MORGANTOWN, West Virginia — The immediate past president of the American Civil Liberties Union and law school professor will speak at West Virginia University on October 24.
Nadine Strossen, currently the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law at the New York Law School, will speak at the JG Theater in the WVU Mountainlair at 4:00 p.m.
The event is co-hosted by the WVU College of Law and the Center for Free Enterprise at the College of Business and Economics. WVU students, the West Virginia University community and the public are invited to attend the free event.
“No cause is more important than the defense and preservation of our constitutional rights,” said Gregory W. Bowman, dean of the WVU College of Law. “Organizations such as the ACLU and dedicated lawyers like Nadine Strossen fight for our rights every day.”
“As our society debates the role of free speech on colleges campuses and beyond, we are honored to have Professor Nadine Strossen lend her voice in a discussion on this and other topics,” said Dr. Bryan McCannon, B&E assistant professor of economics and affiliated faculty for the Center for Free Enterprise.
Strossen served as president of the ACLU from 1991-2008, and was the first woman to head the largest and oldest civil liberties organization in the nation. She is a member of the ACLU National Advisory Council, as well as the advisory boards of EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center), FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and Heterodox Academy. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Earlier this year, the American Bar Association presented Strossen with the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award, an award that “celebrates the accomplishments of women lawyers who have excelled in their field and have paved the way to success for other women lawyers.” The National Law Journal recognized her as one of “The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America”; Vanity Fair listed her in “America’s 200 Most Influential Women”; Ladies’ Home Journal included her among “America’s 100 Most Important Women”; and Working Woman Magazine named her among the “350 Women Who Changed the World.”
“The WVU Center for Free Enterprise was established with a vision to promote the understanding of what the principles and institutions of a free society play in creating widely shared prosperity,” said Dr. Joshua Hall, director of the center and associate professor of economics at B&E. “To fulfill our goal, universities must remain a place of free and open inquiry. Professor Strossen’s career at the ACLU and at the New York Law School has been about defending everyone’s right to participate in debate, and that’s why it is so important to host her on our campus.”
Bowman added that by offering the best in traditional legal education with dynamic law programs that address emerging challenges faced by our society, the WVU College of Law prepares lawyers to defend and uphold the U.S. Constitution.
Strossen, a Minneapolis native, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College in 1972 and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1975, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Prior to becoming a law professor, she practiced law for nine years in Minneapolis and New York City.
The event is also sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and the John Templeton Foundation.
For further information on the WVU College of Business and Economics, follow B&E on Twitter at @wvucobe or visit business.wvu.edu.
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Patrick Gregg/10/20/17
