Free Speech, the First Amendment, and Parrhesia


Date: Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Time: 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Location: Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge MA 02138

No one has done more to shape legal interpretation of the first amendment than Floyd Abrams. Yet when Abrams litigated Citizens United, some proponents of free speech thought that this just gave big money the biggest voice.  By contrast in ancient democratic Athens, parrhesia, free and frank speech, was thought to give voice to citizens who lacked power. Join  Floyd Abrams and Matt Landauer and Yael Melamede in a conversation about the value of public speech and the relationship between free speech, equality and power, then and now. We will be screening excerpts from Yael Melamede’s 2023 documentary Floyd Abrams: Speaking Freely. You can watch the entire documentary in advance here

Organized by the Center for Hellenic Studies and the Department of the Classics, Harvard University.