Project Free Speech An interdisciplinary education and research project by students and faculty at California State University, Long Beach

How Can I Participate? Current Projects Home page

For more information: jvancamp@csulb.edu

Project Free Speech is an on-going interdisciplinary education and research project by students and faculty at California State University, Long Beach.

Its primary goal is to use the resources and capabilities of the Internet to promote open dialogue about contemporary issues of freedom of expression.

Projects include:

• Student research projects to study particular issues involving freedom of expression: Working in class projects and independent research projects, students collect important materials both on the Internet and in print. Research results are disseminated through creation and posting of Web sites. Students are encouraged to identify original documents in the public domain which are not yet available on the World Wide Web and post those on-line as part of their projects to add to the primary resources available on the Internet. Two student projects were initiated in spring 1997: (1) a study of John Stuart Mill's writings on free speech, including newspaper articles and speeches not otherwise available on the Web, and (2) a study of Mill's influence on the American courts.
• Faculty research projects involve development of Web sites to disseminate original research and teaching materials on freedom of expression. The first project, "Freedom of Expression at the National Endowment for the Arts," has been on-line since March, 1996. It includes teaching course materials, a print bibliography, discussion questions, class exercises using the Internet, and extensive hyperlinks. The site also includes the full text of seven court decisions involving the NEA which are not otherwise available free on the World Wide Web. The NEA project was supported with a grant from the American Bar Association, Commission on College and University Legal Studies.
  
• Future projects: We hope to offer institutes for college faculty and high school teachers to learn how to use the Web in their teaching, develop their own on-line projects, and contribute to this one. We also will initiate new sites on topics of interest in free speech that can serve as an on-line laboratory for students to learn how to both use the resources of the Internet and contribute to those resources so they can be used by others.
  

Julie Van Camp, Associate Professor of Philosophy California State University, Long Beach 1250 Bellflower Boulevard Long Beach, CA 90840-2408 Office: (562) 985-5545 Fax: (562) 985-7135 Last Updated: June 29, 1997