Samantha Barbas, March 2023. Photograph courtesy of Douglas Levere.
Email: sbarbas@buffalo.edu
Research Focus: First Amendment Law, American Legal History, Privacy Law, Mass Communications Law
Samantha Barbas is the director of The Baldy Center, effective Summer 2019. Her work focuses on the intersection of law, culture, media and technology in United States history. Her recent research has explored the history of censorship, privacy and defamation.
Barbas holds a PhD in U.S. history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a J.D from Stanford Law School. She was previously a professor of history at Chapman University, a visiting professor of history at U.C. Berkeley, and a lecturer at Arizona State University. She clerked for Judge Richard Clifton on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Honolulu.
Barbas is the author of seven books:
Barbas' books have been reviewed in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among other news media outlets. In 2020, she received a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar award for her book in progress, on the Supreme Court First Amendment case New York Times v. Sullivan. Barbas is an adviser on the Restatement of the Law (Third) of Torts: Defamation and Privacy.