Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression

Freedom of Thought and the Struggle to End Slavery

Professor Keith Whittington, Princeton University

Thursday, March 31, 2022, 7:00 pm

Daniel Family Commons, Usdan Hall and a Zoom Webinar.

Please register for the webinar event here.

Please register for the in-person event here.

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 Lecture

The abolitionists saw the success of their movement as a victory for free speech, as well as for human liberty generally. To them, free speech was a necessary adjunct to their goal of converting a small movement on the fringes of mainstream politics into a powerful political force that could shape public opinion and win democratic elections. Their opponents thought the same, and engaged in aggressive efforts to suppress and silence antislavery speakers and writers in the antebellum period. The struggle to end slavery was also a struggle to extend and protect the freedom of speech.

Keith Whittington Bio

Keith E. Whittington is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University and is currently the chair of Academic Freedom Alliance and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He works on American constitutional history, politics and law, and on American political thought. He is the author of Repugnant Laws: Judicial Review of Acts of Congress from the Founding to the Present and Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech, among other works. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, and the University of Texas School of Law, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin and completed his Ph.D. in political science at Yale University.

Hugo Black 2022 poster

Hugo L. Black Lecturers 1991 - 2021

Keith Whittington William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University
Bertrall Ross Chancellor's Professor of Law U.C. Berkeley Law	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