Rights in the News: FIRE Issues Get the Lou Dobbs Treatment

As Will wrote earlier in the week, FIRE has seen far too many instances of students’ First Amendment rights being thrown out the window when used to support Second Amendment rights. FIRE has been all over the news concerning the most recent instance of this, in which a student at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) was reported to the police by his professor and subjected to an interrogation on the basis of a class presentation he had given in favor of concealed carry rights on campus.

Building on a FoxNews.com front-page story (tipped this week in an editorial on the debate site Opposing Views) and a host of radio interviews, FIRE Vice President Robert Shibley appeared as a guest on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight to comment on the CCSU case and the larger trend it falls under. (Also noted in the course of Robert’s interview are FIRE’s cases at Hamline University, Tarrant County College, and Colorado College.) To boot, documentary filmmaker and longtime FIRE ally Evan Coyne Maloney appeared on Dobbs’ program the evening after Robert’s appearance to talk about his award-winning documentary Indoctrinate U, which draws heavily on FIRE’s 2004 case at California Polytechnic State University. Not a bad couple of days’ work!

Binghamton-area Torch readers will be able to view Adam’s recent lecture at Binghamton University tomorrow evening on the local public access station (channel 4) tomorrow evening from 6:00–8:00 p.m.; the lecture will be rebroadcast at the same time on Saturday, March 21, and remains viewable online at the blog Essential Dissent for all interested viewers outside channel 4’s sphere of influence.

Finally, the Associated Press reports that nursing student Nina Yoder has sued the University of Louisville after it expelled her over the content of her MySpace blog. AP writer Brett Barrouquere quotes Adam while referencing FIRE’s cases at Colorado College and Valdosta State University. FIRE will be following this case closely for sure.