FIRE Guides Board of Editors

FIRE has assembled a distinguished group of legal scholars to serve on the Board of Editors to the Guides project. The Board, selected from across the political and ideological spectrum, advises FIRE staff on the final drafts of the Guides. The nature and pluralism of this Board ensures the quality, accuracy, and balance of the information supplied and conveys the fact that liberty on campus is not a question of partisan politics, but of the rights and responsibilities of free individuals in a society governed by the rule of law.

Vivian Berger -Vivian Berger is the Nash Professor of Law Emerita at Columbia Law School. Berger is a former New York County Assistant District Attorney and a former Assistant Counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She has done significant work in the fields of criminal law and procedure (in particular, the death penalty and habeas corpus) and mediation, and continues to use her expertise in various settings, both public and private. Berger is General Counsel for and a National Board Member of the American Civil Liberties Union and has written numerous essays and journal articles on human rights and due process.

T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr. - T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr. is the President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a nonpartisan, educational organization dedicated to furthering the American ideal of ordered liberty on college and university campuses. He served as Counselor to the Attorney General of the United States and later as Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs during the Reagan administration. Cribb is also President of the Collegiate Network of independent college newspapers. He is former Vice Chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Alan Dershowitz - Alan Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School. He is an expert on civil liberties and criminal law and has been described by Newsweek as “the nation's most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights.” Dershowitz is a frequent public commentator on matters of freedom of expression and of due process, and is the author of eighteen books, including, most recently, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge, and hundreds of magazine and journal articles.

Paul McMasters - Paul McMasters is the First Amendment Ombudsman at the Freedom Forum in Arlington, Virginia. He speaks and writes frequently on all aspects of First Amendment rights, has appeared on various television programs, and has testified before numerous government commissions and congressional committees. Prior to joining the Freedom Forum, McMasters was the Associate Editorial Director of USA Today. He is also past National President of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Edwin Meese III - Edwin Meese III holds the Ronald Reagan Chair in Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation. He is also Chairman of Heritage's Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Meese is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at The University of London's Institute of United States Studies. He is also Chairman of the governing board at George Mason University in Virginia. Meese served as the 75th Attorney General of the United States under the Reagan administration.

Roger Pilon - Roger Pilon is Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Cato Institute, where he holds the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, directs Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies, and publishes the Cato Supreme Court Review. Prior to joining Cato, he held five senior posts in the Reagan administration. He has taught philosophy and law, and was a National Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. Pilon has published widely in moral, political, and legal theory.

Jamin Raskin - Jamin Raskin is Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, specializing in constitutional law and the First Amendment. He served as a member of the Clinton-Gore Justice Department Transition Team, as Assistant Attorney General in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and as General Counsel for the National Rainbow Coalition. Raskin has also been a Teaching Fellow in the Government Department at Harvard University and has won several awards for his scholarly essays and journal articles. He is author of We the Students and founder of the Marshall-Brennan Fellows Program, which sends law students into public high schools to teach the Constitution.

Nadine Strossen - Nadine Strossen is President of the American Civil Liberties Union and Professor of Law at New York Law School. Strossen has published approximately 250 works in scholarly and general interest publications, and is author of two significant books on the importance of civil liberties to the struggle for equality. She has lectured and practiced extensively in the areas of constitutional law and civil liberties, and is a frequent commentator in the national media on various legal issues.