Back to the Classroom: Energy Policy, Technology Law, and the Beginning of a New Academic Year at The University of Tulsa

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Back to the Classroom: Energy Policy, Technology Law, and the Beginning of a New Academic Year at The University of Tulsa

After a summer filled with conferences, research, teaching, and academic activities in the United States and Europe, it was especially meaningful to return this week to one of the parts of academic life that I value most: the classroom.

On Tuesday, August 25, I began my second academic year at The University of Tulsa College of Law, returning to two courses that I first taught at TU last fall: Energy Policy and Technology Law: AI, Cybersecurity, Data Privacy.

There was something particularly rewarding about beginning these courses again one year later. When I arrived at TU in Fall 2025, the timing of my appointment meant that Energy Policy was added relatively late, after many students had already completed their schedules. This year, I was very pleased to see considerably stronger enrollment and, across both courses, an impressive range of interests, experiences, and academic backgrounds.

The response to Technology Law has been particularly striking. Enrollment required us to move to a larger classroom, and the course brings together students from different parts of the university and at different stages of their education: J.D. students, undergraduate students from political science and business, international and exchange students, and even postgraduate study connecting law with computer science.

What interested me most during our first meeting, however, was why they had chosen to be there.

Students spoke about technology law as increasingly foundational to legal practice; about their interest in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and data privacy; about the challenge of understanding how law can keep pace with technological change; and about the relevance of these questions to virtually every area in which future lawyers may practice.

That diversity is precisely what I hope the course can use as a resource. Technology governance cannot be understood exclusively through one disciplinary lens. Questions surrounding AI, cybersecurity and data privacy inevitably lead us toward ethics, democratic governance, the rule of law, business, intellectual property, energy, environmental sustainability and broader questions about society and technological change. The course therefore asks students to connect these subjects with their own disciplinary and professional interests rather than studying technology law in isolation.

The same principle shapes Energy Policy. Our first conversation moved rapidly from energy transition and climate justice to data centers, water scarcity and the Colorado River, renewable energy development in Oklahoma and Texas, rural communities, land use, environmental impacts and the very different historical and economic experiences of energy-producing regions in the United States.

One of the ideas I emphasized in both classrooms was that, as a professor, I see my role as going beyond disciplinary silos and helping students understand the connections across different fields. A data center, for example, can be approached as a technology-law problem, but equally as an energy-policy problem: its enormous demand for electricity immediately raises questions about infrastructure, energy prices, environmental impacts, climate policy, regulation and distributive consequences. The point is not that every course should cover everything, but that students should learn to recognize the intersections.

It was also particularly gratifying to see many familiar faces. Several students who studied Climate Change Law, Secured Transactions or International and EU Energy Law with me during the past year have returned for another course—and some are now taking both Energy Policy and Technology Law. One student jokingly told me that they needed to take one more of my courses before graduating. It was equally gratifying to welcome back students now enrolling in their third or even fourth course with me. For a professor, seeing students voluntarily return to the classroom semester after semester is among the most meaningful forms of feedback one can receive.

The first days of an academic year are also about rebuilding the broader community of a law school. At the end of Tuesday’s classes, students and faculty had an opportunity to gather more informally at a welcome ice-cream event organized by Associate Dean for Student Affairs April Fox—a very welcome way to cool down after the first days of classes and to begin another semester together.

The preceding week had already brought orientation and other activities for incoming students, but with regular classes now underway, the new academic year feels fully begun.

I am grateful to the students who have chosen these courses, to those who have returned after studying with me previously, and especially to the students bringing perspectives and interests that I could never design into a syllabus in advance.

The most interesting classroom is not one in which everyone arrives already interested in precisely the same subject. It is one in which energy, technology, law, policy, business, science, ethics and society can encounter one another—and where students discover connections that neither they nor the professor necessarily anticipated on the first day.

I look forward to seeing where those conversations take us during the Fall 2026 semester.

Welcome back to The University of Tulsa—and to a new academic year.

Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah

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