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PAGE | Marjorie
Heins, Director of the Free Expression Policy
Project
is a longtime civil liberties attorney. She
was the Founding Director of the Amreican
Civil Liberties
Union Arts Censorship Project, and has been
counsel on a number of landmark censorship
cases across
the nation. These include Reno vs. American
Civil Liberties Union, the successful challenge
to
the 1996 "Communications Decenvy Act",
and Finley vs. National Endowment for
the Arts,
a suit challenging the requirement that all
federal arts grants comply with "general
standards of decency and respect for the diverse
beliefs
and values of the American public".
Before creating the Arts Censorship
Project, Heins served as staff counsel for
the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts,
chief of the Civil Rights Division in the Office
of the Attorney General of Massachusetts, and
visiting professor at Boston College Law School.
She is the author of numerous law review and
general interest articles in addition to three
books: Sex, Sin and Blasphemy: A Guide to America's
Censorship Wars (1993), Cutting the Mustard:
Affirmative Action and the Nature of Excellence
(1987) and Strictly Ghetto Property: The Story
of Los Siete de la Raza (1975). Her newest
book is Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency",
Censorhip, and the Innocence of Youth (2001);
it won the American Library Association's 2002
Eli Oboler Award for best published work in
the area of intellectual freedom.
Heins has served as editor-in-chief
of the Massachusetts Law Review, and has been
a member of the board of directors of the Women's
Bar Association of Massachusetts. In 1991 she
received the Luther McNair Award for significant
contributions to civil liberties from the Civil
Liberties Union of Massachusetts, and in 1992
and 1993 was designated a "First Amendment
Hero" by the Boston Coalition for Freedom
of Expression.
Heins received her J.D. in
1978, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School,
where she was Articles Editor of the Harvard
Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review. She
was awarded her B.A., with distinction, from
Cornell University in 1967.
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