Table of Contents
FIRE Staff Speakers
Research & Learn
Having a Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression staffer come to your event to speak is an excellent opportunity to bring positive change to the state of freedom of speech and expression in America.
Executive Team
FIRE’s mission is to defend and sustain the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought—the most essential qualities of liberty.
Greg Lukianoff
President & CEO
- Coddling of the American Mind
- Canceling of the American Mind
- Cancel culture
- Promoting a culture of free expression
- Free speech on campus
Nico Perrino
Executive Vice President
- Viewpoint diversity
- Current free speech trends
- Free speech on campus
- Free speech in media
Will Creeley
Legal Director
- Free speech on campus / grade school
- Why free speech is worth fighting for
- Free speech and social media
- Free speech and its exceptions
Ronnie London
General Counsel
- Free speech in media
- Free speech on campus
- Free speech in public forums
- Commercial speech
- Freedom of information
Alex Morey
Vice President of Campus Advocacy
- Free speech on campus
- Due process on campus
- Cultivating a free speech culture on campus
- Campus free speech trends
- Student governments & free speech
Bob Corn-Revere
Chief Counsel
- Book censorship
- Free speech in the digital age
- Sex and censorship
- Comedy and the First Amendment
Campus Rights Advocacy
Our Campus Rights Advocacy team provides free assistance to students and faculty facing civil liberties violations on America’s college and university campuses.
Lindsie Rank
Director of Campus Rights Advocacy
- Free speech on campus
- Campus protest
- Student press freedom
- Media law for student journalists
Connor Murnane
Campus Advocacy Chief of Staff
- Free speech on campus
- Freedom of speech in American political thought
- Mobilizing for speech reform on campus
Zach Greenberg
Faculty Legal Defense Counsel
- Free speech on campus
- Academic freedom and faculty rights
- Due process on campus
- Freedom of association
- Fraternities, Sororities, and student group rights
Graham Piro
Faculty Legal Defense Fund Fellow
- Free speech on campus
- Current free speech trends
- Faculty speech rights: A primer
More About Graham
Dominic Coletti
Program Officer
- Media law
- Free speech on campus
- Free speech in the digital age
Haley Gluhanich
Senior Program Officer
- Free speech on campus
- Why protect hate speech?
- Due process on campus
- Academic freedom and faculty rights
Robert Shibley
Special Counsel
- Free speech on campus
- Due process on campus
- Free speech in the digital age
- Navigating campus speech policies
Litigation
FIRE's litigation team seeks to protect Americans’ free speech rights by defending them in the courts and creating lasting legal precedents. Our lawyers also work to position FIRE as a thought leader in First Amendment jurisprudence by submitting amicus briefs in strategically chosen cases and publishing legal scholarship.
Adam Steinbaugh
Attorney
- When to Pull the FIRE Alarm
- First Amendment in the digital age
Gabe Walters
Attorney
- Free speech on campus
- Due process on campus
- Free speech in the digital age
Conor Fitzpatrick
Supervising Senior Attorney
- Social media regulation
- DEI requirements
- Free speech on campus
- Right to protest
Daniel Ortner
Attorney
- Media law
- Free speech on campus
- Free speech in the digital age
Jeff Zeman
Staff Attorney
- Civil rights litigation
- Qualified Immunity
- Prisons and the First Amendment
- Free speech in K-12 schools
- Legal writing
Communications
FIRE's vision is an America in which people overwhelmingly believe in the right of others to freely express views different from their own, and expect their laws and educational institutions to reflect and teach this belief.
Daniel Burnett
Senior Director of Communications
- Free speech on campus
- Free speech in media
Sarah McLaughlin
Senior Scholar, Global Expression
- Higher education and authoritarianism
- China and campus censorship
- Authoritarian censorship in free countries
- The state of global censorship today
Angel Eduardo
Senior Writer and Editor
- Free expression in the arts
- Communicating across political, ideological, and cultural differences
- Free speech in the digital age
Legislative Policy Reform
FIRE works closely with lawmakers across the country and political spectrum to protect civil liberties.
