Fred H. Cate, Distinguished Professor

Fred H. Cate School of Law—Bloomington University Graduate School, IU Bloomington

Interim President Gerald Bepko, Cate and IU Bloomington Chancellor Sharon Brehm at the Founders Day ceremony

His scholarly attainment, Robel noted, has not come at the expense of his teaching or his service to the university: “The law school hired Professor Cate to create a communications law program, and he not only has done that but has continually revised it to reflect the growth of information law as a distinct and influential field. Every course he teaches, he created.” Cate’s most recent research, in collaboration with Michael E. Staten, Distinguished Professor and director of the Credit Research Center at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, involves a series of interdisciplinary case studies of information flows in four major United States corporations. Cate, said Staten, couples “his talent as a skillful communicator with his ability to do high-quality research that blends the tools of both law and economics.” This has made him “a well-known academic expert on Capitol Hill, in large part because he is eloquently effective at explaining complex regulatory issues.” He has held appointments at two Washington, D.C., think tanks: on the political left, the Brookings Institution, and on the political right, the American Enterprise Institute. He served for six years as a senior fellow of the Annenberg Washington Program in Communications Policy Studies. He has chaired commissions for the United Nations, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the American Association of University Professors; served as a member of the Federal Trade Commission’s influential Committee on Online Access and Security; and been sought as an adviser by numerous governments, including those of Finland, Japan, Taiwan and China.

‘Fred Cate is singularly successful at translating the fruits of intellectual inquiry into his teaching and service, so that the impact of his work is felt not only by other scholars, but also by students, policymakers and the public.’ Lauren Robel, acting dean of the IU School of Law—Bloomington