Michael Gerhardt, a Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, takes a moment to reflect on what the founders of the First Amendment would think if they attended the National Conference on the First Amendment today, Sunday Oct. 21, 2018, at Duquesne University’s Power Center Ballroom Uptown. Mr. Gerhardt responded, ÒAt the University of North Carolina we had a statue called Silent Sam, which was a confederate soldier, big statue of a confederate soldier, placed right in the most prominent place on campus. Raising the interesting question, to what extent does the University speak? What we find when we look at First Amendment doctrine or cases, is people might have different rights depending on where they are in the system. Administrators letÕs say, Gov. Officials, students. What rights do all these different people have in a particular situation. In our case silent sam was eventually brought down, but then it raised the question because North Carolina protected the statue, where do we put it? For a lot of students that statue is very expressive and not expressive in a very positive way. And this kind of raises a very confounding question that we ought to think about.Ó (Jessie Wardarski/Post-Gazette)