Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression: Monday, March 25, 2024, 5pm

Please register HERE for the in-person event and register HERE for the Zoom event.

latest hugo black lecture poster

Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee: Campus Censorship from the 'STOP WOKE ACT' to Israel-Palestine

Join us to hear from Amna Khalid and Jeff Snyder from Carleton College.

Presented by The Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life and moderated by Dean Mary-Jane Rubenstein.

Monday, March 25, 2024, 5:00 pm- 6:30pm, EST

Frank Public Affairs Center 100, and a Zoom Webinar

238 Church St, Middletown, CT 06459

Reception following the event at 6:30 pm, EST.

Please register HERE for the in-person event or register HERE for the Zoom event.

This annual lecture is designed to bring to the Wesleyan Campus, public figures and scholars with experience and expertise in matters related to the First Amendment and freedom of expression. This lecture is endowed by Leonard S. Halpert ’44 (1922–2017), who believed that the First Amendment to the US Constitution is the basis upon which we enjoy all other Civil Rights. This lecture is named in honor of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black.

About the Speakers

Amna Khalid is an Associate Professor in the department of History at Carleton College. She specializes in modern South Asian history, the history of medicine and the global history of free expression. Khalid is the author of multiple book chapters on the history of public health in nineteenth-century India, with an emphasis on the connections between Hindu pilgrimages and the spread of epidemics. She completed a Bachelor’s Degree at Lahore University of Management Sciences and earned both an MPhil in Development Studies and a DPhil in History from Oxford University. Growing up under a series of military dictatorships in Pakistan, Khalid has a strong interest in issues relating to free expression. She hosts a podcast and accompanying blog called “Banished,” which explores censorship controversies in the past and present.

Jeff Snyder is an Associate Professor in the department of Educational Studies at Carleton College. He is a historian of education, whose work examines questions about race, national identity and the purpose of public education in a diverse, democratic society. Snyder is the author of the book, Making Black History: The Color Line, Culture and Race in the Age of Jim Crow. He holds a BA from Carleton, an EdM in Learning and Teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a PhD in the History of Education from New York University. Before pursuing graduate studies, Snyder taught English to Speakers of Other Languages in the Czech Republic, France, China, India, Nepal and the United States.

Khalid and Snyder speak regularly together about academic freedom, free speech and campus politics at colleges and universities across the country. They write frequently on these issues for newspapers and magazines, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Republic and The Washington Post. Last academic year (2022/23), Khalid and Snyder were fellows with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. Their research focused on threats to academic freedom in Florida, the state at the epicenter of the conservative “culture wars” movement to encourage state intervention in public school classrooms. Based on interviews they conducted with Florida faculty members, Khalid and Snyder submitted an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs who are challenging the Stop WOKE Act.

Hugo L. Black Lecturers 1991 - 2023

David Rabban, '71 University of Texas at Austin School of Law	Keith Whittington Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University
Bertrall Ross Chancellor's Professor of Law U.C. Berkeley Law	William Nelson
	Jelani Cobb IRA A. Lipman Professor of Journalism Columbia University
A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia	Rodney Smolla Dean University of Richmond Law School
Harry A. Blackmun Justice Supreme Court of the United States	Margaret Marshall Chief Justice Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
Anthony Lewis Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, The New York Times	Cass Sunstein School of Law University of Chicago
Nadine Strossen President American Civil Liberties Union	Patricia Williams Professor of Law Columbia University
Abner Mikva Former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia	Laurence H. Tribe Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard University
Norman Dorsen Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law	Lawrence Lessig Director, Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethic Professor, Harvard Law School
Patricia Wald Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia	Jack M. Balkin Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment Yale Law School
Floyd Abrahms William J. Brennan Visiting Professor of First Amendment Law, Columbia University	Antonin Scalia Associate Justice Supreme Court of the United States
Kathleen Sullivan Dean Stanford Law School	Geoffrey R. Stone Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor University of Chicago Law School
Nat Hentoff Award-winning author and journalist	Aharon Barak President of the Israeli Supreme Court (Ret.), IDC Herzliya
Lee C. Bollinger President Columbia University	Robert Post Sol and Lillian Goldman Professor of Law Dean, Yale Law School
Anthony D. Romero Executive Director American Civil Liberties Union	Stanley Fish The Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law Florida International University
Linda Greenhouse Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence Joseph M. Goldstein Lecturer in Law Yale Law School	John Finn Professor Emeritus Wesleyan University