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I haven’t met Hollywood producer Edward Zwick, who brought the movie and the concept of Blood Diamonds to the world’s attention, but I have had the honor of meeting with medical rock star, and Nobel Prize nominee Dr. Denis Mukwege. Both Zwick and Mukwege had joined numerous NGOs in advocating for a mandatory conflict minerals law in the EU. I met the doctor when I visited Democratic Republic of Congo in 2011 on a fact finding trip for a nonprofit that focuses on maternal and infant health and mortality. Since Mukwege works with mass rape victims, my colleague and I were delighted to have dinner with him to discuss the nonprofit. I also wanted to get his reaction to the Dodd-Frank conflict minerals regulation, which was not yet in effect. I don’t remember him having as strong an opinion on the law as he does now, but I do remember that he adamantly wanted the US to do something to stop the bloodshed that he saw first hand every day.

The success of the Dodd-Frank law is debatable in terms of stemming the mass rape, use of child slaves, and violence against innocent civilians. Indeed, earlier this month…

Below is a call for papers and description of a weeklong project on business and human rights. If you are interested, please contact one of the organizers below. I plan to participate and may also be able to answer some questions.

Lat Crit Study Space Project in Guatemala

Corporations, the State, and the Rule of Law

We are excited to invite you to participate in an exciting Study Space Project in Guatemala. Study Space, a LatCrit, Inc. initiative, is a series of intensive workshops, held at diverse locations around the world. This 2015 Study Space project involves a 7 working day field visit to Guatemala between Saturday June 27 (arrival date) and Saturday July 4, 2015 (departure date).  We are reaching out to you because we believe that your interests, scholarship, and service record align well with the proposed focus of our trip.

This call for papers proposes a trip to Guatemala to study more closely the phenomena of failed nations viewed from the perspective of the relationship of the state of Guatemala with corporations. With the recent surge of Central American unaccompanied minors and children fleeing with their mothers, the United States has had to confront the human face…

Greetings from Dublin. Between the Guinness tour, the champagne afternoon tea, and the jet lag, I don’t have the mental energy to do the blog I planned to write with a deep analysis of the AALS conference in DC. I live tweeted for several days and here my top 25 tweets from the conference. I have also added some that I re-tweeted from sessions I did not attend. I apologize for any misspellings and for the potentially misleading title of this post:

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We covered a lot of ground today, driving up from Medora, ND, to Williston, ND, through Watford City.  The traffic was not terrible for us, though the truck traffic and the road construction was slow going for a while.  We're told we missed the worst of the traffic because our timing was good. It still felt like big city traffic in what is not a big city.  Traffic

Watford City has been a prime example of a place where the oil boom has caused significant growing pains. A recent article in The Atlantic asked, What If Your Small Town Suddenly Got Huge?, and explained: 

The Bakken oil boom has brought rapid growth to many towns and cities in western North Dakota, including Williston, north of the Missouri River, and Dickinson, alongside Interstate 94. But Watford City, where the population has jumped from just 1,400 people six years ago to more than 10,000 today, has experienced a particularly dramatic shift in character. 

There is dirt being moved everywhere: for roads, for housing, and, of course, for oil.  Driving this region you see very few homes, rolling hills, a few small buttes, and some abandoned farm homes. Oil wells blend in surprisingly well…

Following are some pictures from my adventures so far, as described in my prior posts on my Bakken Oil trip in western North Dakota, here and here. Thanks to co-blogger Haskell Murray for the suggestion.

 This is a picture of one of the mudrooms from a crew camp near Dickinson, ND, in Dunn County:

Mudroom

This is a VIP room in the same facility. It has a private bath, while other rooms are smaller and share a jack-and-jill style bathroom. 

VIP

This is the sign for the guest laundry — No Greasers. 

NoGrease

This is a picture of the crude oil site for loading oil on the tanker cars.  

OIlfield

A crude storage tank: 

CrudeStorage

Most of the oil coming out of North Dakota, 1 million barrels a day, is shipped by rail: 

Railcars

This is North Dakota crude. It comes from the ground a little more orange in color, but mellows to this over time.  It's not thick; it almost like iced tea. 

NDCrude

Flaring natural gas remains a problem, though some gathering is underway to help reduced the amount of flaring in the state. 

Flare

Finally, some pictures from Theodore Roosevelt National Park:

TRPark1

TR2

Ttpan

TRHorses

The title of this post refers to the thought-provoking book by former BP executive, Christine Bader, The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil. I will save a review for next week in Part 2 of this post. Briefly, Bader discusses the internal and external struggles that she and other “corporate idealists” face when trying to provide practical, culturally appropriate, innovative ways to implement corporate social responsibility and human rights programs around the world. Much of what she said resonated with me based upon my years as a compliance and ethics officer for a multinational corporation and as a current consultant on these issues.

Like comedian/TV commentator John Oliver, I am torn about the World Cup and the significant power that soccer/futbol’s international governing body FIFA has over both Brazil and its residents. His hilarious but educational rant is worth a close watch, and I experienced the conflict he describes firsthand during my two recent trips to Salvador, Brazil. I went to watch what the rest of the world calls “the beautiful game” in a country where soccer is a religion. That's not an exaggeration by the way– I bought a statuette of a monk holding a…

Today, rather than my usual profound insights, I’m going to pose a question to our readers. (What do you mean, what “usual profound insights”?)

I have been thinking about applying for a Fulbright to teach overseas. The problem is that Fulbright applications are country-specific and I’m having trouble deciding where I would like to teach.

There are several ways to approach this problem. The first approach would be to look for the greatest possible geographical distance from Lincoln, Nebraska. I think this would be my Dean’s preference. But, as my Dean will tell you, pleasing her is almost never one of my criteria.

The second approach would be to choose the place with the greatest beach. This seems like a sound approach to me, but there seems to be a serious shortage of teaching opportunities in places like Tahiti.

That leaves but one possibility—choosing a location that best fits my particular teaching and research interests. My primary focus is securities regulation, particularly the application of securities law to small businesses. Given that focus what would be the best country to visit? Where would I find both (1) interesting things going on in securities regulation of small businesses and (2) people…

A friend with two small children recently told me that he has a bad case of FOMO (“fear of missing out”) at work because of his obligations at home.  His comment struck a chord with me because I recently turned down an opportunity to present a paper because the conference falls on my son’s upcoming first birthday.  Last year, I passed on another wonderful opportunity because it was extremely close to my son’s due date.  (Privileged, first world problems, I realize).  Unlike some of our readers, I am not usually inundated with requests to speak, so both of these opportunities were difficult to turn down. 

Do not get me wrong, the flexibility provided by a career as a professor is fabulous for raising a family.  However, while the baseline day-to-day work requirements for professors are relatively limited, the possible uses of our time are infinite.  For Type-A people like me (and most business and law professors I know), it can be difficult to know where to draw the line at work.  And even when we do draw the line, like I did in the two cases mentioned above, there can be nagging feelings that we are missing out, that those…