There is no organization that’s done more to fight for freedom of speech on American campuses over the past 20 years than FIRE, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. If you care deeply about the First Amendment and a robust culture of free speech, FIRE is the kind of organization you hope will go out of business.
Unfortunately, as our friend Andrew Sullivan has perfectly put it, we all live on campus now.
As the culture of campus has become the culture of the country—one in which ideological conformity is enforced by mobs that wield the weapons of shame and stigma—it should not come as a surprise that 62% of Americans say they hold views they are afraid to share in public.
All of which is why FIRE is radically expanding its scope and its ambition. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is now The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. And the organization has announced a goal of $75 million in order to pick up the flag the ACLU has put down by becoming the premier civil liberties organization in America.
Today: a conversation with the president and CEO of FIRE, Greg Lukianoff. Lukianoff is also the author of “Unlearning Liberty” and the co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, of “The Coddling of the American Mind.”
At about the 53 minute mark, Bari asks (paraphrasing) "which side is worse - left or right?" Greg, more or less, says that both sides are equally crazy with censorship. Over the course of the interview, dozens of examples of left-wing censorship are given, but I didn't hear any examples of right-wing censorship. Did I miss even one contemporary example from the right?
I have been a Philosophy professor for over 40 years, and from my perspective much of the censorship is just subterfuge. American Academia is stealing money from our students and their families, and so long as we professors remain terrified of the administrators, so long as we continue to cower and play the pronoun games and all the rest of these absurdities, this thievery will continue. Academia has become a fraudulent institution where students are manipulated and treated like angry customers and truth has become a flavor, perpetually adjusted to appeal to the tastes of the customers who are systematically cheated. For my very small part I have simply refused to play the pronoun game. It is not courageous, but at least it is something. Perhaps God is dead for most, but Truth is very much alive, and I thank God I still feel guilt when I attempt to teach what I know is not true.