Texas Law faculty are invited to join us on April 18, 2025, for a Bookfest event celebrating “Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right,” the latest book by Professor David Rabban.
Rabban—the Dahr Jamail, Randall Hage Jamail, and Robert Lee Jamail Regents Chair in Law—has spent his career studying and defending academic freedom. His new book examines academic freedom as a unique area of First Amendment law, offering both historical perspective and contemporary relevance to today’s higher education debates.
The Bookfest will take place in the Sheffield-Massey Room (TNH 2.111) at Texas Law. The event runs from 11:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., with lunch served at 11:45 a.m. and the main program beginning at noon. Guest panelists include Professor Michael Meranze of the UCLA Department of History and New York Law School Professor Emerita Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Since the book’s publication, Rabban has been recognized with several prestigious honors. He has been named a 2025-2026 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, a distinction given to only 15 scholars nationwide. His book also won the 2025 PROSE Award in Legal Studies and Criminology from the Association of American Publishers and is now in contention for the PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences and the R.R. Hawkins Award, created in 1976 to recognize outstanding scholarly works in all disciplines of the arts and science. Additionally, the Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center will host an awards banquet in his honor on April 2, where Rabban will be awarded a new national Excellence in Free Speech Scholarship Award.
Rabban also led a discussion on academic freedom as part of the Alumni Association’s “Teaching Legends Talks” series at an event hosted in Chicago last fall. His next appearance in the series will be on May 15 in Houston, continuing the conversation with alumni and friends.
A leading expert in the field, Rabban previously served as general counsel and chair of the committee on academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors. In his book, Rabban traces the evolution of academic freedom from a professional principle to a constitutional right, offering critical insights for legal scholars, faculty, and university leaders.