This program was funded by the ‘Why It Matters: Civic and Electoral Participation’ initiative, administered by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The First Amendment to the Constitution describes the process of becoming an actualized citizen. It begins with the freedom to follow a higher moral standard (freedom of religion) and ends with political protest (freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances). This Zoom talk, presented by Dr. Meg Mott, will consider how the Framers understood these First Freedoms and how we might think about them in the context of our current racial reckoning. Why does the First Amendment make it so hard to curtail offensive speech?
