About the event
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will celebrate its eighth-annual First Amendment Day on Tuesday, Sept. 27. This campus-wide, daylong event is designed to both celebrate the First Amendment and explore its role in the lives of Carolina students. Students and other members of the university community will read from banned books, sing controversial music, and discuss the public university’s special role as a marketplace of ideas and the need to be tolerant when others exercise their rights. As always, First Amendment Day is observed during National Banned Books Week.
First Amendment Day is organized by the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy with generous financial support from Charter Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable).
For more information, please visit the UNC Center for Media Law & Policy website.
#uncfree Instagram Contest
Anyone can participate in the First Amendment Day Instagram contest by posting a photo on Instagram on Tuesday, Sept. 27, with the hashtag #uncfree. The winner of the best photo and caption will be announced Monday, Oct. 3, and that contestant will receive a prize pack!
How to participate:
- Fill out an "I believe in the FA because..." mini poster
- Take a picture with/of the poster
- Post it to Instagram (public account)
- Add a clever caption with the hashtag #uncfree
Prize pack will include:
- First Amendment Day T-shirt
- $20 Starbucks gift card
- Your quote/caption added to the list of potential T-shirt quotes for 2017
First Amendment Day posters will be distributed at Carroll Hall but can also be found at this link for all participants.
The 2015 #uncfree Instagram Contest winner was ...
"Freedom of speech for my inner rebel. Freedom of press for my inner journalist."
— Maria Mullis, UNC '17
This is what Carolina’s most enthusiastic First Amendment supporters will be wearing on First Amendment Day this year. And for the first time, the First Amendment Day shirt features a quote by a UNC student. UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media senior Maria Mullis won the #uncfree Instagram Contest held on First Amendment Day last year by filling out an “I believe in the First Amendment because…” mini poster with the quote on this year’s shirt. Maria is from Norwood, N.C. She is a double major in public relations and political science. This t-shirt was designed by Lindsie Trego, a third-year student in a dual-degree program in which she will earn a master’s degree in journalism and a law degree.
Itinerary
Monday, Sept. 26 - Friday, Sept. 30
#ParkLibReadsBannedBooks Instagram Challenge
All day (UNC campus)
Monday, Sept. 26
Story Time @ Park Library
1:45-2:15 p.m. (Park Library)
Tuesday, Sept. 27
#uncfree Instagram Contest
All day (UNC campus)
First Amendment Day Opening Ceremony
9:30-10 a.m. (Front Steps of Carroll Hall)
Free Speech and Humor
10-10:50 a.m. (Freedom Forum Conference Center, third floor, Carroll Hall)
Cyberbullying, Free Speech, and School Discipline: Can We Protect Students in Constitutional and Just Ways?
Noon - 1 p.m. (Room 5046 UNC School of Law)
A Musical Performance by Cadence
12:20-12:30 p.m. (Front steps of Manning Hall)
Banned Book Reading
12:30-2:30 p.m. (Front steps of Manning Hall)
Trigger Warnings, Safe Spaces, and “Special Snowflakes”: The Politics of Campus Speech and the First Amendment
2-3:15 p.m. (Freedom Forum Conference Center, third floor, Carroll Hall)
Student Journalists, Carolina’s New General Counsel, and Public Records
3:30-4:45 p.m. (Freedom Forum Conference Center, third floor of Carroll Hall, Chapel Hill)
The UNC Cypher
6:30-7 p.m. (111 Carroll Hall)
Trevor Timm: First Amendment Day Keynote Address
7-8:15 p.m. (111 Carroll Hall)
First Amendment Trivia Contest
8:30-10:30 p.m. (Linda’s Bar and Grill)
Keynote speaker
Trevor Timm
Co-Founder and Rxecutive Director
Freedom of the Press Foundation
The 2016 keynote speaker will be Trevor Timm, co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation in San Francisco. The Freedom of the Press Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping support and defend public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government. The organization works to preserve and strengthen the rights guaranteed to the press under the First Amendment.
Timm is a journalist, activist, and lawyer who writes a twice weekly column for The Guardian on privacy, free speech, and national security. He has contributed to The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy Review, PBS MediaShift, and Politico.
Timm formerly worked as an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before that, he helped the longtime general counsel of The New York Times,James Goodale, write a book on the Pentagon Papers and the First Amendment. He received his J.D. from New York Law School.
In 2013, he received the Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award for journalism.
About the Center for Media Law & Policy
The UNC Center for Media Law and Policy is an interdisciplinary research center run jointly out of the UNC School of Law and UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. The center serves as a forum for study and debate about the broad array of media law and policy issues facing North Carolina, the nation, and the world. The center’s work ranges from the legal and policy issues affecting traditional media organizations to the challenges posed by new communication technologies, including social media, the Internet, and mobile technology, and the impact they are having on governments, on the economy, and on cultural and social values throughout the world.
The center capitalizes on the extraordinary strengths of UNC-Chapel Hill’s highly regarded law and journalism schools. Center events and projects bring together a diverse group of legal and communication scholars, media professionals, and practicing attorneys. Faculty and graduate students affiliated with the center conduct media law and policy research, host public events, including UNC’s annual First Amendment Day, and work to educate North Carolina’s business community about the opportunities for supporting and expanding entrepreneurship in the field of information technology.
For more information
For more information, please visit the UNC Center for Media Law & Policy website.