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…
BY HANK REICHMAN The headline on Inside Higher Ed was provocative, if not downright inflammatory: “AAUP vs. FIRE.” But rather than the knockdown drag-out contest between two national organizations celebrated for their defense of intellectual freedom implied by the headline, the article that followed offered something much more modest. The AAUP chapter at the University…
BY KELLI PYRON ALVAREZ In June, a colleague who did not attend my University of Oklahoma workshop “Anti-Racist Rhetoric & Pedagogies” decided to download the video and send it to off-campus parties. I cannot speak to his intent, but the result was that several organizations, including FIRE, misinterpreted and misconstrued the goal and purpose of…
BY MICHAEL GIVEL At many universities across the United States, a modern addition to central administrations has been some type of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program or office. At the University of Oklahoma (OU), where I am a professor of political science, our DEI program is known as the Office of Diversity, Equity,…
At the end of an article of his published yesterday in The New York Times, Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) says: Students can’t learn how to navigate democracy and engage with their fellow citizens if they are forced to think twice before they speak their mind. Well… actually they can, and…