First Amendment Day 2022

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill celebrated its thirteenth First Amendment Day on Wednesday, September 21, 2022. This campus-wide, daylong series of events is designed to both celebrate the First Amendment and explore its role in the lives of Carolina students.

First Amendment Day was organized by the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy and is truly one of the highlights of the year for the UNC community.

2022 First Amendment Day Events

The UNC Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl Team will debate timely ethical issues related to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.

The Parr Center for Ethics sponsors the UNC-Chapel Hill Ethics Bowl team that competes in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Ethics Bowl each November. The Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl Competition (IEB) is a part of a larger ethics bowl initiative by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics.

The UNC-Chapel Hill Ethics Bowl team provides students with an opportunity to practice applying moral theories and principles of argument that they learn in their ethics classes in the interactive format of the Ethics Bowl. Competition preparation involves significant research, writing, understanding ethical theories, and oral presentation. The provided case studies involve ethical issues in practical contexts, including engineering, law, medicine, personal relationships, education, and domestic and international politics. Specific questions may concern a wide range of ethically salient topics, including but not limited to plagiarism, dating and friendship, gun control, environmental policy, civilian casualties, and globalization.

This event will showcase the current UNC IEB team, as they present an abridged and interactive version of a regular competition round. The round will include information about a selected case study, a presentation by one team, comments from the opposing team, a response from the presenting team, and a Q&A period with the audience.

For information on the UNC-Chapel Hill Ethics Bowl team or how to get involved, contact Sally Moore at Sallybm@live.unc.edu

This event is free and open to the public.

Video from the event is below.

U.S. and European Approaches to Regulating Social Media Platforms               
UNC School of Law, Room 5042
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Debates over how best to regulate social media have raged for years without resolution, but new legislation in the United States and Europe presage a more complicated regulatory environment for social media companies. This panel of experts will discuss government efforts to regulate social media platforms, including recent laws passed in Texas and Florida as well as the E.U.’s Digital Services Act. What impact will these laws have on social media companies? Are they compatible with the U.S. First Amendment and the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights? What additional regulation might be coming in the future?

Panelists:

• David Ardia, Reef C. Ivey II Excellence Fund Term Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Media Law and Policy, UNC School of Law
• Paivi Korpisaari, Professor of Law, University of Helsinki
• Bill Marshall, William Rand Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, UNC School of Law
• Matt Perault, Professor of the Practice, UNC School of Information & Library Science, and Director of the UNC Center on Technology Policy

The panel will be moderated by Anne Klinefelter, Henry P. Brandis Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the UNC Law Library.

This event is co-sponsored by the UNC Center on Technology Policy and the UNC Media Law Society.  It is free and open to the public.

Video from the event is below.

Get 1A Smart: Having Your Say & Staying Out of Court               
Freedom Forum Conference Center on the Third Floor of Carroll Hall
2:00 pm - 3:15 pm

Has there ever been a time with more libel cases in the courts and in the headlines?  If following cases like Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard or Dominion Voting v. Fox News has you scratching your head, wondering when your speech is protected and when it isn’t, this is the discussion for you. Is everyone with a Facebook page or Twitter handle a publisher? In an environment of lawsuit after lawsuit, how can individuals tell their life story or voice an opinion without defaming others? Come hear seasoned journalists and lawyers discuss how they decide what to say and how they will say it.  For aspiring journalists, the panel will discuss the role of pre-publication review and the expectations of those giving and receiving feedback.  Everyone will walk away with some helpful guidance on how to stay on the right side of the line when posting online.

Panelists:

• Erica Beshears Perel, Director of the UNC Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media; former General Manager at The Daily Tar Heel
• Aysu Basaran, Assistant News Director at WRAL-TV
• John Drescher, Contributing Editor at The Assembly; former Executive Editor at The News & Observer Publishing Company
• Hugh Stevens, Nationally-known media lawyer and experienced litigator

This panel will be co-moderated by Amanda Martin, Senior Lecturing Fellow and Supervising Attorney at Duke Law’s First Amendment Clinic, and Ben Rossi, 3L at Duke Law School and Intern at First Amendment Clinic.

This event is free and open to the public.

Video from the event is below.

Banned Books Reading               
Room 209, Manning Hall
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

The Information and Library Science Student Association is excited to host a Banned Book Reading in honor of Banned Books Week.

Dr. Francesca Tripodi will introduce the event, followed by several readings of banned books by SILS students.  Students and other members of the university community are invited to join and discuss the public university’s special role as a marketplace of ideas and the need to be tolerant when others exercise their rights.

This event is free and open to the public.

Weaponizing First Amendment Rhetoric               
Freedom Forum Conference Center on the Third Floor of Carroll Hall
4:00 pm - 5:15 pm

This panel is presented by the UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP).

The cultural power of the First Amendment means that principles of free speech are routinely invoked in ways that extend far beyond government suppression of speech.

But should free expression be what we value beyond everything else in public life, viz. progress, equality, and inclusion? From internet trolls to election disinformation, people weaponize ‘free speech’ and First Amendment principles to do things like silence women and undermine the legitimacy of elections. This panel discusses how movements use the rhetoric of free speech and expression as a strategic tool in the service of political, social, and cultural power – and considers alternative ways of thinking about expression to reclaim our shared public life.

Panelists:

• Daniel Kreiss, Edgar Thomas Cato Distinguished Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media; Principal Researcher, Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life
• Tressie McMillan Cottom, Associate Professor, UNC School of Information and Library Science; Senior Faculty Researcher, Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life
• Shannon McGregor, Assistant Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media; Senior Faculty Researcher, Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life
• Francesca Tripodi, Assistant Professor, UNC School of Information and Library Science; Senior Faculty Researcher, Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life

The panel will be moderated by Nanditha Narayanamoorthy, postdoctoral research fellow at CITAP.

This event is free and open to the public.

Clay Calvert: Free Speech and Public School Students--Lessons From a Cursing Cheerleader and South Park               
Freedom Forum Conference Center on the Third Floor of Carroll Hall
6:30 pm - 7:45 pm

The 2022 First Amendment Day Keynote speaker will be Clay Calvert, Professor of Law, Brechner Eminent Scholar in Mass Communication and Director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida.  Prof. Calvert holds a joint appointment with the College of Journalism and Communications and the Levin College of Law.  Calvert has published more than 150 law journal articles related to issues affecting freedom of expression.  He has taught courses on communications and media law for more than twenty-five years, including courses at the undergraduate, graduate and law school levels.

Calvert is co-author of a market-leading undergraduate textbook Mass Media Law, 22nd Edition (McGraw-Hill Education 2023) and is the author of Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture (Westview Press 2000).  He is a member of the State Bar of California and the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.  Calvert earned a Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University, where he also completed his undergraduate work with a B.A. with Distinction in Communication.  He received his J.D. (Order of the Coif) from the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.

Using the United States Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling in the student-speech case of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. as a springboard and the kids from South Park as a supporting cast, this wide-ranging talk will address some fundamentals about the First Amendment guarantee of free expression, as well as details about the speech rights of public school students in the social media era.

Video from the event is below.

First Amendment (Virtual) Trivia Contest               
8:00 pm - 9:15 pm

What rights are explicitly protected by the First Amendment? Which U.S. Supreme Court justice said obscenity was difficult to define but “I know it when I see it?” Enter the trivia contest and test your knowledge of the First Amendment.

Please join us for this virtual trivia contest.  Heck, you can just watch and enjoy the fun. This event is being organized by doctoral candidate Evan Ringel.

This event is open to all members of the UNC-Chapel Hill community.  The Zoom link can be accessed here or at https://tinyurl.com/firstatrivia22