BY ANDREW TONKOVICH
It’s hard to find a better-funded speech rights outfit than one purchasing digital ads on the virtual front page of the New York Times. Setting aside the peculiar politics of the “libertarian-leaning” Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), its newest campaign, which I noticed in early April, is puzzling, if not just scary. The ad shows a man holding out his hand in front of his face. A headline reads, “Certain People Think You’re Entitled to an Opinion—Their Opinion.” Who is obscuring our view, and of what, and why? And enforcing their opinion? It’s hard to understand the logic of the gesture, as it’s generally cops and authoritarians who block cameras. Or is this only the bog-standard conservative move of constituting itself as a harried minority, hemmed in by aggressive giant liberals or worse? Everything’s inverted, with rightist speech needing protection from the suppressive, intolerant, cancel-culture Left.
It’s easier, perhaps, and more fun, to note the ad’s perverse intentional or unintentional mimicry of an iconic poster by antifascist Dadaist photo-collagist John Heartfield (1891–1968) in its membership appeal, meant for university and college students. Of course Heartfield’s iconic 1928 campaign poster supported five German Communist Party (KDP) candidates. Titled “5 Finger Hat Die Hand” (“5 Fingers Has the Hand”), nobody in Berlin was confused by its politics urging resistance and solidarity. But what to make of the apparent appropriation of this image by an organization that critics identify as itself a purposefully confused mimicry of more obviously credible free speech organizations such as the ACLU, PEN America, and the AAUP? Greg Lukianoff, FIRE president and CEO, and Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist, made their names with the alarmist The Coddling of the American Mind (2018) and stoked their FIRE by exaggerating the scope and number of campus speech conflicts, misconstruing complicated administrative responses, creating a color-coded campus speech rights ranking scheme, attacking progressive student groups and, as a result, attracting wide media attention. For an excellent consideration of the largely manufactured campus speech “crisis” and political analysis, readers might review P. E. Moskowitz’s chapter “The Shadow Campus,” in his The Case Against Free Speech, which assesses the role of powerful players: “certain people” (read wealthy conservative donors) behind groups like FIRE.
Andrew Tonkovich is a retired lecturer who formerly taught in the University of California, Irvine, Department of English.
Note: The post was corrected to indicate that Greg Lukianoff is FIRE president and CEO (rather than that he and Jonathan Haidt founded the organization); reference to a former ACLU affiliation was also removed.
There is a lot I think is wrong here, but even the author won’t dispute, if he takes the time to Google the organization that he is writing about, that Greg Lukianoff and Jon Haidt didn’t co-found FIRE.
That factual detail has been corrected.
There’s a lot that is right here, too! There’s a lot that I like about FIRE — they have rightly rushed to the defense of a number of wrongly-accused faculty for left-leaning speech and Nico Perrini was a wonderful interlocutor when he graciously hosted my co-author Michael Bérubé and I on FIRE’ s “So To Speak” podcast. However, they operate with an emphasis on free speech — and not academic freedom — so they get some things wrong and they fuel the right-wing manufacture of outrage and amplify sensationalized stories of an allegedly illiberal left — as the author shows through analyzing this ad. The way they tried to draw media attention to a University of Oklahoma training, for example, seemed right out of Campus Reform’s playbook. For the best treatment of the issues with FIRE and a discussion of the University of Oklahoma situation I refer to, I recommend reading my blog colleague Hank Reichman’s post “Playing with Fire” from July 15, 2021.
https://academeblog.org/2021/07/15/playing-with-fire/
I’m an AAUP member who thinks that FIRE has done some excellent work that no one else is doing. This blog post can only be described as a hit-piece. For anyone who is not familiar with FIRE’s work, I encourage you to visit their site rather than taking this author’s word for how horrible and dangerous they are.
FIRE is a free speech only organization. It may sometimes use the words academic freedom, but its purpose is to defend the expression of opinion, not scholarship that distinguishes truth from falsehood. It was founded during a controversy over student protest at U Penn by a decidedly conservative faculty member, who referred to the protestors as barbarians at the gates. Read FIRE’s mission statement; nowhere will you find the words academic freedom. In fact, their aim is to undermine what AAUP understands to be academic freedom: the collective rights of faculty to research and teach in the interests of furthering knowledge. Even, and perhaps especially, when that knowledge disturbs what is taken to be common sense or the opinion of some political interest group.
Thanks, Joan Scott, for clarifying the difference between academic freedom and freedom of speech for those of us new to this issue.
I appreciate the ambiguity of FIRE’s hand, because it reflects how FIRE (despite its right-wing funding) has evolved over the years from its origins as a group almost exclusively attacking the left to one that defends faculty and students across the ideological spectrum. So I agree with almost all of FIRE’s individual cases, and its critiques of speech codes and other flawed policies. The problem with FIRE is when it makes generalizations blaming left-wing students for most of the censorship on campus, rather than administrators. But FIRE’s errors seem minor compared to Tonkovich’s mistake of saying there’s no problem with campus censorship and being an apologist for “complicated administrative responses” when faculty and students are punished for controversial ideas.
Please, please, please: A little research. Joan is right BUT FIRE is a part of the organized well-funded national right-wing network operated by Heritage, Koch Brothers, Bradley Fdn, Robert Gates. ALEC is one of their semi-public faces.
Those who wish to “defund” it need to see who they do not defend and who they attack. Do not take individual cases out of context, fellow scholars.
Websites promoting and organizing dishonest attacks on “freed speech” with which they disagree; their caricatures of critical race theory; “offensive” books almost always by women, “minorities,” and differently gendered authors, and only white male authors with minority or different gendered protagonists.
They defend “free speech” in high distorted and partisan ways; and do not endorse “academic freedom” as the AAUP has defined it for more than a century.
AAUP leaders NEED to know this.
That should be “defend” not “defund.” Forgive the unintended slip of the fingers.
Thanks Harvey. I agree with you that all of us active in the AAUP need to pull together a bit to distinguish what we work on (academic freedom) from what FIRE works on (free speech — that too often aids the spread of misinformation and disinformation and undermines the collective faculty’s autonomy and expertise).
Jennifer, AAUP cannot fight alone. I am personally trying to bring together AAUP, PEN America, ACLU, FTRF, Honesty in Education, RedWine.Blue, etc, with all of whom I work as a retired historian. Too many are struggllng without sufficient information and certainly without institutional support.
Although I don’t see completely eye to eye with you and Berube, the crank right wing, ignorant attack by a pseudo-histoian and liberal arts prof. at Grinnell is shameful. CHE has become a right wing front, a far cry from its own history. They will only publish letters from me–and the head of letters to the editor doesn’t even know where on the website they sit! IHE, THE, others are eager for my contributions. Some readers may be interested in today’s https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/05/06/myths-underlie-humanities-crisis-discourse-opinion?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=36626b73e6-DNU_2021_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-36626b73e6-197419157&mc_cid=36626b73e6&mc_eid=20158fd9b5
Thanks, Harvey, for all the work you’re doing. It certainly has been interesting/telling to watch which views CHE most often and repeatedly publishes and which views it denies.