FIRE's 10th Anniversary Celebration a Great Success

Throughout 2009, the excitement has been building for FIRE’s 10^th anniversary year. Last night, this excitement culminated in New York City, when over 200 friends and supporters of FIRE convened at the beautiful Mandarin Oriental Hotel for FIRE’s 10th Anniversary Celebration Dinner. The night was a great success, featuring several inspiring speeches and a thoughtful reflection on the state of liberty by keynote speaker Eugene Volokh, the premiere of FIRE’s new short film, “Reflecting on 10 Years of FIRE,” and the recognition of FIRE’s first-ever Prometheus Award recipients. Pictures from this beautiful evening at the Mandarin will be posted on our website soon, so be sure to check back to see them!

Dinner guests spent the evening reflecting on FIRE’s ten-year history, during which FIRE has grown from a fledgling organization to a powerful leader in the campus reform movement and a force to be reckoned with on college campuses. FIRE Co-founder and Chairman Harvey Silverglate commented on the occasion of FIRE’s tenth anniversary, saying, “Marking time by decades makes a certain amount of sense, as a decade is a manageable chunk of time. FIRE has done about 20 years worth of work and of good since its founding in 1999. At the anniversary meeting and dinner, we are planning to do 30 years worth in FIRE’s second decade.”

With the close of our first decade, FIRE is already looking ahead to another ten years of great work in defense of individual liberty on campus. We again would like to thank everyone who joined us at our celebration last night—it was wonderful to see all of you and to celebrate with you! It’s not often that FIRE hosts big events, so the opportunity to spend an evening in the company of our friends and allies was truly special.

If you weren’t able to join us last night, you can still help us start our next decade off strong. Your donation today will help launch FIRE into our second decade with the resources to make even greater strides and to restore our nation’s campuses to the marketplace of ideas they should be. We would not have reached our ten-year milestone without the generous support of our passionate friends, donors, and allies, and as we look ahead, we could not be more pleased to find ourselves in such good company as our voice in the campus reform movement grows even louder.