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Constitutional Roundtable with Professor David M. Rabban
The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights’ Constitutional Roundtables are an annual series of lunchtime discussion forums that provide an opportunity to consider developments in Canadian constitutional theory and practice and comparative constitutional law. The Constitutional Roundtable series promotes scholarship and aims to make a meaningful contribution to intellectual discourse about Canadian constitutional law.
We are pleased to be hosting author and Professor David M. Rabban of the University of Texas at Austin School of Law for an in-person Constitutional Roundtable on Thursday November 13, 2025 at 12h30. A light lunch will be provided.
The presentation is titled: The Meaning of Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right
ABSTRACT: This talk will trace the judicial development of academic freedom as a First Amendment right of professors, beginning in 1957, and the judicial extension of the First Amendment right of academic freedom to universities, beginning in the 1970s. It will point out that the courts have clearly recognized academic freedom as First Amendment right, but have disagreed about its coverage. Nor have courts developed its meaning, as judges themselves have often complained. I will assert that academic freedom should be understood as a distinctive First Amendment right that protects the expert academic speech of professors and the educational decisions of universities. Academic freedom is related to but differentiated from general First Amendment rights of political expression. I will conclude by applying this understanding of academic freedom to recent intervention by federal and state governments into university affairs.
BIO: Professor Rabban joined the Texas Law faculty in 1983. He served as counsel to the American Association of University Professors for several years; later, served as its general counsel and as chair of its committee on academic freedom and tenure. His teaching and research focus on free speech, academic freedom, higher education and the law, and American legal history. 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, Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right, was published in 2024.