UNC celebrates 15th annual First Amendment Day

This Wednesday, there was an expert-led panel, an ethics debate, a trivia contest and a voter registration drive, for its 15th annual First Amendment Day celebration.

The events were organized by the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy and designed to educate and explore the role of the First Amendment in the lives of UNC students.

Keynote speaker Lindsie Rank, the director of campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, concluded the day’s events with a presentation that started 5:15 p.m.

In her presentation, “Clashes on Campus - Student Protest & The First Amendment,” Rank discussed her hypothesis around free speech being hard work, saying the concept should be modeled and taught by universities. 

She cited pro-Palestinian protests and encampments,  such as the Triangle Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Polk Place in April, as an example of universities being intolerant to controversial debate among attendees and counter-protestors.

After the event, Evan Ringel, assistant professor of media law at Appalachian State University and moderator of the keynote session, said that acts of civil disobedience do break rules, and have consequences.

“Sometimes, those consequences are worthwhile to make the statement that it is you're trying to make,” he said

Clay Williams, a doctoral candidate who attended the keynote session said regardless of their area of study, all students should have an understanding of the importance of having a speech doctrine.

He said that the First Amendment and free speech are pressing issues, and it is critical to understand the concepts’ history and debate current events.

Williams said he also attended an event earlier in the day hosted by the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, where CITAP principal investigators Daniel Kreiss, Meredith Clark and Shannon McGregor discussed the impacts of social media on the 2024 general election in November.

As she was preparing to speak on the panel, McGregor said she wants to make students aware of the nuances of social media and the impact they might have.

“The same type of tools on different platforms that allowed people to gather and communicate on Jan. 6 are the very same things that allowed people to spread messages of racial justice as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, and allow people to gather to protest racial injustice,” she said.

Clark, Kreiss and McGregor used the political disinformation around Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, to demonstrate how social media can influence voter behavior.

On the surface, McGregor said, the disinformation came from a post picked up by right-wing groups, eventually making its way to the presidential debate stage as a comment from former President Donald Trump.

She said that on a deeper level, the reason the story gained so much attention is because it draws on centuries of racist tropes, white nationalism and fear surrounding immigrants.

“This isn't just a story about social media disinformation,” she said. “This is the story about identity and about who gets to be an American, and it's one that's designed to motivate people to action, including voting — along those lines, also designed to demotivate other types of people to not vote.”

Ringel said celebrating First Amendment Day is important because the amendment is one of the key creeds of the United States, and U.S. society is situated in a way that emphasizes freedom of speech.

“We are inherently creatures who communicate through voice, and the First Amendment often dictates when that’s appropriate,” he said.

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