Dean of Yale Law, Former Dean at Harvard to Debate Academic Freedom

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Robert Post, and Frederick Schauer

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Robert Post, the dean of Yale Law School, and Frederick Schauer, the former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, will discuss the First Amendment and the limits of academic freedom. The presentation at the University of Arkansas School of Law, part of the Hartman Hotz Lectures in Law and Liberal Arts, will take place 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, in the E.J. Ball Courtroom in the Leflar Law Center. The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited.

Post and Schauer are among the preeminent legal experts in the fields of constitutional law and the First Amendment. They will debate the critical question of whether faculty members should be protected by academic freedom when they make public statements outside the classroom. In recent years, University of California, Berkeley professor John Yoo’s legal opinions on torture, National University of Singapore professor Thio Li-Ann’s support of a criminal law against gay sex and other controversial faculty commentary have been made in public forums. Many have argued these statements should have academic consequences.

Post, dean of Yale Law School and the Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law, is the author of books such as For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom and the forthcoming Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom: A First Amendment Jurisprudence for the Modern State. Before joining Yale Law, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall). He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Law Institute, as well as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Connecticut Bar Foundation. He holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in history of American civilization from Harvard and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.

Schauer is the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and previously served for 18 years as the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he also served as academic dean and acting dean. His books include Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry and The First Amendment: A Reader, and the recently published Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, has been vice-president of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy and chair of the Committee on Philosophy and Law of the American Philosophical Association. He was also a founding co-editor of the journal Legal Theory. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration and Harvard Law School.

The dialogue is sponsored by the Hartman Hotz Trust, the School of Law and the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. The University of Arkansas Hartman Hotz Lectures in Law and Liberal Arts were established by Dr. and Mrs. Palmer Hotz of Foster City, Calif., to honor the memory of his brother, Hartman Hotz. Hartman Hotz was a graduate in history from the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. After graduating from Yale University Law School, he joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas School of Law, where he made significant contributions to the study of law.