Dr. Chris Demaske, PhD

Dr. Chris Demaske is a former journalist and a Professor of Communication in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and affiliate faculty in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. She is a nationally recognized First Amendment law scholar whose work seeks to reconceptualize First Amendment law in a manner that more fully protects and supports free speech for everyone, especially for members of racial, ethnic, gendered and religious groups typically marginalize, silenced or vilified in U.S. society.

Her investigations cover a spectrum of free speech topics including internet pornography, social media regulation, free speech zones, political dissident speech, high school censorship, academic freedom, incitement, and true threats. However, her most in-depth scholarly work to-date is in the area of hate speech restriction, in which she focuses on the legal treatment of hate speech in the United States and why that treatment, or lack thereof, is problematic in light of social tensions that are continuing to escalate. While Dr. Demaske is a communication scholar by training, her approach to examining free speech and press is decidedly interdisciplinary. She brings together feminist theory, critical race theory, and social justice theory to shine a critical lens on whose speech rights the First Amendment is protecting. She relies on her past professional experiences as a journalist, her academic training, and her positionality as a woman and a member of the LGBTQ community to drive her interest in helping to create a more equitable reading of free speech protection.

Dr. Demaske has authored two books in field of First Amendment law. Her first book, Modern Power and Free Speech: Contemporary Culture and Issues of Equality (2009), called for a radical shift in the fundamental way we think about the assumptions of how free speech protection operates in society. Her most recent book, Free Speech and Hate Speech in the United States: The Limits of Toleration (2021), addresses the question: What can be done to curb the proliferation of hate speech and hate acts in the United States? Free Speech and Hate Speech develops a concrete framework grounded in social justice theory that can be used initially for assessing hate speech restrictions specifically, but also has ramifications for the entirety of free speech theory and First Amendment law. She has published in a variety of scholarly and media-related venues. She has taught courses on First Amendment Law, Communication History, Russian Media Studies and various professional based-journalism courses, such as News Writing, Feature Writing and Investigative Reporting. Since 2002, she has served as the co-founder and supervisor of an on-going Journalism Exchange Program with Moscow State University in Russia. Prior to her obtaining her PhD, Dr. Demaske worked as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor at publications including the Uniontown (PA) Herald Standard, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the Jackson Clarion Ledger, Night Club and Bar Magazine, and Cotton Grower Magazine. Dr. Demaske earned a PhD in Communication and Society from the University of Oregon; an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Mississippi; and a BA in Journalism from California University of Pennsylvania. In 2005, she received a Faculty Fulbright Award to lecture on the topics of U.S. News Writing and First Amendment Law at the acclaimed Moscow State University Department of Journalism. She is also the recipient of a COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) and the Best Dissertation Writing Award from the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon.

Sub-Specialties:
First Amendment Law, Freedom of Speech, Hate Speech, Critical Race Theory, Academic Freedom, Communication, Internet, Social Media, United States Supreme Court, Net Neutrality, Incitement, True Threats, Internet Pornography, Political Speech, Critical Legal Studies, Campus Speech, Highschool Censorship, First Amendment History, History of Communication, Russian Media Studies