PLAYBOY FOUNDATION GIVES 1ST AMENDMENT AWARDS

By: Staff Reports Seigenthaler, Lawbaugh Among Recipients


The Playboy Foundation of Chicago has announced the winners of
the 21st Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards, to be presented
May 18 in New York.

John Seigenthaler, who founded the First Amendment Center at
Vanderbilt University in 1991, is being presented with a Lifetime
Achievement award. The Playboy Foundation said Seigenthaler is
being honored for more than four decades of work supporting the
First Amendment. He worked for 43 years at Nashville's
Tennessean and nine years at USA Today.

Other 2001 winners are:

Print Journalism: William M. Lawbaugh, associate professor
of communications at Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, Md.,
and faculty adviser to the student newspaper, The Mountain
Echo "for successfully thwarting attempts by college
officials to muzzle student journalists," the foundation said.

Law: James Wheaton, senior counsel and cofounder of the
First Amendment Project in Oakland, Calif.

Arts & Entertainment: Penn & Teller, "who have threaded
their work with serious messages to educate nontraditional and
often unsuspecting audiences about the value of the First
Amendment's protections," according to the foundation.

Education: Mary Dana and Nancy Zennie, who rallied the
public to oppose a ban on Harry Potter books in the public
schools of Zeeland, Mich.

Book Publishing: Michael Kent Curtis, constitutional
scholar and professor of law at Wake Forest University for his
latest book, "Free Speech, the People's Darling Privilege."

Each award winner receives $5,000. The awards were established in
1979 by Christie Hefner, who is now chairman and CEO of Playboy
Enterprises Inc., to honor those who protect First Amendment
rights. The winners are chosen by an independent panel of judges,
including First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, Lucy Dalglish of
the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Robert
O'Neill of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free
Expression.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.