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Sept. 27, 2005

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

First Amendment champion Floyd Abrams to deliver 2005 academic freedom lecture

DATE: 4 p.m. Oct. 6, 2005.

Abrams (click image for high resolution)

EVENT: Attorney and educator Floyd Abrams will deliver the 15th Annual University of Michigan Senate's Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom. The lecture, titled " Whose Academic Freedom?" is free and open to the public.

Abrams is the William J. Brennan, Jr. Visiting Professor of First Amendment Issues at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has argued frequently in the Supreme Court in a large number of its most significant First Amendment cases. He has represented The New York Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, and other clients in trials and appeals. Abrams discusses many of these cases in his recent book, "Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment."

Abrams graduated from Cornell University in 1956 and the Yale Law School in 1960. He was a Visiting Lecturer at the Yale Law School from 1974 to 1980 and 1986-1989 and at the Columbia Law School from 1981 to 1985.

In 1998, Abrams received the William J. Brennan, Jr. Award for outstanding contribution to public discourse and the Learned Hand Award of the American Jewish Committee. His other awards include the Thurgood Marshall Award of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and in 2003, Anti-Defamation League's Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize.

The lecture series was established in 1990 by the Senate Advisory Committee for University Affairs (SACUA) to honor three U-M faculty members, Chandler Davis, Clement Markert and Mark Nickerson, who were suspended in 1954 after refusing to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Ultimately, Markert was reinstated; Nickerson, a tenured professor, and Davis were dismissed from the University.

PLACE: Auditorium of the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, 915 E. Washington St. Central Campus map: http://www.umich.edu/~info/maps.html

SPONSORS: Academic Freedom Lecture Fund, American Association of University Professors University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Chapter, Office of the President, Office of Vice President for Communications, University of Michigan Law School and SACUA.

Contact: Joel Seguine
Phone: (734) 936-6396