The following bio is that of an event speaker or guest author. This person is not directly affiliated with the John Locke Foundation.

Michael Kent Curtis is one of the foremost constitutional historians in the United States.  His book “Free Speech: The People’s Darling Privilege: Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History” won the Playboy Foundation Heffner First Amendment Award for the best book of its year on the subject of the 1st Amendment.  The North Carolina Literary and Historical Society also chose the book as the best non-fiction book of the year by a North Carolina author.  Professor Akhil Amar of Yale Law School described Michael Curtis’s book “No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights” as “one of the most important and most impressive works of constitutional scholarship of the late twentieth century.”  Professor Curtis has also received the Frank Porter Graham Award from the North Carolina Civil Liberties Union for achievement in defending and advancing civil liberties in North Carolina