NEW YORK—The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today announced a major new initiative–“Reconstructing Free Expression”–that will consider how our system of free expression could be strengthened to better protect democracy against authoritarian attacks. The initiative will encompass a series of closed convenings with scholars and advocates to generate ideas for legal, institutional, and other reforms; published essays exploring specific proposed interventions; a year-end report that provides a blueprint for reform; and a series of public events intended to build support for the blueprint.
“The Knight Institute has filed multiple major lawsuits challenging Trump administration policies that violate the First Amendment, and we’re prepared to file more—but we also want to look past the current democratic crisis to consider what could be done to strengthen our system of free expression against authoritarian threats in the future,” said Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director. “This initiative is meant to encourage creative and ambitious thinking about how to build a system of free expression that serves democracy better.”
The Trump administration is engaged in a full-scale assault on First Amendment rights and values, violating laws and using threats to create a climate of fear and self-censorship. Its attacks—often successful—have exposed significant, longstanding weaknesses in the laws, institutions, and norms that underwrite public discourse. The Institute’s “Reconstructing Free Expression” initiative is an effort to understand the precise nature of those weaknesses and to identify ways in which both public and private institutions can better protect the expressive and associational freedoms that are essential to democracy. The Institute expects some of the proposed reforms to be implemented in the short- and medium-term even in the face of judicial and political headwinds.
“There’s so much that legislatures can do to strengthen democratic institutions and better protect democratic freedoms,” says Nadine Farid Johnson, the Knight Institute’s policy director. “We intend to give legislators a set of proposals that they can act on quickly.”
Many scholars and advocates have already agreed to participate in the initiative, and the Institute anticipates involving others in the coming months. The steering committee includes, in addition to Knight Institute staff, Michael Dorf (Cornell Law School), Jamal Greene (Columbia Law School), Genevieve Lakier (University of Chicago Law School), and Sabeel Rahman (Cornell Law School & Reconstructing Democracy Project). This project is also affiliated with Rahman’s Reconstructing Democracy initiative.
The participants in the first convening, which will take place on February 20, will include Gautam Hans (Cornell Law School), Quinta Jurecic (The Atlantic), Amy Kapczynski (Yale Law School), Rachel Levinson-Waldman (Brennan Center for Justice), David Pozen (Columbia Law School), and Michael S. Schudson (Columbia Journalism School), in addition to the members of the steering committee and Knight Institute staff.
“We’re delighted that so many leading scholars and advocates have agreed to participate in this initiative,” said Katy Glenn Bass, the Knight Institute’s research director. “With their help, the Knight Institute will chart a course not only to repair the damage done to our constitutional rights by the Trump administration, but also to expand the set of tools available to protect them.”
For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, [email protected]