Since I first started writing this column, I have written three of them on guns and violence —"Violence and Public Safety” in 2013, after Sandy Hook; “America as a Killing Field” in 2017, after the Las Vegas massacre; and “America is Still a Killing Field” in 2019, after Stoneman-Douglas, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and other mass shooting events.

I have been teaching a graduate course that I renamed to its original title, “Ethics, Policy, and Law in Information Management,” for ten years now. Most years, I have begun with a reading of the Declaration of Independence, followed by a presentation on the Constitution and the structure of American government, and then a closer look at the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. This spring we read aloud the Bill of Rights, and before I could make my usual statement that the founding documents of the United States are imperfect and still evolving, an Afghan student asked, “Why is there no mention of women in these documents?”

With spring comes optimism, including around the challenge of COVID. We see people returning to art exhibitions, sporting events, visiting the famous cherry blossoms on the University of Washington campus, even attending the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington D.C., most without masks. Others are returning to movie theatres, or coming out for ceremonial events like weddings, and funerals.

I am preparing my reading materials for the ethics, policy, and law course I will be teaching this next quarter.

The National Academy of Science has released its final report on a three-part project that provides a guide --Managing Risk Across the Enterprise-- and an implementation path for state departments of transportation to develop an enterprise risk management program.

Volume VI of Reflections on Risk contains 27 research notes first published online by Annie Searle & Associates, LLC from 2019-2021. The focus of the research notes is on current operational risk gaps and technology issues in generally well-known corporations. Analysts and executives in the public and private sector will find the research notes both concise and diagnostic, covering topic areas such as global regulation, privacy, operational risk, cybersecurity and information ethics and policy.

With this sixth volume, we have published 152 research notes since 2012

As I write this on the day I give my last lecture of the quarter, there is a lot at stake in this battle for democratic rule in Ukraine.

The Oxford Dictionaries offers three meanings of the term “judgment” -- two of which are relevant to this column and to a long article I am working on right now for a Shared Assessments Board Risk Report this spring: “a formal utterance of an authoritative opinion” and “the capacity for judging or the exercise of this capacity.”

After four weeks of teaching online, I am sitting in my campus office preparing to teach in person this afternoon.

We enjoy stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end. We especially like clear resolutions to mark the end of a story. So, it’s no wonder that we’re itchy nearly two years later when the omicron variant has lengthened the COVID-19 story, and threatens re-entry to libraries, museums, theatres, restaurants, churches, schools, and sporting events.