Lawrence Lessig is on his way back to Harvard and even though I don’t normally post about professors moving from one school to another, this one seems like a particularly important move. Lessig gained popularity at Stanford for his work on intellectual property rights and he carries more popularity with non-legal thinkers than almost any other IP professor in America.

With that in mind, its even more surprising that his work at Harvard will have very little to do with IP rights. He has signed up to head their program on ethics and public policy. If Dean Elena Kagan ends up leaving for a post in the Obama administration, as some expect, she’s certainly left HLS a nice going-away present!