The Fight for Free Speech – Brooklyn College Library Talk

Author Ian Rosenberg in conversation with Senior Associate Provost April Whatley Bedford at Brooklyn College’s Graduate Center.

The Fight for Free Speech is an accessible and engaging user’s guide to free speech. Media lawyer Ian Rosenberg distills the spectrum of free speech law down to ten critical issues. Each chapter in this book focuses on a contemporary free speech question—from Colin Kaepernick taking a knee to student walkouts for gun safety, from Nazis marching in Charlottesville to lies on social media— and then unpacks and explains the key Supreme Court case that provides the answers. Together these fascinating stories create a practical framework for understanding where our free speech protections originated and how they can develop in the future. Hailed as “essential” by Kirkus in a starred review, the Los Angeles Review of Books proclaims, “The Fight for Free Speech may very well be the best introduction to free speech and freedom of the press.”

In connection with NYU Press’ publication of The Fight for Free Speech in paperback with an updated afterword, author Ian Rosenberg will be in conversation with Brooklyn College Senior Associate Provost April Whatley Bedford at Brooklyn College’s Graduate Center, 25 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, on May 30, 2023 at 5:30pm. Together, along with host Beth Evans, Associate Professor, Brooklyn College Library, they will discuss recent efforts to censor libraries and academic programs along with other contemporary free speech issues. A Q&A will follow. RSVPs are required for those without Brooklyn College ID, so please email: freespeechRSVP@gmail.com.

Author Ian Rosenberg has over twenty years of experience as a media lawyer, and has worked as legal counsel for ABC News since 2003. He graduated magna cum laude from Cornell Law School, is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker, and since 2016 has been an Adjunct Lecturer teaching media law to Brooklyn College graduate students in the Department of TV, Radio and Emerging Media. Ian is also the author of the nonfiction graphic novel Free Speech Handbook (with art by Mike Cavallaro). He lives in New York City with his wife and their two children.