Thursday will mark the 222 years since the signing of the U.S. Constitution, and the
Mark Goodman, Knight Chair for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University and former director of the Student Press Law Center
University of Kentucky is starting its celebration tonight. Mark Goodman, former director of the Student Press Law Center, will deliver the annual State of the First Amendment Address at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the auditorium of W.T. Young Library. At the same event, the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center will present the James Madison Award for Service to David Hawpe, a UK graduate and former Kentucky Kernel editor who recently left The Courier-Journal after more than 40 years. The Kentucky Kernel has more on the event.
On Wednesday, Goodman will join other panelists at 10 a.m. in the library auditorium for a discussion on “How Free Should the Student Press Be?” Other members of the panel will be Josh Moore, a Western Kentucky University student who led the push for legal protections for high school journalists in Kentucky; Betsey Bell, a journalism teacher at Louisville’s duPont Manual High School; and Richard Labunski, a professor in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications.
The First Amendment events wrap up on Thursday, first with free apple pie from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in front of Patterson Office Tower and on Rose Street in front of W.T. Young Library. At 6 p.m. in the Student Center’s Worsham Theater, Nashville-based band Freedom Sings! will present a multimedia concert of music that has been banned or censored throughout the years.