Robin Kar, a professor of law and philosophy and associate dean for curricular innovation at the College of Law, received the Outstanding Faculty Leadership Award. This award recognizes faculty members who have provided extraordinary leadership contributions across many dimensions of shared governance that advance the excellence of a unit, a college and/or the campus, and who exemplify the campus commitment to collaborative decision-making. The award is the highest accolade honoring a faculty member whose professional service has advanced progress toward the Illinois mission.

Kar has garnered several key leadership roles for the Urbana campus and the University of Illinois System, acting as a compass for the development and adoption of meaningful shared governance. These roles include serving as interim head of the Department of Philosophy for three years, chair of the Senate Executive Committee for three years, chair and vice chair of the of the University Senate for two years and chair of the Committee on Faculty Sexual Misconduct for one year. Kar established a style of leadership in the Department of Philosophy grounded in impartiality and open communication. He was credited with hiring and retaining philosophy professors that restored the department into a top 50 program globally and elevated it into the intellectually vibrant community that it is today. Kar was also cited for his initial work in 2018 in updating systemwide policies regarding sexual harassment, sexual assault and other forms of sexual misconduct and remains a trusted voice as those matters are continuously monitored. His approach to leadership — amid navigating complex problems — rests on listening to different and sometimes opposing perspectives and then “working creatively to harmonize them.” Kar’s record of shared governance is now being applied to his current leadership role as the inaugural associate dean for curricular innovation in the College of Law.

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This Article proposes, for the first time, the application of “shared meaning analysis” — a method of contract interpretation grounded in traditional contract principles, as developed in Pseudo-Contract and Shared Meaning Analysis, 132 HARV. L. REV. 1135 (2019) (“PseudoContract”) — to online privacy policies. The method identifies when policy text adds enforceable terms to a contract, as opposed to mere unenforceable boilerplate, addressing an underappreciated paradigm slip in contract law that is enabling widespread digital surveillance. Consumers routinely click “I agree” to online privacy policies — which purport to permit cookies, other tracking devices (like pixels and SDKs), and AI-driven data analysis — without reading or comprehending their text, leading to massive transfers of personal information that erode privacy, facilitate consumer and political manipulation, and threaten freedom and democracy. Critiquing the binary debate over whether online privacy policies are contracts at all, this Article argues for a more nuanced reform: courts, operating within their common law authority, should revive privacy by focusing contract interpretation on the shared meanings of any contracts over privacy formed in digital contexts. Through examples involving policy scope, unilateral modifications, and conflicts between shared meaning and deceptive boilerplate, this Article demonstrates how contract interpretation — once returned to its rightful focus on shared meaning — can be used to counter modern surveillance harms without requiring new legislation, complementing other privacy frameworks and restoring the proper moral relationship between contract and privacy.

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