elected as the first female president of the Society of Academic Urologists, a subgroup within the American Urological Association.

Greene was appointed the Paul Mellon Professor and chair of the Department of Urology in 2019. She specializes in caring for patients with cancer of the prostate, kidney, bladder, ureter, urethra, penis, scrotum and testicles. She is interested in organ preservation and minimally invasive and robotic surgery.

Dr. Kirsten Greene was recently elected as the first female president of the Society of Academic Urologists. (UVA School of Medicine photo)

Other clinical interests include cancer screening, quality of life assessment and novel imaging technology. Her research efforts focus on surgical device development, robotic surgical techniques and innovations, new forms of imaging for prostate cancer, cancer outcomes research, and physician well-being and burnout.

In 1995, Greene completed her undergraduate studies at UVA, where she was both a Jefferson Scholar and an Echols Scholar. She earned her medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine before beginning her career at the University of California, San Francisco.

Canadian Magazine Honors Music Professor’s Composition

Leah Reid, an assistant professor of composition in the Department of Music, took first place in Canada’s Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest for her composition, “Reverie.”

Musicworks is a Toronto-based music magazine. Reid earned a bachelor’s degree from Canada’s McGill University before going on to earn a D.M.A. and M.A. in music composition from Stanford University.

Leah Reid’s award-winning composition, “Reverie,” is described as “an immersive fantasy centered around deconstructed music boxes.” (Contributed photo)

Reid’s compositions range from opera, chamber and vocal music to acousmatic, electroacoustic works, and interactive sound installations.

She will be interviewed in Musicworks’ summer issue, and “Reverie” – selected from 179 entries from 19 countries – is included in the Musicworks 145 CD. Reid also won $500.

Soundcloud describes “Reverie” as “an acousmatic composition that leads the listener through an immersive fantasy centered around deconstructed music boxes ... In the work, the music boxes’ sounds are pulled apart, exaggerated, expanded, and combined with other sounds whose timbres and textures are reminiscent of the original. As the piece unfolds, the timbres increase in spectral and textural density, and the associations become more and more fantastical. Gears are transformed into zippers, coins, chainsaws, motorcycles, and fireworks, and the chimes morph into rainstorms, all sizes of bells, pianos, and more.”

Media Studies Professor’s Book Medals in Business Awards

Media studies professor Aynne Kokas’ 2022 book, “Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty,” received a bronze medal in the “International Business and Globalization” category in the annual Axiom Business Book Awards.

Aynne Kokas’ book, “Trafficking Data,” argues that exploitative Silicon Valley data governance practices help China build infrastructures for global control. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

Kokas, the C.K. Yen Professor at UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, studies Sino-U.S. media and technology relations. “Trafficking Data” argues that exploitative Silicon Valley data governance practices help China build infrastructures for global control.

Previous Axiom Awards medalists include Nobel laureate Robert Shiller, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin.