Free Speech

Freedom of speech is a fundamental American freedom, and nowhere should it be more valued and protected than at America's colleges and universities. The "marketplace of ideas" upon which a university depends for its intellectual vitality cannot flourish when students or faculty members must fear punishment for expressing views that might be unpopular with the public at large or disfavored by university administrators. Yet this freedom is under continuous assault at many of America's campuses. Speech codes dictating what may or may not be said, "free speech zones" confining free speech to a certain area of campus, and administrative attempts to punish or repress speech on a case-by-case basis are common today in academia. FIRE's public cases dealing with freedom of speech, listed below, demonstrate our commitment to restoring and preserving this basic freedom on our nation's campuses. The future of a generation of students -- and of liberal education itself -- depends on our success.

Cases

Articles and News Items

  • "Oregon protects free speech," Jason Rantz, Family Security Matters, July 17, 2007
  • "‘New York Times’ disappoints," Greg Lukianoff, The Huffington Post, June 29, 2007
  • "Film portrays stifling of speech, but one college’s struggle reflects a nuanced reality," Joseph Berger, The New York Times, June 27, 2007
  • "College students have a voice in campus free speech," Melissa Drosjack, FOXNews.com, August 17, 2006: College students are encouraged to exercise their minds in the classroom, but the same might not be true for their voices on campus. "They should know that [the right to] free speech is routinely violated on campus these days," said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit group that promotes individual rights at the nation's colleges and universities.
  • "SUNY Fredonia Punishes Professor for Political Expression," FIRE Press Release, July 24, 2006: A professor at SUNY Fredonia has been denied promotion for publicly disagreeing with the university’s student conduct policies and affirmative action practices. SUNY Fredonia’s president later agreed to approve the promotion only if the professor would submit all of his public writings to prior university review. Professor Stephen Kershnar declined the offer and sought help from FIRE.
  • "Victory for Freedom of Speech: University of Nevada at Reno Abolishes ‘Free Speech Zones’," FIRE Press Release, June 28, 2006: Students at the University of Nevada at Reno (UNR) are freer today, thanks to a new policy that designates the entire campus—save the interior of university buildings—as an “open public forum area.” The university’s previous policy designated only four small or remote areas on UNR’s campus as “‘public forum’ areas,” and explicitly deemed the rest of the campus a non-public forum. Student activists, working with FIRE and the ACLU of Nevada, protested this unconstitutional policy and proposed a new policy that would open the public university campus to free speech. The students worked closely with UNR administrators, who approved the policy earlier this month.
  • "AAUW Sexual Harassment Report Is Fatally Flawed," FIRE Press Release, January 26, 2006: The American Association of University Women Educational Foundation released a report Tuesday claiming that 62 percent of students surveyed have been sexually harassed at college. The report’s definition of sexual harassment is so broad that its conclusions are highly misleading and dangerous to free expression on campus.
  • "FIRE Joins Amicus Brief in Student Press Freedom Case," December 15, 2005: FIRE has joined an amicus brief supporting freedom of the press at Kansas State University. Advisor Ronald Johnson was removed after administrators determined, in part based on its level of “diversity” coverage, that the award-winning paper had “quality” issues. While the move was widely recognized as a punishment of the newspaper, the court went so far as to determine, incomprehensibly, that the “content analysis” of the paper that led to the removal did not represent an attempt by Kansas State, as a public institution, to influence the content of the paper. FIRE and other organizations are working to ensure that this method of punishing students and influencing news coverage does not become a regular feature on America’s public college campuses.
  • "FIRE Files Brief Urging Supreme Court to Hear Student Newspaper Censorship Case," FIRE Press Release, October 19, 2005: On October 19, FIRE filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of Hosty v. Carter, a Seventh Circuit decision that poses a grave threat to student press freedom. FIRE President David French declared, “The Seventh Circuit’s decision in Hosty v. Carter has the potential to destroy freedom of the press on campus.... We hope that the Supreme Court will intervene and undo this potentially disastrous opinion.”
  • "FIRE Issues Statement Regarding Censorship of ‘Partisan’ Speech on Campus," FIRE Press Release, October 21, 2004: In response to the recent increase in administrative attempts to silence or postpone so-called "partisan" political events until after the election, FIRE has issued a statement calling on colleges and universities to maintain the free marketplace of ideas and protect free speech during a time when it matters the most. Political speech is not low value speech; it is the kind of speech the First Amendment was originally intended to protect. 
  • "Practical Advice for Fraternities Caught in the Battle for Free Speech on Campus," Matthew Vasconcellos and Greg Lukianoff, Fraternal Law, September 16, 2004: In this month’s issue of Fraternal Law, FIRE Legal Director Greg Lukianoff and legal researcher Matt Vasconcellos offer important advice to fraternities that find themselves (often unwillingly) involved in the battle for free speech on campus.
  • "College Officials Vote ‘Yes’ on Free Speech," FIRE Press Release, March 23, 2004: The Association for Student Judicial Affairs (ASJA), a national organization of college judicial administrators, has adopted a resolution affirming the priority of free speech rights and calling for the reform of policies that violate constitutional standards that protect student speech. FIRE has long engaged the ASJA on this issue and had publicly encouraged ASJA members to vote for this vital resolution. FIRE looks forward to the ASJA's help in ending the scandal of campus speech codes.
  • "College Officials to Vote on Free Speech," FIRE Press Release, February 26, 2004: The Association for Student Judicial Affairs, a national organization of college judicial administrators, is set to vote on a resolution affirming the importance of college and university students' free speech rights and calling for reform of policies that contain illegal or unconstitutional limits on student speech. FIRE, which has been instrumental in bringing this issue to national prominence, is encouraging members of the group to vote "yes" on this important resolution.
  • "Advocates Tell Senate Panel of Broad Threats to Free Speech on Campuses," Eric Hoover, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 30, 2003
  • "Is Intellectual Diversity an Endangered Species on America's College Campuses?," Greg Lukianoff, United States Senate Full Committee Hearing, October 29, 2003
  • "U.S. Senate to Discuss Speech Codes," FIRE Press Release, October 28, 2003: FIRE Director of Legal and Public Advocacy Greg Lukianoff has been invited to testify before a Senate committee on Wednesday, October 29, about speech codes and other threats to liberty at America 's colleges and universities.
  • "Tolling the death knell for speech codes," Nat Hentoff, First Amendment Center, October 16, 2003
  • "FIRE Intern Warns Bucknell Freshmen About Speech Codes," September 30, 2003: FIRE Intern Charles Mitchell, an undergraduate at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, sent a letter to freshmen students warning them about Bucknell's speech codes and provided examples of speech that could be punished by Bucknell's administration. Mitchell warned students of speech codes that provide for punishments of up to expulsion for uttering speech that "seriously annoys" others.
  • "In Landmark Letter, Office for Civil Rights Clarifies the Law and Vindicates Free Speech on Campus," FIRE Press Release, August 12, 2003: The Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education has issued a landmark letter of clarification that deals a powerful blow to administrative censors on America’s college and university campuses. FIRE and others long have sought clarification of OCR regulations that many academic leaders have cited in support of campus policies that weaken First Amendment protections of freedom of expression.
  • "Letter from the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, July 28, 2003," July 28, 2003: Dear Colleague: I am writing to confirm the position of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Education regarding a subject which is of central importance to our government, our heritage of freedom, and our way of life: the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
  • "Speech Pathology," Carl Takei and Harvey Silverglate, The Boston Phoenix, May 23, 2003: FIRE codirector Harvey A. Silverglate and FIRE Program Officer Carl Takei write on campus speech codes and FIRE's speech code litigation strategy in The Boston Phoenix.
  • "FIRE Declares War on Speech Codes," FIRE Press Release, April 23, 2003: Yesterday afternoon, attorneys from FIRE's Legal Network challenged the unconstitutional speech code at Shippensburg University, in Pennsylvania. This lawsuit is the first step in an unprecedented national campaign that will end—through legal action and through public exposure—the scandal of unconstitutional censorship at America's public college and university campuses and that will force private institutions to choose between liberty and tyranny.
  • "FIRE's Systematic Defense of Liberty in Higher Education: speechcodes.org," March 28, 2003: There is a moral crisis in American higher education. Our students are punished for what they say, what they write, and even what they think. Administrators create and enforce speech codes, under various euphemistic names, to outlaw expression that does not conform to reigning campus orthodoxies. In practice, these codes rely on a double standard that strikes at the heart of legal and moral equality. This spring, FIRE is launching speechcodes.org, a systematic challenge to the injustice of speech codes. This website will catalog restrictions on speech at America's college and university campuses. FIRE intends to make it possible for students, faculty, members of the media, and the general public all to see, understand, and end the betrayal of liberty that continues in higher education.
  • "A War Of Words," Connecticut Law Tribune, October 15, 2001: "There are people on the right and the left who are being told to shut up, and administrators keep saying, 'This isn't the time for such debate,'" said Harvey Silverglate, a Boston civil liberties attorney and co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group representing about 10 college professors who charge that they've been silenced by school administrators since the terrorist attacks.
  • "A Note About Free Speech," Alan Charles Kors, The Hornacle, September 1, 2001: Why should we tolerate speech that offends our sense of essential value, security, and truth? In On Liberty (1859), John Stuart Mill offered compelling answers to that question. We are not infallible, he reasoned wisely, and the opinion we abhor might be right, or, even if erroneous, might “contain a portion of truth” that would be denied to us by censorship. Further, Mill argued, even if the opinion of the censors was the whole truth, if it were not permitted to be “vigorously and earnestly contested,” it would be believed not by our critical reason, but simply by prejudice. Above all, Mill saw, if we did not have to defend our beliefs and values, they would lose their vitality, becoming merely rote formulas, not deep, living, and creative convictions capable of leading us to sincere and great things.
  • "Memorandum to Free Speech Advocates, University of Wisconsin," Harvey Silverglate, January 26, 1999