Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
The mission of FIRE is to defend and sustain individual rights at America's colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience.
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Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

 
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
As we point out in today's press release, America's college and university campuses still rank among the worst places in America for free speech and other First Amendment rights in 2009...
Joyce Christopher
Joyce Christopher
How did we get things so backwards!
4 hours ago
Roger Freberg
Roger Freberg
thank you, Fire!
3 hours ago
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
In my last post, I ranked our exclusive interview with humorist Dave Barry as FIRE's number three video of 2009. My number two choice will come as no surprise, as it has by far received the most views of any video on FIRE's YouTube channel. Th...
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Liberty cannot exist in a society where people are forced to conform their thoughts and expression to official viewpoints...
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
In the past year, FIRE celebrated a number of public victories in our continued fight to defend individual liberties on college campuses...
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
If there is one thing that I think is absolutely crucial if FIRE is to get its message out, it is the production of high-quality online video...
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
One of FIRE's hallmark programs is FIRE's Guides to Student Rights on Campus, a series of publications that articulate the principles at the heart of FIRE's mission...
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
As 2009 winds down, FIRE is quickly approaching our goal of raising $25,000 to hire a one-year Video Fellow. Just over one month ago, the generosity and confidence of FIRE donors Raymie Stata and Kimberly Sweidy enabled FIRE to set up a matching gift fund in support of the fellowship...
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
It's no surprise that of the dozens of free speech incidents FIRE encounters at universities throughout the year, many are connected to the issues grabbing headlines at the time...
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Boston Globe journalist Tracy Jan drew attention yesterday to FIRE's latest case at Yale University. No, not the one where images of Mohammed were censored from a book about those very images...
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Today's issue of the New York Post features an op-ed by FIRE's Adam Kissel, in which he discusses the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities' plan to impose a political litmus test on future teachers enrolled in its College of Education and Human Development. ...
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Seven years ago this month, FIRE won our first victory against a so-called "free speech zone" at West Virginia University...
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
As Torch readers know, each month FIRE singles out a particularly reprehensible speech code for our Speech Code of the Month award...
Ed Alberts
Ed Alberts
"The Code states that RIC "will not tolerate actions or attitudes that threaten the welfare of any of its members."

This is a disturbing and growing trend as schools start bringing in the voodoo scientists. It is now what you think, with what you actually do being irrelevant. Oh, brave new world!

And if you do something henious, but for a good ... See Morereason, that is no longer considered a bad thing. So you can slice and dice two men (Jason Vassell) but if you did it because they were racists, that is somehow OK....
December 24 at 9:41am
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Today's press release reports that the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities has backed away from its plans to enforce a political litmus test for future teachers.As Torch readers know, the plans from its College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) involved redesigning admissions and the cur...
Ed Alberts
Ed Alberts
This is a Pyrrhic victory. Those with the "wrong" views WILL STILL receive remedial re-education, be weeded out, or be denied admission altogether.

The only difference is that the university won't advertise that it is doing this. FIRE having declared victory and having gone home will mistake the Potemkin village for the reality on the ground, and thought will be less free than if the policy had remained in place.

Two things will happen. First, all of the stuff that FIRE was concerned about will still exist, it will just shift over to issues of "academic judgment" and "academic freedom." And second, students will loose their ability to defend themselves against charges that they fail to meet the ideological standards imposed.... See More

With a clear standard, a student could demonstrate having attended the required re-education seminars, having participated in the required activities, even having the required number of friends of the required categories vouching for him. With it instead being "academic judgments" the student is helpless and worse off than before!

Further, I would like to have programs advertise their bigotry. I would prefer to know who is going to hate me and not let me graduate rather than have them lie to me and learn it later when I have lots of time and money invested in a hopeless quest to graduate....
December 24 at 6:40am
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Today, FIRE filed an amicus curiae brief in the case of McCauley v. University of the Virgin Islands. FIRE's brief asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to clarify its landmark decision in DeJohn v. Temple University, 537 F.3d 301 (3rd Cir...
Ed Alberts
Ed Alberts
"... infantilizes college students and deprives them of the unique educational opportunities available at colleges."

THIS is what is at stake here - something far more than even free speech. There is a movement amongst faculty to define "academic freedom" as an absolute license and amongst administrators to see students as less than human. Not just infants, but a subhuman fungible renewable resource.

Hence what you wind up with are places like Planet UMass where college kids have LESS rights and freedoms than they had in high school. To the point where college kids are now going back to their high schools to party with the kids younger than they, not the other way around.... See More

College students are increasingly told what to think and how to think it -- and that is the root cause of the rioting on every campus I know of, something that no one really wants to talk about....
December 23 at 7:48am
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Jytte Klausen, author of the recently published book The Cartoons That Shook the World and the subject of much controversy since the Yale University Press unilaterally decided to excise inclusion of the controversial cartoons of Mohammed central to the book's premise, discusses the incident in the ...