For Immediate Release
09/13/2017

Delta College Constitution Day Panel Event Thursday, September 21

(Stockton, CA) San Joaquin Delta College will celebrate Constitution Day with a special panel event, “Confronting Hate Speech on College Campuses: First Amendment Rights and Social Responsibility,” Thursday, September 21, 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. at Atherton Auditorium. This event is FREE and open to the public.

“In light of recent events on college campuses, including the University of Virginia, our speakers will address a timely and politically salient issue that is at the very heart of First Amendment disputes,” says Dr. Matt Wetstein, Delta’s Vice President of Instruction and Planning. “We look forward to an extremely lively discussion, which will include questions from the audience.”

The panel discussion features three legal experts and two Delta College professors as moderators: Cirian Villavicencio, Professor of Political Science, and Steve McCarty, Associate Professor of Business and Co-Director of Delta’s Pathway to Law Program.

Invited speakers include: Stephen Rosenbaum, Regional Director of the California Rural Legal Assistance and John & Elizabeth Boalt Lecturer at UC Berkeley Law; Michael Pinkerton, Attorney and Adjunct Professor of Law at the Pacific McGeorge School of Law; and Dylan Zorea, Assistant Director of the Pacific Legal Scholars Program and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at University of the Pacific.

Constitution Day is celebrated annually on September 17 to commemorate the signing of the U. S. Constitution by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Federal law requires that colleges provided educational opportunities on Constitution Day, or during that week, to educate both students and the community on the freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the Constitution.

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