The University of Michigan Senate's Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom was established in 1990 to honor three professors.:
Clement L. Markert (left)
Mark Nickerson (center), and
H. Chandler Davis (right),
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Markert, Nickerson, Davis Lectures 1991 - 2016
Each year since 1991 the Academic Freedom Lecture Fund has sponsored the University of Michigan Senate's Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom.
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Some of these lectures, are now accessible for viewing via streaming video.
Click the symbol to watch video for years 2001–2016.
1991
Robert M. O'Neil
Professor of Law and Founding Director
Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression
University of Virginia
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"Inaugural Lecture"
1992
Lee C. Bollinger
Dean and Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
"The Open-Minded Soldier and
the University"
1993
Catharine R. Stimpson
University Professor and
Dean, Rutgers Graduate School
The State University of New Jersey
"Dirty Minds, Dirty Bodies,
Clean Speech"
1994
Walter P. Metzger
Emeritus Professor of History
Columbia University
"A Walk Along the New Frontiers of Academic Freedom"
1995
Linda Ray Pratt
Professor of English
University of Nebraska-Lincoln and
Past-President, AAUP
"Academic Freedom and the
Merits of Uncertainty"
1996
Avern Cohn
United States District Judge
Eastern District of Michigan
"Academic Freedom:
A Trial Judge's View"
1997
Roger Wood Wilkins
Clarence J. Robinson Professor of
History and American Culture
George Mason University
" Opportunity and Academic Integrity"
1998
Eugene L. Roberts, Jr.
Professor of Journalism
University of Maryland - College Park
"Free Speech, Free Press: Free Society"
1999
David A. Hollinger
Chancellor's Professor of History
University of California at Berkeley
"Universities and Cosmopolitanism"
2000
10th Anniversary Symposium
Anthony Lewis
Columnist
The New York Times
Keynote Address
"Freedom: The Seamless Web"
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2001
Vartan Gregorian
President
Carnegie Corporation of New York
"Universities in the 21st Century:
Perils, Challenges, and Prospects"
2002
Catharine A. MacKinnon
Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
"From Powerlessness to Power:
The Uses of Academic Freedom"
2003
David D. Cole
Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center
"Freedom and Terror:
September 11th and the
21st Century Challenge"
2005
Floyd Abrams
William J. Brennan, Jr. Visiting Professor of First Amendment Law
Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism
Partner, Cahill, Gordon & Reindel
"Whose Academic Freedom? "
2006
Bill Keller
Executive Editor, The New York Times
"Editors in Chains:
Secrets, Security and the Press"
2007
Nadine Strossen
President, American Civil Liberties Union
Professor of Law, New York Law School
"Defending Freedom:
Even for Thoughts We Hate"
2008
Cass R. Sunstein
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
"My University.com;
My Government.com:
Is the Internet Really a Blessing
for Democracy"
2009
Philip Hamburger
Maurice and Hilda Friedman
Professor of Law
Columbia University Law School
"Galileo's Ghost: 17th Century Censorship
in 21st Century America"
2010
Michael A. Olivas
William B. Bates
Distinguished Chair of Law
Director of the Institute for
Higher Education of the
College Classroom
University of Houston Law Center
"God, Grades, and Sex:
The Developing Law of the College Classroom "
2011
Ellen W. Schrecker
Professor of History
Yeshiva University
"The Lost Soul of Higher Education:
Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom,
and the End of the American University"
2012
Robert C. Post
Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman
Professor of Law
Yale Law School
"The Constitutional Meaning of Academic Freedom"
2013
Marjorie Heins
Founding Director
Free Expression Policy Project
"Priests of Our Democracy:
The Supreme Court,
Academic Freedom,
and the Anti-Communist Purge"
2014
Douglas Laycock
Robert E. Scott
Distinguished Professor of Law
Professor of Religious Studies
University of Virginia School of Law
"Religious Liberty and the Culture Wars"
2015
Natalie Zemon Davis
Henry Charles Lea
Professor of History Emerita
Princeton University
Adjunct Professor of History and
Medieval Studies
Senior Fellow in the Centre for Comparative Literature
University of Toronto
"Experiencing Exclusion: Scholarship in the Wake of Inquisition "
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Joan Wallach Scott
Professor Emerita
School of Social Science
Institute for Advanced Study
Adjunct Professor of History
Graduate Center
City University of New York
"Civility and Academic Freedom"
2016
Marc Rotenberg
President,
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Professor of Law
Georgetown Law School
The Misunderstood Right
to Be Forgotten:
The Future of Free Expression and Privacy in the Online World
2017
Michael E. Mann,
Professor of
Atmospheric Science
Director, Earth System Science Center
The Madhouse Effect: Climate Change Denial in the Age of Trump
2004
Noam Chomsky
Professor of Linguistics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Illegal but Legitimate:
A Dubious Doctrine for the Times"
