On Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009, UNC-CH celebrated First Amendment Day. This campus-wide, day-long event was designed to both celebrate the First Amendment and explore its role in the lives of Carolina students. Students and others read from banned books, sang banned music and discussed the importance of each of the rights protected by the First Amendment, the need to be tolerant when others exercise their rights and the public university’s special role as a marketplace of ideas. First Amendment Day was co-sponsored by the UNC Center for Media Law & Policy and the Campus Y. Below are the highlights of the events, press mentions, photos and videos from First Amendment Day.
First Amendment Day Buzz
“Bring on the Debate” by Meredith Engelen, The Daily Tar Heel, Oct. 7, 2009
The Daily Tar Heel piece followed up on two First Amendment Day events, the panel discussion titled, “The State of Free Speech at Carolina: A Conversation with Haley Koch, Nikhil Patel and Hugh Stevens,” and the keynote lecture delivered by Greg Lukianoff, “Unlearning Liberty.” The article concluded with this mandate to campus: “There are ideas we like and ideas with which we vehemently disagree. But at our great University, these ideas become lessons of tolerance, patience and, ultimately, lessons in the freedom to decide for ourselves.”
Video
“Unlearning Liberty”: A video of the keynote lecture from Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)