FIRE President to Testify at House Judiciary Committee Hearing Regarding Free Speech on Campus

UPDATE (6/2/15): Today’s hearing will be webcast live on the House Judiciary Committee’s website.

WASHINGTON, June 1, 2015—Tomorrow, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) President and CEO Greg Lukianoff will address the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice on the state of free speech on America’s public college campuses. Lukianoff will be joined by attorney and author Wendy Kaminer; Kim Colby, Director of the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom; and Professor Jamie Raskin of American University Washington College of Law. The hearing will begin at 2 p.m. ET in room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

“I applaud the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice for holding a hearing to shed light on the serious problem of censorship on today’s public college campuses and am honored to testify,” said Lukianoff.

In his testimony, Lukianoff will explore why a majority of public colleges and universities maintain clearly unconstitutional speech codes and the frightening effect these codes have on students, who increasingly seek to censor speech that they disagree with. The testimony will also examine threats to faculty speech and how the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos has left protections for faculty expression troublingly unclear.

Tomorrow’s hearing is not the first time Lukianoff has testified about free speech on campus. Last July, he testified before the United States Commission on Civil Rights about how the federal government's interpretation of Title IX threatens student and faculty expression. In 2003, Lukianoff testified before the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee about university speech codes and free speech zones and their effect on campus discourse.

“Free speech on campus is an issue that needs to stay on Congress’s radar,” said Lukianoff. “I’m hoping Congress will take meaningful action to protect the First Amendment rights of students and faculty at our nation’s public institutions. FIRE stands ready and willing to work with legislators to make sure campuses remain true marketplaces of ideas.”

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, freedom of expression, academic freedom, due process, and freedom of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities. FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty on campuses across America can be viewed at thefire.org.

CONTACT:

Katie Barrows, Communications Coordinator, FIRE: 215-717-3473; katie@thefire.org