FCC chairman to visit university on Sept. 18

Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, will visit the University of Nebraska–Lincoln on Sept. 18. The visit is hosted by the University of Nebraska College of Law’s Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law program and its co-director Gus Hurwitz.

Pai will participate in a public conversation with Hurwitz at 3:30 p.m. in the Nebraska Union Auditorium. The chat will be followed by a question-and-answer session. The event is open to the university community and general public; however, space is limited. Pre-registration is required. Register here.

The presentation is part of a daylong visit by the FCC chairman. Working through university’s Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, Pai will visit a farm near Waverly for a discussion of dryland farming operations, the precision technology used for planting and harvesting, and related data collection. Pai will also have lunch with law, business, engineering and journalism students, discussing the FCC’s work and federal policy; and join interested Nebraskans in a roundtable discussion about federal communications policy.

The farm visit, lunch with students and roundtable discussion are not open to the public.

The FCC works on issues ranging from closing the digital divide and facilitating the development of cutting-edge communications technologies, to ensuring that telephone and television networks are accessible to all Americans and support public-safety uses. The commission also handles high-profile issues such as network neutrality and the deployment of satellite-based internet services.

Pai has led the FCC since 2017 and has been a commissioner since 2012. In these roles, he has helped shape federal-communications policies, from efforts to shrink the digital divide, to fostering deployment of next-generation wireless technologies, fighting robocalls, freeing spectrum to support next-generation technologies such as precision agriculture and satellite-based internet access, modernizing media-ownership rules, updating public-safety technologies and ruling on net neutrality. The son of immigrants from India, Pai grew up in Parsons, Kansas. He graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1994 and from the University of Chicago Law School in 1997.

Questions about the visit should be directed to Elsbeth Magilton, executive director of the Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law program, at elsbeth@unl.edu.