On Friday, May 23, the Knight Institute will host a closed convening at Columbia University to explore the question of when the government may regulate speech by imposing conditions on federal funding. The Supreme Court has said that Congress has broad power to tax and spend for the general welfare, and that this power encompasses the authority to impose limits on the use of the funds to ensure that the funds are used for the purpose Congress intends. At the same time, the Court has made clear that the First Amendment precludes the government from denying a benefit on a basis that infringes the applicant’s freedom of speech, even if the applicant does not have an entitlement to that benefit.

This convening will bring together a group of legal experts to consider these two principles and understand how they might apply to executive orders issued by President Trump that attempt to place conditions on how federal funding recipients can speak and associate. The convening is not open to the public, but participants will write short notes in advance of the event, and these will be published on the Institute’s website.

The participants include:

Kendra Albert is a partner at Albert Sellars LLP, a public interest technology and media law firm. Prior to founding Albert Sellars, they spent seven years practicing and teaching students to practice technology law at the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School. Albert also served as the director of the Initiative for a Representative First Amendment from 2019 to 2024.

Sam Bagenstos is the Frank G. Millard Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. He has held roles in the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Management and Budget, and Department of Justice. Bagenstos has argued four cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and is the author of Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement and Disability Rights Law: Cases and Materials.

Orion Danjuma serves as counsel at Protect Democracy, focusing on voting rights, protecting election officials, preventing voter intimidation, and ensuring free and fair elections. Danjuma was formerly a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program working on issues at the intersection of voting rights and racial justice.

Michael C. Dorf is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He has authored or co-authored over one hundred scholarly articles and essays. Before joining the Cornell faculty in 2008, Dorf taught at Rutgers-Camden Law School for three years and at Columbia Law School for 13 years where he served as vice dean for four years and was the Isidor & Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law.

Evelyn Douek is an Assistant Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. She was previously a senior research fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute and host of the Knight Institute’s podcast “Views on First.” Evelyn obtained her doctorate from Harvard Law School, where she researched private and public regulation of online speech.

Lisa Femia is a Staff Attorney on the civil liberties team at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) where her work focuses on surveillance, privacy, free speech, and the impact of technology on civil rights and civil liberties. Femia came to EFF from Hogan Lovells US LLP, where she maintained a robust pro bono practice centered on democracy reform, criminal justice, and civil rights.

Olati Johnson is a Faculty Director for the Constitutional Democracy Initiative and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg '59 Professor of Law at Columbia Law School where she writes and teaches about legislation, civil procedure and constitutional law. She previously served as constitutional and civil rights counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Genevieve Lakier is professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School. Her work looks at the changing meaning of free speech in the U.S. and the role legislatures play in safeguarding free speech values on social media platforms. She was the Knight Institute’s 2021-2022 senior visiting research scholar, where she led an inquiry into the First Amendment and dis- and misinformation in the public sphere.

Greg Lipper is the founder of Lipper Law PLLC in Washington, DC. His practice includes First Amendment cases and advice, criminal defense, and appeals. Lipper formerly served as senior litigation counsel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, where he litigated a range of cases under the Free Speech, Free Exercise, and Establishment Clauses.

Richard Primus is the Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan where teaches the law, theory, and history of the U.S. Constitution. He is a senior editorial adviser of the Journal of American Constitutional History, a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance, and a member of the Board of Advisors of Protect Democracy.

Kate Ruane is the Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s (CDT) Free Expression Project where she works on the intersection of civil rights and free speech protections, among other issues. Ruane previously worked at PEN America, the Wikimedia Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Congressional Research Service.

Frederick P. Schaffer is chair of the New York City Campaign Finance Board. For 16 years, he served as general counsel and senior vice chancellor for legal affairs of The City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university system in the country. Schaffer has also served as Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, associate professor at Cardozo Law School and adjunct professor at the CUNY School of Law.

Amanda Shanor is an assistant professor and Wolpow Family Faculty Scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she writes about U.S. constitutional law with an emphasis on the freedom of speech. Shanor teaches first-year constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and previously worked at the ACLU on their Supreme Court litigation and national strategy.

Melissa Stewart is a civil-rights lawyer at Donati Law in Memphis, Tennessee. She represented the plaintiffs in First Amendment challenges to Tennessee and Florida laws banning drag performances. She has spoken about the First Amendment at the University of Notre Dame’s “What a Drag Symposium,” at University of Minnesota Law School, and at Lavender Law 2024.