Davis, Markert, and Nickerson Academic and Intellectual Freedom Lecture
The annual Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom is named for three U-M faculty members—Chandler Davis, Clement Markert, and Mark Nickerson—who in 1954 were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. All invoked constitutional rights and refused to answer questions about their political associations. The three were suspended from the University with subsequent hearings and committee actions resulting in the reinstatement of Markert, an assistant professor who eventually gained tenure, and the dismissal of Davis, an instructor, and Nickerson, a tenured associate professor.
Past Speakers
2023
Jonathan Friedman
Director of Free Expression and Education Programs
PEN America
“Academic Freedom 2024: Educational Gag Orders, State Censorship, and the Fight for Higher Education”
2022
Jamelle Bouie
Columnist
New York Times
Political Analyst
CBS News
“Revisiting Du Bois and ‘The Propaganda of History’”
2021
Dima Khalidi
Director
Palestine Legal
“A New McCarthyism? Academic Freedom and Palestine“
2020
Nadje S. Al-Ali
Robert Family Professor of International Studies
Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies
Brown University
Susan Benesch
Faculty Associate
Harvard University
Adjunct Professor
American University
Director, Dangerous Speech Project
Michael Bérubé
Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature
Pennsylvania State University
Melanie Tanielian
Associate Professor
History, University of Michigan
Panel Discussion: “Challenges to Academic Freedom in a Changing Landscape, at Home and Abroad”
2019
Hank F. Reichman
AAUP Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
Chair, AAUP Foundation
Professor Emeritus of History
California State University, East Bay
“Do Adjuncts Have Academic Freedom? Why Tenure Matters”
2018
Gene Nicol
Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor
University of North Carolina
“Academic Freedom: New Politics, Old School Censorship and Meaningful Constitutional Review“
2017
Michael Mann
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science
Pennsylvania State University
“The Madhouse Effect: Climate Change Denial in the Age of Trump”
2016
Marc Rotenberg
President and CEO
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Professor of Law
Georgetown Law
2015
Natalie Zemon
Davis Henry & Charles Lea Professor of History Emerita
Princeton University
Adjunct Professor of History and Medieval Studies
Senior Fellow in the Centre for Comparative Literature
University of Toronto
“Experiencing Exclusion: Scholarship in the Wake of Inquisition”
Joan Wallach Scott
Professor Emerita, School of Social Science
Institute for Advanced Study
Adjunct Professor of History, Graduate Center
City University of New York
“Civility and Academic Freedom”
2014
Douglas Laycock
Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law
Professor of Religious Studies
University of Virginia School of Law
“Religious Liberty and the Culture Wars”
2013
Marjorie Heins
Founding Director of the Free Expression Policy Project
“Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom and the Anti-Communist Purge”
2012
Robert C. Post
Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law
Yale Law School
“The Constitutional Meaning of Academic Freedom”
2011
Ellen W. Schrecker
Professor of History
Yeshiva University
“The Lost Soul of Higher Education”
2010
Michael A. Olivas
William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law
University of Houston Law Center
“God, Grades, and Sex: The Developing Law of the College Classroom”
2009
Philip Hamburger
Maurice & Hilda Friedman Professor of Law
Columbia University School of Law
“Galileo’s Ghost: Seventeenth-Century Censorship in Twenty- First-Century America”
2008
Cass R. Sunstein
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
“My University.com, My Government.com: Is the Internet Really a Blessing for Democracy?”
2007
Nadine Strossen
Professor of Law
New York Law School
President of the American Civil Liberties Union
“Defending Freedom: Even for the Thoughts We Hate!”
2006
Bill Keller
Executive Editor, The New York Times
“Editors in Chains: Secrets, Security and the Press”
2005
Floyd Abrams
Walter J. Brennan, Jr. Visiting Professor of First Amendment Law
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Partner, Cahill Gordon & Reindel
2004
Noam Chomsky
Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Illegal but Legitimate: A Dubious Doctrine for the Times”
2003
David D. Cole
Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center
“Freedom and Terror: September 11th and the 21st Century Challenge”
2002
Catharine A. MacKinnon
Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
“From Powerlessness to Power: The Uses of Academic Freedom”
2001
Vartan Gregorian
President
Carnegie Corporation of New York
“Universities in the 21st Century: Perils, Challenges, and Prospects”
2000
Anthony Lewis
Journalist, New York Times
James Madison Visiting Professor
Columbia University
“Freedom: The Seamless Web”
1999
David A. Hollinger
Chancellor’s Professor of History
University of California at Berkeley
“Universities and Cosmopolitanism”
1998
Eugene L. Roberts, Jr.
Professor of Journalism
University of Maryland – College Park
“Free Speech, Free Press: Free Society”
1997
Roger Wood Wilkins
Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History and American Culture
George Mason University
“Opportunity and Academic Integrity”
1996
Avern Cohn
United States District Judge Eastern District of Michigan
“Academic Freedom: A Trial Judge’s View”
1995
Linda Ray Pratt
Professor of English
University of Nebraska- Lincoln and
Past-President, AAUP
“Academic Freedom and the Merits of Uncertainty”
1994
Walter P. Metzger
Emeritus Professor of History
Columbia University
“A Walk Along the New Frontiers of Academic Freedom”
1993
Catharine R. Stimpson
University Professor and Dean of the Graduate School
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
“Dirty Minds, Dirty Bodies, Clean Speech”
1992
Lee C. Bollinger
Dean and Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
“The Open-Minded Soldier and the University”
1991
Robert M. O’Neil
Professor of Law and Founding Director
Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression
University of Virginia
“Inaugural Lecture”