First Amendment Day

The UNC Center for Media Law and Policy will celebrate First Amendment Day on Wednesday, October 7, 2026.

This campuswide, daylong series of events 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 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.

2026 First amendment day events

• First Amendment for Student Leaders Workshop
• Free Press in a Time of Algorithms and AI
• Banned Books Reading
• Free Press in a Time of Algorithms and AI
• Free Press Around the Globe
• UNC Voter Registration Drive
• AI and the Midterm Elections
• The Two-Way Mirror: Transparency on the UNC Campus
• Ethics Bowl Mock Round with UNC’s IEB Team
• The Daily Tar Heel’s April Fools’ Edition: Satire, Institutional Response, and the First Amendment
• The UNC Encampments, 3 Years Later
• Why Public Media Matters Now
• First Amendment Trivia
• Keynote: The Shifting Frontiers of Academic Freedom

First Amendment Day is free and open to the public. For a full schedule of First Amendment Day events, please visit FirstAmendmentDay.unc.edu. 

UNC students can register for CLE credit on Heel Life.