So with almost 320 votes, here are the results (an * indicates a vote tally very close to the school ranked just ahead):
1. University of California, Berkeley
2. Harvard University
3. Stanford University
*4. Columbia University
5. New York University
6. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
*7. George Washington University
8. Georgetown University
9. University of California, Los Angeles
*10. Duke University
University of Virginia was the runner-up for the top ten.
This differs a fair bit from the U.S. News list of the top ten programs in intellectual property, which admittedly was based on a survey before Lessig went from Stanford back to Harvard, or before Beebe and Crawford left Cardozo (for NYU and Michigan, respectively): 1. Stanford; 2. Berkeley; 3. George Washington; 4. Columbia; 5. Chicago-Kent; 6. Franklin Pierce; 7. Houston; 8. Santa Clara; 8. Cardozo; 10. Duke. The differences are pretty easy to explain. Our survey included Cyberlaw, while U.S. News did not. More seriously, U.S. News doesn't ask about the scholarly distinction of the faculty, but about the best programs in an area, and that seems to have more to do with advertising and organization than with actual faculty who set the scholarly agenda. In addition, U.S. News asks those surveyed to list up to 15 programs, and then ranked them based on which were mentioned most: in other words, Stanford ranks ahead of Berkeley because some genius forgot to mention Berkeley among the top 15 intellectual property programs!



I’d like to pose a question. Let’s be pessimistic for the moment, and assume AI *does* destroy the university, at…