Norman Matloff Computer Science Recipient 2001-2002 Professor Matloff has written extensively about immigration and employment issues, age discrimination and rmative action. He has been a vocal critic of the use of young, skilled foreign workers on short-term visas to fill jobs in the computer industry, arguing that these jobs could be done by older American programmers and that the foreign-born workers are vulnerable to exploitation. Professor Matloff has testified before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on immigration issues and has served as an expert witness in age-discrimination lawsuits. He has advised federal and state agencies, including the U.S. departments of Commerce and State and the White House, on employment issues. He has served on a number of panels and committees on computer-industry hiring practices sponsored by industry, academia, government and public interest groups. In addition to his contributions on the national level, Professor Matloff has provided extensive service to the state of California. He has been invited to hearings by the Assembly’s Select Committee on Immigration and to joint Assembly/Senate hearings on immigration issue. He also wrote an invited article in the Controller Quarterly, a publication of the California State Controller’s Office, and has served as invited speaker at the California Governor’s Older Worker and Exemplary Employer Conference. Striving to bring these issues into public debate, Professor Matloff has served as an expert commentator for virtually every major national news outlet, including NBC Nightly News, the CBS Evening News, CNN, NPR’s All Things Considered, the PBS News Hour, CNBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, TIME, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Week, and US News and World Report. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Wen Ho Lee Defense Fund, which is now working towards a presidential pardon of the former Los Alamos scientist. It happens that Wen Ho Lee’s work was in the area of parallel processing, a computer research specialty of Professor Matloff’s. Dr. Lee claimed that most of his downloaded software files were generic in nature, not defense-related, and in fact in the public domain. Professor Matloff’s expertise in parallel processing enabled him to explain Dr. Lee’s claim to the public, though the Steering Committee and newspaper editorial boards. Professor Matloff also has written extensively to educate the public on the issue of affirmative action in university admissions. He has served on both the UC Davis and University of California affirmative action committees and has been active in minority outreach programs. Since receiving this award, I have continued to work on these issues, and as of Fall 2002 am now writing my first academic paper related to the H-1B program. In this paper I aim to educate academics about the exploitation of the H-1B workers, and hopefully inspire some of them to get involved in working with government to reform policy in this area. Speaking of awards, I think UC Davis should give itself an award for recognizing faculty who do extensive public service via this honor. In this era in which universities are increasingly turning to "bean counting" for evaluating faculty performance, the fact that UCD actually bestows a Distinguished Public Service Award is a breath of fresh air. Of course, engaging in public service is gratifying in its own right, but it is nice to see such work appreciated. Back to Past Recipients