Dartmouth Events

Co-sponsored by Nelson A. Rockefeller Center, Dartmouth Lawyers Association, and Dartmouth Legal Studies Faculty Group

Nadine Strossen, John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law at New York Law School, has written, taught, and advocated extensively in the areas of constitutional law and civil liberties, including through frequent media interviews. From 1991 through 2008, she served as President of the American Civil Liberties Union, the first woman to head the nation’s largest and oldest civil liberties organization. Professor Strossen is currently a member of the ACLU’s National Advisory Council, as well as the Advisory Boards of EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center), FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), and Heterodox Academy.

Her book, HATE: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship, was published by Oxford University Press in May 2018. University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone, a noted First Amendment expert, wrote in his foreword to the book, “Strossen stakes out a bold and important claim about how best to protect both equality and freedom. . . . No one can address this issue in the foreseeable future without taking on this formidable and compelling analysis. It lays the foundation for all debates on this issue for years to come.”

In 2017, the American Bar Association presented Prof. Strossen with the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award, which “celebrates the accomplishments of women lawyers who have excelled in their field and have paved the way to success for other women lawyers.” The National Law Journal has named her one of “The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America”; Vanity Fair included her in “America’s 200 Most Influential Women”;  Ladies’ Home Journal named her among  “America’s 100 Most Important Women”; Working Woman Magazine listed her among the “350 Women Who Changed the World”; and Upside Magazine included her in the “Elite 100: 100 Executives Leading The Digital Revolution.” In 2005, she was honored by the University of Tulsa College of Law and the Tulsa Law Review, which made her scholarly work the subject of its Fifth Annual Legal Scholarship Symposium, entitled “Nadine Strossen: Scholar as Activist.”

She has commented frequently on legal issues in the national media, having appeared on virtually every national news program.

Strossen’s writings have been published in many scholarly and general-interest publications. Her book, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights, was named by The New York Times as a “Notable Book” of 1995. Her co-authored book, Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex: Hate Speech, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, was named an “outstanding book” by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America.

Strossen is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College (1972) and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School (1975), where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.