Prof. Dr. David M. Rabban
The University of Texas at Austin (USA)
Date: 28.11.2024, 6.00 p.m.
Venue: Room L619, 6th floor | Faculty of Law | Sigmund Freud University | Lassallestraße 3, 1020 Vienna
Professor Rabban will compare the concept of academic freedom as a professional norm in the United States with the treatment of academic freedom as a constitutional right by American courts. He will discuss the controversial relationship between academic freedom and general rights of free speech in both the professional and judicial interpretations. After analyzing the case law about academic freedom as a constitutional right of both professors and universities, he will present a theory of academic freedom as a distinctive constitutional right designed to promote the production and dissemination of expert knowledge.
Please register until 27.11.2024: konrad.lachmayer@jus.sfu.ac.at
Biography
Professor David M. Rabban served as counsel to the American Association of University Professors for several years before joining the Texas faculty in 1983. He served as General Counsel of the AAUP from 1998 to 2006 and Chair of its Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 2006 to 2012. His teaching and research focus on free speech, higher education and the law, and American legal history. He is the author of Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years, 1870-1920 (Cambridge, 1997), which received the Forkosch Prize from the Journal of the History of Ideas for “the best book in intellectual history published in 1997.” His many articles have appeared in Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, Cambridge Law Journal, and elsewhere. He was a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2016 and of the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University in 2016-17.
His most recent book is Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right.