2009 Campus Freedom Network Summer Conference
Location: Doubletree Hotel, Philadelphia, PA (Map)
- June 18, 2009–June 20, 2009
FIRE is proud to announce the 2nd Annual Campus Freedom Network Student Conference to be held June 18-20 at the Doubletree Hotel in Philadelphia. The conference will begin with a reception and dinner on Thursday evening followed by a day and a half of lectures and panels. Students will hear from some of the leading experts on First Amendment rights in the country and will have the opportunity to learn how to defend liberty on their own campuses.
KC Johnson, professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate School and author with Stuart Taylor of Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, will give the opening remarks on Thursday evening. Prof. Johnson gave a well-received keynote at last year’s CFN conference.
FIRE Co-founder, current Chairman of FIRE's Board of Directors, and famed civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate will open the conference on Friday morning with a speech about the founding of FIRE. He will then moderate a panel on the philosophical underpinnings of FIRE's mission. Panelists include David French, Daphne Patai, and Derek Shaffer.
Former FIRE president David French is currently director of the Alliance Defense Fund's Center for Academic Freedom. He is a former lecturer at Cornell Law School, author of FIRE's Guide to Religious Liberty on Campus, and co-author with Harvey Silverglate and Greg Lukianoff of FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus. French is a regular commentator on Phi Beta Cons and led the successful litigation against Temple University's speech code in DeJohn v. Temple University in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Daphne Patai is a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a member of FIRE's Board of Directors. A long-time commentator on higher education, she has authored and edited twelve books, most recently What Price Utopia: Essays on Ideological Policing, Feminism, and Academic Affairs.
Derek Shaffer is a graduate of and professor at Stanford Law School and Executive Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.
Wendy Kaminer will give the keynote address on Friday night. Kaminer is a member of FIRE’s Board of Advisors and a long time champion of freedom of speech. She has written eight books, most recently Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU. Kaminer’s articles and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and Newsweek. She is also a columnist for Free Inquiry.
Documentary producer and filmmaker Andrew Marcus will run a session on new media at the CFN student conference. Andrew is a longtime friend of FIRE and has recently produced Political Correctness vs. Freedom of Thought—The Keith John Sampson Story. This excellent piece explores FIRE's case at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, where student Keith John Sampson was found guilty of racial harassment for reading an anti-Klan book. Andrew also produced the FIRE videos FIRE on Campus: An Introduction to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and FIRE in Action: Valdosta State University with Evan Coyne Maloney, producer of Indoctrinate U.
