Who's Too Weak to Live With Freedom? Prof. Alan Charles Kors on His Career Fighting for Free Expression (VIDEO)

In 1999, Alan Charles Kors, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, joined attorney Harvey Silverglate in founding FIRE. Since his days as an undergraduate at Princeton University, Kors has been a fierce advocate for civil liberties on campus. In FIRE’s latest video, Kors shares many of the stories from his five decades as a free speech activist, including why he vowed during his junior year at Princeton to do whatever he could, whenever he could, for the rights of students to be who they are and speak their minds.  Despite having spent a career defending students and faculty members against some of the worst free speech violations to have occurred on campus in recent history, Kors is hopeful that future abuses will continue to be opposed. “What gives me grounds for optimism,” says Kors in the video, “is that this is the only country on the face of the earth where if you tell a ten-year-old kid he can't do something, and it strikes him as absurd, that kid looks up and says, ‘it's a free country.’” “This is the only nation on earth whose children say, ‘it's a free country.’  It's going to take a whole lot to root that out of the American spirit.” This video is the first installment in a two-part series about the careers of FIRE’s co-founders. Read the complete video transcript.

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