Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics

Our Mission

In 2010, Lawrence Lessig launched the Edmond J. Safra Research Lab, a major initiative designed to address fundamental problems of ethics in a way that is of practical benefit to institutions of government and society around the world. As its first undertaking, the Lab is tackling the problem of institutional corruption.

Institutional corruption: the consequence of an influence within an economy of influence that illegitimately weakens the effectiveness of an institution especially by weakening the public trust of the institution.

Over a five year period, a wide range of important institutions will be studied, with the ultimate goal of producing a set of practical tools that might be used both to understand the dynamic of institutional corruption and to respond to it. A new structure of fellowships supports the project and draws scholars and researchers from a wide range of disciplines across academia, industry, and government. Collaborative research that integrates the work of different fields is a strong component of the Lab's work.

Read a full description of the Lab's research project and operational plan.

Watch the Lab's introductory lecture, given by Professor Lessig in the fall of 2009, which lays out the framework for the Lab's current project on institutional corruption.

The Edmond J. Safra Research Lab is made possible, in part, by the generous support of Mrs. Lily Safra. Read about her extraordinary gift.

Lawrence Lessig, Director

Lawrence Lessig is the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Prior to returning to Harvard, he was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school's Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

For much of his career, Professor Lessig focused his work on law and technology, especially as it affects copyright. His current work addresses "institutional corruption," relationships which are legal, even currently ethical, but which weaken public trust in an institution.

He has won numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation's Freedom Award, and was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries. He is the author of Remix (2008), Code v2 (2007), Free Culture (2004),The Future of Ideas (2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). He is on the board of Creative Commons, MAPLight, Brave New Film Foundation, Change Congress, The American Academy, Berlin, Freedom House and iCommons.org, and the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. He has served on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, Free Press, and Public Knowledge. He was a columnist for Wired, Red Herring, and The Industry Standard.

Professor Lessig earned a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.

Neeru Paharia, Research Director

Neeru Paharia is the research director at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Neeru completed her doctorate at Harvard Business School in 2010, and her research focuses on consumer behavior, decision making, identity, and moral psychology. Neeru is broadly interested in finding ways for people to consume more consciously, and her current research focuses on how ethicality is perceived when companies use intermediaries to commit unethical acts, how consumers morally disengage when faced with products they desire, and how consumers are more likely to identify with products that are marketed as underdogs.

She has one first-author paper published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and another in the Journal of Consumer Research. Prior to coming to Harvard, Neeru spent three years on the founding team at Creative Commons serving as Assistant and Executive Director. She has worked as an Associate Consultant at McKinsey and did a summer internship at Deloitte. Neeru graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Master of Science in Public Policy as a PPIA fellow, and from the University of California at Davis with a Bachelor's degree in Economics. She spent a year in the Coro Fellowship Program, a leadership program in public affairs. Neeru enjoys playing blues guitar and thinking about how to solve social problems in innovative ways.

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