About
Stephen D. Solomon is Marjorie Deane Professor of Journalism at New York University (NYU), where he teaches First Amendment law. He is founding editor of NYU's First Amendment Watch, which covers current conflicts over freedom of expression and provides educational material on the First Amendment for college classrooms. He served as Director of NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute from 2020 to 2023.
Steve's book, Revolutionary Dissent: How the Founding Generation Created the Freedom of Speech, was published by St. Martin's Press in 2016. It was named book of the year by the law blog, Concurring Opinions. It explores how the raucous political protest of the nation’s founding period gave meaning to the freedoms of speech and press at a time when it was a crime to criticize government and public officials. He is working on a book for Bloomsbury Press on the birth of America's Bill of Rights, scheduled for publication in 2023.
A previous book, Ellery's Protest: How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle Over School Prayer, explores the landmark 1963 case (Abington School District v. Schempp) in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state-sponsored prayer and Bible reading in the public schools violated the First Amendment. The case still inflames passions today as Americans on the right and left debate what role, if any, that religion, prayer, creationism, intelligent design, and the Ten Commandments should play in the public schools.
Steve is the founder and director of the NYU Master of Arts program in Business and Economic Reporting. He received his B.A. degree from Pennsylvania State University and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. His academic specialty is First Amendment law; he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Journalism as well as in the freshman honors program in the College of Arts and Science. He was awarded NYU's Golden Dozen Award for excellence in teaching.
He was a writer at Fortune magazine and has written for many other national publications including The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and The Nation. His articles have won the two most prestigious awards for business writing, the Gerald Loeb Award and the John Hancock Award for Excellence, as well as the Sidney Hillman Prize. Professor Solomon is also co-author of Building 6: The Tragedy at Bridesburg, an investigation of the working conditions that caused the deaths of 54 men from respiratory cancer at Rohm and Haas, at the time a Fortune 500 chemical company in Philadelphia. The revelations in the book led to legal action by victims' families against the company, and they received a multi-million dollar settlement.