On April 5, 2024, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and experts for a symposium exploring the speech rights of public employees—from the civil service and public sector unions to educators and researchers.

In our deeply polarized political environment, the question of how a democracy ought to manage the speech of some 22 million public employees is more important than ever. We’ll examine this issue through a series of conversations about First Amendment, administrative, and labor law; democratic theory and political contestation; and the balance between transparency and autonomy.

The symposium, “Permission to Speak Freely? Managing Government Employee Speech in a Democracy,” is part of a collaboration between the Knight Institute and the Institute’s 2023-2024 Senior Visiting Research Scholar Sam Lebovic.

More information and RSVP at: https://permissiontospeakfreely.eventbrite.com