Threats to freedom of speech are all around us, often changing as new threats arise and others diminish. Former director of the American Civil Liberties Union and Professor Emeritus of Law at New York University Nadine Strossen will discuss current free speech controversies, where they fit within broader patterns of law and politics, and how we can best respond to them both within the university and more broadly. Strossen is also a Senior Fellow with FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education) and a leading expert and frequent speaker/media commentator on constitutional law and civil liberties, who has testified before Congress on multiple occasions. 

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® (2023). She is also the host and project consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series on free speech that was released on public television in 2023 (and is also available on YouTube).

The event is sponsored by the UO Heterodox Academy community, the Wayne Morse Center on Law and Politics, the Oregon Humanities Center, the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages, and the Department of Political Science.

In a talk that is both timely and relevant, freelance journalist and award winning author Rebecca Grant will discuss her definitive and eye-opening new book Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom (Simon & Schuster 2025), which charts the reproductive freedom movement from the days before Roe v. Wade through the seismic impacts of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows individual states to ban abortion. Drawing on expert research and investigative reporting, the stories in Access span four continents, tracing strategies across generations and borders, and serves as a rallying cry for advocates the work that lies ahead.

Join us via livestream or in person at Ford Alumni Center's Giustina Ballroom, 1720 E 13th Ave, Eugene.

This event is sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics in honor of its founder, Margaret Hallock. It is part of the Margaret Hallock Program for Women’s Rights. 

Free and open to the public. No registration required. Livestream link: https://www.youtube.com/live/f2mRewW2zO4

Rebecca Grant is a freelance journalist and award-winning author based in Portland, Oregon, who writes about reproductive rights, health, and justice. She has covered everything from protests against abortion clinics to forced interventions during childbirth. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The Atlantic, VICE, The Nation, Washington Post, Mother Jones, The New Republic, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, HuffPost, Newsweek, Wired, Undark Magazine, and The Guardian, among other publications and on This American Life. Grant’s first book, BIRTH: Three Mothers, Nine Months and Pregnancy in America, was published in 2023 by Avid Reader Press and is a winner of a Porchlight Book Award. A fellow with the International Women's Media Foundation, the International Reporting Project, and The Investigative Fund, Grant has reported stories around the US and the world. In her previous lives, Grant studied English and Art History at Cornell University, worked as an editorial assistant at Washingtonian Magazine, covered startups for a tech news site in San Francisco, and served in the Peace Corps in Thailand.

About Margaret Hallock Margaret Hallock is the founder and former longtime director of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. She has been a strategic, organized, and impactful leader locally, at the state level, and beyond for decades. Margaret has served as an indefatigable advocate for reproductive freedom, pay equity, and economic and social justice, and more. She continues to serve as an advisor for and a champion of the Wayne Morse Center. In honor of Margaret's retirement in 2015, the Wayne Morse Center—with generous support from students, alumni, faculty, staff, community members, unions, and former Wayne Morse Chair holders—established the Margaret Hallock Program for Women’s Rights, of which this lecture is a part.

Margaret came to Eugene to join the University of Oregon faculty in 1974 as a PhD economist, where her research, teaching, and academic writing focused on workers’ rights and women’s issues. Margaret served as senior economist for the State of Oregon’s forecasting office and then as chief economist for Service Employees International Union 503, where she led the struggle for pay equity for women workers. Governor Ted Kulongoski enlisted Margaret as an advisor on labor, revenue, and workforce development issues. In that role, she helped lead to a solution on the PERS funding crunch. Through her work, Margaret has influenced public policy on labor, taxes, healthcare, and workforce development, among other issues.

For many years, Margaret led the Labor Education and Research Center at UO. That role included coordinating the Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics, which at the time was an annual lecture by visiting scholars. Teaming with then-UO President Dave Frohnmayer, Margaret devoted enormous energy to secure the funding and support necessary to create the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics as an interdisciplinary center at the university.

Since “retiring” from UO, Margaret served – including as board president – on the boards of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon and Sponsors, a nonprofit that helps offenders transition from prison back into the community. She was also instrumental in the establishment of the David and Sharon Schuman Legal Justice Fellowship at the UO School of Law.