I have a story in this week’s issue of Education Week about a recent conference at the University of Missouri-Kansas City bringing together participants from several landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases on school speech.
The story is headlined “Symposium Revisits Landmark Student-Speech Cases,” and it should be freely accessible for a few days by clicking on this link.
The conference was attended by John and Mary Beth Tinker, of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District; Mary Kuhlmeier Frey of Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier; and various participants from Bethel School District v. Fraser (including a video appearance by Matthew Fraser) and Morse v. Frederick.
The conference also addressed one higher education case, Widmar v. Vincent, which happened to involve a student religious group at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I didn’t have room for that discussion in my story, which focused on the four cases involving speech in K-12 schools.
The University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School, and in particular Professor Daniel Weddle, did a great job organizing the conference and including a wide range of views. Professor Weddle tells me that the school’s video recording of the entire conference is going through post-production and will be put online when it is ready.