Date 11/7/02

Contact: FOIFT office, (214) 977-6658

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Application Deadline for The First Amendment Institute Extended

The First Amendment Institute, an annual program of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, has extended its application deadline for 2003 registrants and sponsors to Dec. 1, 2002.

The goal of the FAI is to provide a select group of individuals the opportunity to study, at a graduate level, the importance and applications of our First Amendment, its relationship to freedom of information and its implications for our democracy. After a year of in-depth study, participants will graduate with a greater appreciation of their rights and why it is so vital to protect those rights. The FAI meets quarterly for one and one half-day sessions. Each session concentrates on an area of the five freedoms granted in the First Amendment: speech, press, religion, assembly and petition.

First in the series will be a study of the freedom of speech, March 7-8 in San Antonio. The session will focus on establishing theoretical justifications for free speech and introduce the jurisprudential foundations of First Amendment cases involving free expression. The program is designed to introduce the timeless concepts that give free speech its robust constitutional protection while bringing the questions of today and even tomorrow into focus. Faculty will be Dr. Charles N. Davis, executive director, Freedom of Information Center and assistant professor, News-Editorial School of Journalism, University of Missouri; and Dr. Paul H. Gates, Jr., associate professor, Appalachian State University.

The freedom of the press session will take place in Dallas April 11-12, and examine the questions, ‘who or what is “the press,” and does the Constitution require it to be either responsible or fair?' Discussion will center on current challenges to press freedom, and group members will debate the real meaning of the fundamental Constitutional right of this freedom. Dr. Susan Ross, assistant professor, Edward R. Murrow School of Journalism, Washington State University; and Ms. Jane Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota will conduct the session.

On June 20-21, in Houston, Dr. Ronald B. Flowers, John F. Weatherly Professor of Religion, Department of Religion, Texas Christian University; and Dr. Barry Hankins, J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, Baylor University, will explore the age-old discussion of church-state separation in the session on freedom of religion. After a historical understanding is established, the issues will be studied in context of the current climate of our renewed patriotism and the passionate debates it produces among the citizenship.

The FAI will conclude in Austin during the month of September, as Mr. Richard J. Peltz, associate professor of law, William H. Bowen School of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, guides the class through its final session. The rights of assembly and petition are the oft-overlooked siblings of the freedoms of religion and speech. But the Supreme Court has viewed these rights as equally important to the fundamental right of free expression that underlies each of the First Amendment guarantees. As government influence over the private sector has grown to implement civil rights initiatives, these rights have arisen as central issues in modern conflicts. FAI will give the rights of assembly and petition their due in an exploration of these issues and more.

For your FAI application or to sponsor a participant, please visit the FOIFT Web page, www.foift.org , or contact the office for a brochure at 214-977-6658.