First Amendment Law Review Symposium: Retaliation, Coercion, and the First Amendment

Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/06/2026
8:00 am - 3:30 pm

On November 6, 2026, the Center for Media Law and Policy will be joining with the First Amendment Law Review (FALR) to present a symposium on “Retaliation, Coercion, and the First Amendment.”

FALR’s annual symposium will bring together leading scholars and practitioners to examine the expanding role of First Amendment retaliation doctrine across constitutional law. As retaliation claims have become an increasingly prominent tool for challenging government overreach, this year’s symposium will explore a range of interconnected questions: how plaintiffs prove retaliatory intent when the government controls the evidence; how the unconstitutional conditions doctrine applies when the federal government uses funding and contracts as leverage against law firms, universities, and other institutions; and how courts should respond to chilling effects and institutional capitulation in the face of executive pressure.

In the past year, student protests over the war in Gaza have spread across the country, raising difficult questions about not only how university administrators should respond but also what role, if any, protests should play in the life of a university. At the same time, UNC and other universities have embraced the concept of “institutional neutrality” for the first time since it was proposed in the 1967 Kalven Report; students and professors alike complain that they are “canceled” for expressing unpopular viewpoints in the place traditionally known as the marketplace of ideas; and federal and state lawmakers take aim at elitist universities.

Join us on Friday, November 6, 2024, at the Rizzo Center at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill as we dive into this important topic.

• David Cole, Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center

• David King, Tennessee Law Group
• Genevieve Lakier, University of Chicago Law School
• Amy Moore, Belmont University College of Law
• Helen Norton, University of Colorado School of Law

• Evelyn Douek, Stanford Law School
• Lyrissa Lidsky, University of Florida Levin College of Law
• Mary-Rose Papandrea, George Washington University Law School
• Scott Wilkens, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University

• Nick Gamse, Williams & Connolly LLP
• Jacob Schriner-Briggs,  Cleveland State University
• Sonja West, University of Georgia School of Law
• Timothy Zick, William & Mary Law School

CLE credit is pending for this event. For more information, please visit the First Amendment Law Review.

This event is free and open to the public.  The event will also be streamed live on YouTube.