Amy Gajda

Assistant Professor of Journalism and Law

Phone: 217-333-5461 Email: agajda@illinois.edu B.A. University of Michigan J.D. Wayne State University Courses Law and Journalism Privacy and Defamation First Amendment

Professor Gajda is an assistant professor in both the College of Law and the College of Media.  Her primary research interests relate to freedom of expression and the First Amendment. Her book, The Trials of Academe: The New Era of Campus Litigation, to be published by Harvard University Press in Fall 2009, explores the growing resort to litigation in academic controversies and its implications for academic freedom and university autonomy.  Her latest article, Judging Journalism: The Turn Toward Privacy and Judicial Regulation of the Press, charts the growing assertiveness of courts in scrutinizing journalists' news judgment and is forthcoming in the California Law Review.   Professor Gajda has presented lectures and papers at law schools, journalism schools, and multidisciplinary conferences in Europe, China, and throughout the United States. She has also published more journalistic writings on law for non-academic audiences, including for The New York Times, and has won multiple Associated Press and other awards for that work. Before attending law school, Professor Gajda worked for many years as a broadcast journalist, anchoring and producing newscasts and reporting for television stations affiliated with every major network, including national work for PBS. She continued to anchor on a part-time basis in Detroit while a law student at Wayne State University, before finishing her studies at Georgetown University Law Center. Before joining the Illinois faculty, she practiced law in Washington, D.C. Gajda serves as the Secretary of the Association of American Law Schools' Mass Communication Section and on the executive committee of the AALS Section on Defamation and Privacy.  She will be the Vice-Head of the Law & Policy Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications in 2009-2010 and is slated to become Head of that division the following year.  In Spring 2008, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brooklyn Law School, where she taught Media Law and the First Amendment and The Law of Higher Education.  Gajda is an affiliated faculty member with the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program at the University of Illinois, and has also been invited to present diverse law and journalism topics for the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study. She is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Michigan.