First Amendment

Freedom of the press, free speech and the right to assemble serve as the very foundation of democracies around the world. Our nation’s First Amendment, which embodies these Constitutional rights, must be protected if democracy is to flourish. These freedoms have been challenged and met many times in our history – and the nation has become stronger as a result.

The Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards, founded in 1979, honor those who breathe life into these freedoms, and often go above and beyond to support First Amendment rights, which is especially important today. We’re thrilled to honor our 2018 awardees:

College campuses should foster an environment where students can explore their beliefs, debate conflicting ideas and find common ground. They should be able to trust their universities to promote free speech, not stifle it.

Free speech is essential to a free society, protecting diverse speakers and opinions. At the same time, our commitment to robust protection for speech is strained by legitimate concerns about hate speech and “fake news.”

The First Amendment is more than a body of law. It is a tradition of the society. At various junctures in our nation’s history, we have lost our constitutional bearings.

Attention constitutional lawyers: As someone who’s been brought up on Title IX complaints twice – the first time for writing an essay, the second time for writing a book about being brought up on Title IX complaints for writing an essay – I’m waiting for the legal challenge on behalf of the thousands of similarly accused professors and students prohibited by their colleges and universities, as per Department of Education gag orders, from speaking about their own Title IX cases, lest “retaliation” charges be brought.

Racist. Hero. Stubborn. Fighter. Chink. I’ve been called many things during my near-decade battle that brought me before the Supreme Court, though ironically, I’ve never been called a “slant,” the contentious term the government wrongly assumed wasn’t one reappropriated by my community.

Free speech and journalism are at the core of what it means to be an American. Thomas Jefferson famously said if he had to decide between government without newspapers or newspapers without government he’d prefer the latter.

The First Amendment is regularly tested by the events and technology of a given time in the U.S. Among the plethora of free speech issues today are:

Free expression and the First Amendment are essential to democracy. That’s why the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation regularly funds research to explore how students, future guardians of our rights and freedoms, feel about the First Amendment.

America’s public colleges are required to respect student and faculty First Amendment rights — but you wouldn’t know it by looking at their speech codes.

Recently, Facebook has taken fire across the political spectrum about how it enforces rules about what speech is allowed on the platform. Conservative commentators have had their accounts suspended; minority rights groups complain of fierce and persistent hate and harassment.

Though the U.S. Constitution enshrines press freedom in its First Amendment, this right has been under attack in recent years.

The “right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people,” James Madison wrote, “has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.”

The First Amendment protects rights essential to democracy. Increasingly courthouses and statehouses are battlegrounds in clashes between advocates for reproductive and LGBTQ rights and social conservatives who want to repeal laws.