Nadine Strossen

Lawyer, Professor, Author, Civil Liberties Commentator

New York Law School Professor Emerita Nadine Strossen, past national President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), is a Senior Fellow with FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) and a leading expert and frequent speaker/media commentator on constitutional law and civil liberties, who has testified before Congress on multiple occasions. She serves on the advisory boards of the ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, FAIR, and National Coalition Against Censorship. The National Law Journal has named Strossen one of America’s “100 Most Influential Lawyers.” She is the author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018) and Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know (forthcoming October 2023). She is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series released on public television in October 2023. In 2023, the National Coalition Against Censorship (an alliance of more than 50 national non-profit organizations) selected Strossen for its Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech.

“In championing free speech and opposing censorship, President Obama and Dr. King are typical of crusaders for racial and social justice throughout U.S. history: they have opposed empowering government to suppress ideas that are hateful or hated, in part because their own ideas have been targeted as such by their political opponents and government authorities. Indeed, current critics of ‘Black Lives Matter’ have attacked its advocacy as ‘hate speech.’

We don’t have to choose between civil rights and civil liberties, or between equality and free speech.”

Nadine Strossen