Veteran political journalist and author Anthony Lewis was interviewed Sept. 12 by First Amendment Center Scholar Ronald Collins at Harvard University in a program exploring a range of free-press and other First Amendment issues.

Lewis’ illustrious career in journalism spans a half-century from his days at the Harvard Crimson (1945-1948) to his decades at The New York Times to his most recent contributions to The New York Review of Books. He is the winner of two Pulitzer Prize Awards (1954 and 1963) and the American Law Institute’s Henry Friendly Medal (2002), among many other awards.

Lewis is the author of Gideon’s Trumpet, a history of the landmark 1963 Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright, involving James Earl Gideon’s battle for the Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel, and Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment. He has also written numerous other works. (See bibliography linked below.)

Among topics likely to be explored in “A Conversation with Anthony Lewis” are Lewis' views on public access to government information and institutions; leaks of classified information to the press; libel; and cameras in courtrooms.

The program, sponsored by the First Amendment Center and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, took place at the Walter Lippmann House in Cambridge, Mass.

Collins’s interview will be transcribed and made publicly available soon.