Alan K. Chen is the Thompson G. Marsh Law Alumni Professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where he teaches and writes about free speech doctrine and theory. He is the co-author of Free Speech Beyond Words: The Surprising Reach of the First Amendment (NYU Press, 2017) and has published numerous scholarly articles about the First Amendment in many of the leading national law journals. Although he is a full-time academic, Chen continues to carry an active litigation docket and represents the plaintiffs in many high-profile First Amendment cases in federal courts around the country, including constitutional challenges to “ag-gag” laws that punish undercover investigators and journalists in Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, and Utah, and to Colorado’s mandatory Pledge of Allegiance law. Before entering teaching, Chen was a staff attorney with the ACLU of Illinois, where he was a litigator focusing primarily on cases concerning the First Amendment, police misconduct, and privacy rights. Prior to that, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Marvin E. Aspen, U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Illinois.