James Howard and Hallie McLean Parker Distinguished Professor

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin at Madison
M.A., University of Wisconsin at Madison
B.A., University of Wisconsin at Madison

Professor Ruth Walden is the school’s James Howard and Hallie McLean Parker Distinguished Professor and chairwoman of the Graduate Admissions Committee. She is also a member of the UNC-Chapel Hill’s Graduate School Administrative Board and its Academic Policy Committee and the UNC System’s Graduate Council.

She is the author of Insult Laws: An Insult to Press Freedom, a worldwide study of insult laws that was commissioned by the World Press Freedom Committee. In October 2000 she was a member of the U.S. delegation to the annual human rights implementation meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Warsaw, Poland, where she delivered the U.S. statement on freedom of expression.

She is also the author of Mass Communication Law in North Carolina, several books chapters and articles in Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism Educator, and Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal.

Her research and teaching interests are mass communication law, First Amendment theory and media ethics.

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