Ben Woods

Wolf Humanities Center Undergraduate Fellow

2026—2027 Forum on Practice

Ben Woods

History, Philosophy, Politics & Economics

CAS, 2027

Ben Woods is a senior majoring in History and Philosophy, Politics & Economics and minoring in Legal Studies. He is interested in constitutional law and media governance, particularly the evolution of First Amendment rights in response to technological change. His current project examines opposition press censorship in the Early American Republic.

Originally from Virginia, Ben has spent the past two summers in the Washington, D.C. area working on speech and technology issues at the Institute for Justice and the Cato Institute. At Penn, he serves as president of the Moot Court team, a director in the Undergraduate Assembly, and a Civic House volunteer at Philadelphia Family Court. In his free time, he enjoys reading and playing the cello.

Ninety-Four Days in Print: Prelude to the Quasi-War

On April 6, 1798, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to publish deciphered dispatches on a failed American diplomatic mission in France. Anti-French public anger, naval mobilization, and a new deportation regime would soon follow. Printers engaged in partisan press battles, provoking government censorship against those critical of the war-leaning administration. In this republic’s first press freedom crisis, the clash between Democratic-Republican printers and the Federalist government became a struggle over the legitimacy of partisan dissent.

This research project, set in Philadelphia after the dispatch publication, examines how Democratic-Republican press functioned as a political institution under threat, and how the struggle shaped the nation’s understanding of acceptable dissent. In particular, I examine how Democratic-Republican printers navigated legal risks of prosecution, secured financial and partisan support, and articulated arguments against censorship. Further, I seek to understand how these pressures and strategies influenced the editorial choices they made.