NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
Stephen D. Solomon is Marjorie Deane Professor of Journalism and Interim Director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.
Activities in the Journalism Institute
Steve serves as Interim Director of the Carter Institute, one of the largest departments within NYU's Faculty of Arts and Science. The Carter Institute has approximately 30 faculty members, 150 M.A. students, and 400 undergraduate majors. He served as director of graduate studies for five years.
He is founding editor of First Amendment Watch, which provides news, commentary, and legal and historical context for the many free speech conflicts in the United States. The site also produces educational materials on the First Amendment for use in First Amendment, media law, and history courses at colleges and high schools. First Amendment Watch has two full-time employees as well as other affiliated scholars and researcher.
He is the founder and director of the M.A. program in Business and Economic Reporting. In this innovative interdisciplinary program, students take six courses in the MBA program at NYU's Leonard N. Stern School of Business and seven courses at the Carter Journalism Institute. The philosophy of the program is that students, in order to prepare themselves for work in journalism today, must learn the underlying subject matter that they will cover. They take courses in economics, corporate finance, accounting, and other business subjects alongside traditional MBA students.
Publishing
Steve's book, Revolutionary Dissent: How the Founding Generation Created the Freedom of Speech, was published by St. Martin's Press in 2016. 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 currently working on a book for Bloomsbury Press on the birth of the Bill of Rights, with publication expected in 2022.
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.
Teaching
Steve is a recipient of NYU's Golden Dozen Award for excellence in teaching. His work in the classroom focuses on First Amendment law and media law and ethics. He teaches in the Freshman Honors Program in the College of Arts and Science as well as other courses for undergraduate and graduate students. He also teaches feature writing in the graduate Business and Economic Reporting program, which he runs. Following is a sampling:
Freshman Honors Seminar: First Amendment Freedom of Expression
FRSEM-UA.235.1.00X
Students begin by examining conflicts over freedom of speech and press during the colonial period and the uncertainty over what those freedoms meant in 1789, even as Madison drafted the amendment. The course looks at freedom of speech through the prism of a rich variety of contemporary conflicts, including libel, political dissent, prior restraints against publication, offensive speech, and symbolic speech, among other issues.
Law and Mass Communications Seminar
JOUR-GA.11.1.00X
Students study First Amendment protections of the press and the most important areas of civil and criminal law affecting the work of journalists. This includes libel, newsgathering, invasions of privacy, privileges and shield laws, access to information, and coverage of the court system. The course also looks closely at the ethical principles that should guide journalists when they face difficult decisions about how to treat especially sensitive situations around newsgathering and publishing.
