The Knight Institute is going to experiment with a part of our website that, for now, we’re calling the Forum. Our aim is to contribute to the burgeoning conversation about the freedoms of speech and press under the First Amendment, with comments from a wide range of perspectives on important court cases, news raising pertinent and pressing questions, new and old books that are relevant and interesting, and a lot more. We’re not sure what the Forum will look like or contain a month from now, let alone in a year. We look forward to your feedback, which will help us answer those questions. You can email us at [email protected].

Pieces in our pipeline to be posted soon include a first-person account by Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza about why she is a plaintiff in the lawsuit the Knight Institute filed in federal court, contending that President Trump and his communications team violated the First Amendment by blocking people from the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account; a dispatch from University of New Hampshire Law School Associate Prof. Leah Plunkett, on the clash between privacy and the right to know in a case about a pending half-billion-dollar pay-out in the state’s oldest-in-the-country lottery; a review by Harvard Law School Prof. Randall Kennedy of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship, a book by the former ACLU president Nadine Strossen out this spring; and more.

In the Forum, we aim to post pieces that have something fresh to say to a broad audience, ranging from leading scholars and First Amendment lawyers, to readers who are passionate about free speech or newly curious about the intense focus on it now — about why it really matters. Pieces published in the Forum do not necessarily represent the views of the Knight Institute. If we think something you send us is right for the Forum, we will look forward to posting it.