FIRE Quarterly: ‘From the Board of Directors’

Daphne Patai, a member of our Board of Directors, contributed to our recent edition of The FIRE Quarterly with a column reinforcing the importance of FIRE’s work after a year in which we saw so many attempts to limit student speech on campus.

She wrote:

Where restrictions on speech must, by law, be content-neutral, universities these days have the habit of taking it upon themselves to decide which points of view are to be protected by the First Amendment and which are not. Where the law prohibits harassment only if it is “persistent and pervasive” enough to interfere with an individual’s right to an equal education, universities typically embrace poorly written policies that aim to inhibit jokes, offensive comments, and unpopular opinions—the very sorts of speech the First Amendment is meant to protect.

By now Torch readers are undoubtedly familiar with the numerous cases FIRE has taken on to defend constitutionally protected speech that others have found “offensive” (take a look at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Illinois, San Francisco State University, or Bellevue Community College for recent examples). As Daphne points out, these types of cases illustrate why the First Amendment exists—to protect viewpoints that may be unpopular or insulting—and also why FIRE continues the fight to protect legal speech that others attempt to silence.