The professor has a very strong political stand. He encouraged students to argue for "the freedom of speech" point of view as in the Houston rocket Morey case. Spent lots of time discussing this topic even after Lebron called for a stop.

One of the best professors I have taken at UCLA. Extremely multifacted background, gives extremely engaging lectures, gets class to participate and discuss. Class had a very manageable workload (two writing assignments and a debate), and was overall extremely enjoyable. Prof Villasenor focuses on recent and controversial topics in the tech space, and I definitely learned a lot from taking his class.

This is the best class you can take for Engineering Ethics. I was actually excited to go to his class because the topics we would talk about were so interesting. What's cool too is that the essays are about whatever you want, meaning they're not about anything you learn in the lecture. The only thing you need to be paying attention to in the lecture is his random in-class quizzes which are based on his lecture content, but those are pretty easy. The worst part of this class is the 3-hour discussion. Just make sure you get a good group and you'll be chilling in this class.

Overall, definitely take this class if you want to fulfill the ethics and writing engineering requirement. The class is easy and not too boring. Lectures are not mandatory and people stopped showing up since nothing from lectures really matters for the course grade, which is unfortunate because the professor is clearly very passionate about what he teaches. There are also reading assignments that no one really did - the articles are interesting but not essential for any graded assignment.

The course grade mainly comes from your TA. The assignments are an individual essay; in-class, open internet midterm; co-op; group essay; group oral presentation on the group essay topic; and a team-based in-class debate. All are very manageable and not difficult.

We covered a lot of relevant modern topics such as blockchain, equity in AI, and Section 230 (content moderation). We had to write an essay, op-ed, group essay, and the midterm involved writing an op-ed. We got to choose our topics and I definitely learned a lot about the things I wrote about. I felt the class was alright, depending on who you got as your TA (pray yours lets you leave early).

Dr. V doesn't bullshit us with random sjw crap
He talks real stuff and gives law background

On a lot of different topics