Tyler Coward
Lead Counsel, Government Affairs
- Free speech on campus
- Due process on campus
- Free speech in the digital age
- Navigating campus speech policies
Policy Priorities
Keep Reading
Our Legislative Policy Reform team supports FIRE’s mission on both a state and federal level by advocating on behalf of rights-protective legislation and against proposed laws that threaten student and faculty rights.
College Policy Reform
FIRE’s college policy reform team works to proactively and systematically challenge campus policies that violate college students’ and faculty members’ free speech rights.
Laura Beltz
Director, Policy Reform
- Identifying restrictive speech policies
- Rewriting speech codes on campus
- Collaborating with campus administrators on reform efforts
- Implementing educational programming on free speech topics
Mary Griffin
Senior Program Officer, Policy Reform
- Free speech on campus
- Revising restrictive speech policies
- Getting involved in policy reform efforts on campus
- Crafting and advocating for free expression statements
Model Speech Policies
Keep Reading
FIRE catalogs campus speech codes — policies that impermissibly regulate or restrict student expression — at hundreds of American colleges and universities. Use these model policies to improve speech codes on your campus.
Research
Data fuels FIRE’s policy awareness and college reform advocacy efforts, giving us the ability to directly work with administrators to offer analysis and advice.
Sean Stevens
Chief Research Advisor
- College Free Speech Rankings
- How to leverage FIRE's data
- Campus deplatforming & the heckler's veto
- Misconceptions about campus censorship
- Free speech trends on campus
Ryne Weiss
Director of Research
- Free speech in the digital age
- Current free speech trends on campus
Research Library
Keep Reading
Explore FIRE's expansive library of research and reports on free speechand other civil liberties.
More Speakers
Public Advocacy
Aaron Terr
Director, Public Advocacy
Aaron is available to speak on various topics such as internet speech regulation, misinformation, "hate speech," library censorship, compelled speech, K-12 speech policies, and free speech culture issues.
Available Speeches
- Censorship, Fake News and Viewpoint Discrimination: What is the role of the government versus market forces in enabling free speech?
- Your guide to Section 230, the law that safeguards free speech on the internet
- Yes, you should be worried about the FBI’s relationship with Twitter
Strategic Partnerships
Molly Fratianne
Director of Strategic Partnerships
Prior to joining FIRE, Molly spent the bulk of her career working for a philanthropic nonprofit, focusing her time on student relations and freedom of speech. In her current role as Director of Strategic Partnerships, she collaborates with a wide range of organizations and allies that are also working to advance freedom of speech and expression.
Molly is available to discuss topics like why free speech matters, the importance of freedom of expression in the arts, and building a free-speech coalition.
Fellows
Nadine Strossen
New York Law School Professor Emerita Nadine Strossen, past national President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), is a Senior Fellow with FIRE and a frequent speaker/media commentator on constitutional law and civil liberties, who has testified before Congress on multiple occasions. She is the author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018) and Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know (to be released in October 2023).
She is available to discuss issues about free speech, intellectual freedom, and civil discourse.
James Kirchick
James Kirchick is a contributing writer to Tablet magazine, a writer at large for Air Mail, and author of the instant New York Times bestseller, "Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington."
He has reported from over 40 countries, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, New York, Rolling Stone, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, the Spectator, and the Times Literary Supplement, among many other publications in the United States and around the world.
His first book, “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age,” was published by Yale University Press in 2017.
Jacob Mchangama
Jacob Mchangama is CEO of the think tank Justitia and directs Justitia´s Future of Free Speech Project at Vanderbilt University. Jacob has written and commented extensively on free speech and human rights in international media outlets including The Economist, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, BBC, CBS News, NPR, CNN, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Wall Street Journal, Politico as well as top-tier academic and peer-reviewed journals. Jacob frequently appears on international TV and Radio providing expert commentary on issues related to free speech, tech and human rights. Jacob is the producer and narrator of the podcast “Clear and Present” Danger: A History of Free Speech and author of the critically acclaimed book “Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media” published by Basic Books in 2022.
He is available to discuss the history and future of free speech, free speech and racial justice, free speech and technology: from social media to AI, global free speech, the “free speech recession," blasphemy and hate speech, free speech in Europe vs. the US, free speech and human rights.