New York Times executive editor to speak at U-M

October 11, 2006
Contact:
  • umichnews@umich.edu

DATE: 4 p.m. Oct. 16, 2006.

EVENT: Sixteenth Annual University of Michigan Senate’s Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom

” Editors in Chains: Secrets, Security and the Press,” a lecture by Bill Keller, executive editor, The New York Times.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

On Dec.16, 2005, Keller made the decision to publish an article revealing that President George W. Bush had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless domestic wiretapping on suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. In response, President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney called the newspaper a disgrace, and several congressmen suggested that it was guilty of treason and demanded the prosecution of Keller as the newspaper’s executive editor.

Keller joined The New York Times in 1984 where he held several domestic and foreign editorial positions before being appointed executive editor in 2003.

The lecture series was established in 1990 by the Senate Advisory Committee for University Affairs (SACUA) to honor three U-M faculty members, Chandler Davis, Clement Markert and Mark Nickerson, who in 1954 were called to testify before a Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities. All invoked Constitutional rights and refused to answer committee questions about their political associations. For their actions, the three were suspended and Nickerson was denied the summer portion of his fiscal year salary. Subsequent hearings and committee actions at U-M resulted in different outcomes. Markert was reinstated; Nickerson, a tenured professor, and Davis were dismissed from the University.

PLACE: Honigman Auditorium, University of Michigan Law School, Central Campus.

SPONSORS: The Academic Freedom Lecture Fund, American Association of University Professors University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Chapter, Office of the President, Office of the Vice President for Communications, University of Michigan Law School, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, Board for Student Publications and the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs.