Co-hosted by FIRE and NYU’s First Amendment Watch, the National Constitution Center’s 2024 First Amendment Summit convenes America’s leading thinkers for a vigorous discussion of the state of free speech in America and around the globe. A keynote conversation about global free speech with Jason Rezaian of The Washington Post will be followed by discussions of free speech on campus and in and out of the courts. Panelists include Mary Anne Franks, author of the new book Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment; FIRE Vice President of Campus Advocacy Alex Morey; Nadine Strossen, author of Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know; Jonathan Turley, author of the new book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage; Keith Whittington, author of You Can't Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms; and Kenji Yoshino of NYU School of Law and Meta's Oversight Board.
This event is presented in partnership with FIRE and NYU’s First Amendment Watch.
Keynote |
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Excerpt from Keynote: Jason Rezaian calls for a renewed U.S. commitment to protect detained journalists and citizens abroad.
Jason Rezaian: Up until very recently, this was a core value that the United States of America always stood for in all circumstances. I hope that we can return to that position that wherever an independent journalist or anybody who is repressed, detained, harassed for expressing their views, opinions or reporting the truths on the ground of any place in the world, we're gonna stand up for people in those situations. I think we've always done a decent job of it, but it's become politicized, right? When it's politically helpful to stand up for a journalist somewhere on the other side of the world, we do it when it's not, we don't. I think we need to return to this idea that this is a core value, not only our ability to express ourselves, but the value of the individual's life and liberty. It's sacred to us, right?
That's always been what kind of differentiated us from a lot of these other countries and around the world. And I can tell you when I was locked up, my interrogators would say to me, you must be all of the things that we say you are, otherwise, why would the American government care? Why would they put so much effort into trying to win your release? And I think this is something that we have to really embrace and remember at a time when more and more Americans, and it's still a small number of people, are being wrongfully detained by governments around the world, but the number is on the rise. And it really, if it gets much worse than it is right now, Jeff, you know how these things work.
When there's three or four Americans who are being held by different governments around the world, that's something that the State Department and the NSC and FBI and CIA can put resources in. When it's 30 people, it comes a little bit harder. When it becomes 300 people or 500 people or 1,000 people, will the US government put those resources into freeing Americans? Probably not. And if that's the case, is using your blue passport the same as it was when I was a kid? I remember in the movies, they would say to us, Americans would be harassed, "They'd say, you can't do that to me, I'm an American." Right? Now it seems like more and more, no, we're gonna do that to you because you're American. And I think we should be focusing on that because our standing in the world, the value of our citizenship is on the line.
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| Panel 1: Free Speech on Campus |
Panel 2: Free Speech In and Out of the Courts |
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Podcasts
Participants
Keynote: Global Threats to Freedom of the Press
Jason Rezaian is director of press freedom initiatives for The Washington Post. He previously served as a writer for the Post’s Global Opinions section and was the Tehran bureau chief from 2012–2016. He spent 544 days unjustly imprisoned by Iranian authorities until his release in January 2016. He is the author of Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison, which was adapted as a nine-episode narrative audio series. Since 2018, has also been a CNN Global Affairs contributor.
Panel 1: Free Speech on Campus Today
Mary Anne Franks is the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at the George Washington University Law School. She is also the president and legislative and tech policy director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. She frequently advises legislators on various forms of technology-facilitated abuse and also several major technology platforms on privacy, free expression, and safety issues. She is the author of Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment.
Alex Morey is vice president of campus advocacy at FIRE, where she leads their Campus Rights Advocacy program. Her commentary is frequently featured by media outlets like The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Hill, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico. She is also a member of the First Amendment Lawyers Association.
Keith Whittington is David Boies Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is the author of You Can’t Teach That! The Battle Over University Classrooms, Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech, as well as works on constitutional theory and law and politics. He serves as founding chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance’s Academic Committee and as a Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow. He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy and hosts The Academic Freedom Podcast.
Panel 2: Free Speech In and Out of the Courts
Nadine Strossen is the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School and past president of the American Civil Liberties Union. She is also a senior fellow with FIRE and serves on the advisory boards of the ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, and the National Coalition Against Censorship. Her most recent books are HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship and Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know. She is also the host and project consultant for the film series Free To Speak.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law, Director of the Environmental Law Advocacy Center, and executive director of the Project for Older Prisoners at the George Washington University Law School. He has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades and has testified before Congress over 100 times. His most recent book is The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.
Kenji Yoshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law and the director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. He previously served as deputy dean at Yale Law School and has published four books, including his most recent (co-authored with David Glasgow), Say the Right Thing: How to Talk About Identity, Diversity and Justice. Yoshino currently serves on the oversight board for Meta.
Moderator
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
Below are links to resources referenced during the program.
- FIRE: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
- NYU’s First Amendment Watch
- The Washington Post’s Press Freedom Partnership
- Jason Rezaian, Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison―Solitary Confinement, a Sham Trial, High-Stakes Diplomacy, and the Extraordinary Efforts It Took to Get Me Out (2019)
- Mary Ann Franks, Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment
- Keith Whittington, You Can’t Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms (2024)
- Nadine Strossen, Free to Speak, PBS
- HB7, “Stop WOKE Act”
- Jonathan Turley, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage (2024)
- Meta Oversight Board
- Twitter Files
- Moody v. NetChoice
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