According to a University of Pennsylvania Annenburg Public Policy Center study, in which more than a thousand adults were surveyed late last year, 37% did not know what the 1st Amendment was about. Still, it is the amendment that is cited repeatedly in political discourse, facebook rants, and at dinner tables and it is used by all sides when it suits an arguement or aggrievement.
Between the ongoing issue of whether NFL players have the right to protest by kneeling during the national anthem, to whether a baker has the right to refuse to make a wedding cake for a same sex couple, and now the US Press secretary being asked to leave a restaurant, 1st Amendment-related stories have found themselves front and center in our national conversation. So, we thought we’d bring in two people who spend a lot of time thinking about the 1st Amendment and what it means. We're joined by Ron Feemster, a journalism professor at Florida Southwestern State College in Fort Myers, and Dr. Peter Bergerson, a political science professor at Florida Gulf Coast University.
