Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right
Monday, December 2, 2024
11:30 am EST/GMT-5 Online Event
11:30 AM New York l 5:30 PM Vienna
David M. Rabban will present his recent book on Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right. He will compare the concept of academic freedom as a professional norm in the United States with the treatment of academic freedom as a constitutional right by American courts and discuss the controversial relationship between academic freedom and general rights of free speech in both professional and judicial interpretations. After analyzing the case law about academic freedom as a constitutional right of both professors and universities, he will present a theory of academic freedom as a distinctive constitutional right designed to promote the production and dissemination of expert knowledge.
There will be an introduction by Shalini Randeria, CEU President and Rector and discussion with Michael Ignatieff, CEU President and Rector (2016-2021) and Professor, CEU Department of Historical Studies.
Rabban served as counsel to the American Association of University Professors for several years before joining the Texas faculty in 1983. His teaching and research focus on free speech, higher education and the law, and American legal history. He is the author of Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years, 1870-1920, which received the Forkosch Prize from the Journal of the History of Ideas for "the best book in intellectual history published in 1997."