Marjorie Heins (born 1946See Library of Congress Authorities, Name Authority Record Number n86057943 (permalink).) is a First Amendment lawyer, writer and founder of the Free Expression Policy Project.Beth Saulnier, "The Talking Cure", Cornell Alumni Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2013.
Education Heins received a B.A., with distinction, from Cornell University in 1967. She received her J.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Law School in 1978. She was admitted to the bar of Massachusetts in 1978 and New York in 1993.
Career Heins started as a journalist in the 1970s in San Francisco with publications including the underground San Francisco Express Times.Applegate, Edd. Literary Journalism: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors (Greenwood, 1996), p. 160. She was also an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War.Biography, Strictly Ghetto Property ("She worked with the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and wrote for a series of underground newspapers: the Rat in New York, the Express Times and Dock of the Bay in San Francisco, the Berkeley Tribe. She reported on Los Siete de la Raza for Hard Times and Ramparts magazine.") See, e.g., Letter from Marjorie Heins for the Mobilization , Sept. 14, 1967.
American Civil Liberties Union In the 1980s as staff counsel at the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Heins litigated numerous civil rights matters, including LGBT rights and free speech. One matter involved a litigation against Boston University for the discharge of the dean of students on the basis of her complaints about discrimination on the part of the university.Barbara Lightner, "Interview with Marjorie Heins ", IOBA Standard, v.3, no. 3 (Aug. 2002). This story is told in Cutting the Mustard (1988).Heins, Cutting the Mustard. Heins also investigated the Boston Police Department's treatment of the notorious Carol Stuart murder case, in which a white man murdered his wife but claimed to be a victim of a carjacking by an African American man.
From 1989 to 1991, she served as editor-in-chief of the Massachusetts Law Review. In 1991–92, she was chief of the Civil Rights Division at the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office.
She founded and directed the Arts Censorship Project at the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 1998, during the years in which arts censorship were a particularly controversial and active field. During that time, she worked on a number of high-profile arts censorship matters. Heins was co-counsel on the ACLU's Reno v. ACLU brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, which led to its striking down the Communications Decency Act as a violation of the First Amendment. Heins was also co-counsel on Karen Finley's landmark lawsuit against the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley."NEA Decency Standards" (discussion between Marjorie Heins and Colby May), C-SPAN, March 31, 1998.
Academics Heins has taught at Boston College Law School, Florida State University College of Law, the University of California-San Diego (UCSD), New York University (NYU), Tufts University, and the American University of Paris.
At UCSD, she created courses in "Censorship, Culture and American Law" and "Political Repression and the Press: Red Scares in U.S. History and Law." At NYU, she taught "Censorship and American Culture." At the American University of Paris, she taught "Free Expression and the Media: Policy and Law."
She was a fellow at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, 2004–2007. In 2011, she was a fellow at NYU's Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center while researching her book, Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge.
She is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication of NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. She is also a docent in the Impressionism/Post-Impressionism collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Heins, Marjorie. "Here’s What Bothers Me About How 'Paris in Ruins' Rewrites Impressionist History", artnet, November 22, 2024.
Cases Litigated Heins' litigation includes:
Urofsky v. Gilmore, 216 F.3d 401 (4th Cir. 2000) (argued for professors challenging constitutionality of Virginia law restricting access to sexually explicit material on work computers) National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569 (1998) (ACLU co-counsel for artists challenging NEA funding criteria as impermissibly viewpoint-based and vague) Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997) (ACLU co-counsel for coalition challenging Communications Decency Act, which restricted "indecent" speech on the Internet)
Bibliography Books Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge (New York: NYU Press, 2013) () Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (2001) ()David Greene, "Book Review: Not in Front of the Children", 10 Boston University Public Interest Law Journal 360 (2001).Michael Grossberg, "Book Review: Does Censorship Really Protect Children?", 54 Federal Communications Law Journal 591 (May 2002). Sex, Sin and Blasphemy: A Guide to America's Censorship Wars (1993; rev. 1998) ()Judy Zeprun Kalman, Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to america's Censorship Wars: Book Review", 81 Massachusetts Law Review 136 (Sept. 1996). Cutting the Mustard: Affirmative Action and the Nature of Excellence (1988) () Strictly Ghetto Property: The Story of Los Siete de la Raza (1972) ()
Other works "Banning Words: A Comment on 'Words That Wound'", 18 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 585 (Summer 1983) "In Memoriam: Benjamin Kaplan," 124 Harvard Law Review 1351 (2011).
Awards and honors 1991 - Luther McNair Award (Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts) for significant contributions to civil liberties"RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Civil Liberties Lawyer and Author Marjorie Heins", Feb. 13, 2013 1992 - "First Amendment Hero" (Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression) 1993 - "First Amendment Hero" (Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression) 2002 - Eli M. Oboler Award (American Library Association) for best published work in intellectual freedom for Not in Front of the Children (2002)Past Recipients , American Library Association, Intellectual Freedom Round Table (last visited March 6, 2014). 2013 - Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award, for Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge Nov. 21, 2013 - 23rd Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual FreedomThe Twenty-Third Annual University of Michigan Senate's Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom, Oct. 23, 2013, Honigman Auditorium, University of Michigan Law School.Jared Wadley, "Civil Liberties Lawyer Marjorie Heins to Deliver Academic Freedom Lecture", University of Michigan Record, Oct. 14, 2013.
References
External links NYU: Marjorie Heins NYU Press: Authors - Heins, Marjorie alternet.org Authors - Heins, Marjorie Interview with Heins, Feb. 14, 2013 Marjorie Heins Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University