Why Would An Organization Dedicated to Free Speech Advertise So Much?
FIRE is not what it claims to be.
A couple of years ago, I got an odd email to my personal inbox. It came from someone wanting information about free speech issues related to the institution where I attended undergrad. It was strange, being asked about something that happened decades ago, and I was not the only alumni to receive this request. I read the email several times, only to realize that the inquirer was so interested in getting gossip that they did not even get the name of my institution correct. I attended a small liberal arts school in Iowa called Cornell College; their question was related to Cornell University.
It’s a common error, but it stood out to me. Why would an organization looking to defend free speech on college campuses make a mistake like that? I tucked the name of that group into my mental filing cabinet, hoping I’d never have to think about it again.
Fast forward to Spring 2023.
If you, like me, don’t watch television or don’t get out a whole lot, chances are still good that somewhere you’ve run into some interesting advertisement for a free speech defending group. I have seen the ads across YouTube, on billboards, and most recently, at a train depot. The group behind it goes by the name FIRE—the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Their advertising is eye-catching and it captures our zeitgeist in a way that even the most out-of-touch, “not political” people know by now: free speech is under attack.
The group launched a $3 million dollar campaign–the first in a series that is anticipated to total over $10 million by the end of the campaign–in April to get the word out about who they are and what they do.^
Kind of.
Once you peel back the layers of this so-called free speech organization, the truth is a lot more complicated and a lot more about playing into a particular narrative and agenda.
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Founded in 1999 by Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverstein as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, FIRE’s initial mission was to protect free speech on college campuses. They spent a lot of time and money drafting letters and showing up to institutions across the country to advocate for free speech. If an individual wanted to claim their freedoms were being taken away on campus, they could reach out to FIRE who would send in the support.
One of the online tools FIRE developed (and still maintains) is a database of campus free speech violations, as well as a red-yellow-green system of ranking the free speech situations in those institutions. There are several entries on Cornell University. Among the complaints is one related to the university’s requirement that faculty engage in diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) trainings and report on what they’ve learned for advancement in rank, title, and tenure. FIRE wrote the university, claiming such a requirement would trample on the “academic” and “conscious” freedom that faculty have. Being told to care about the realities of the world via some trainings was, apparently, so heinous an act that a private educational institution could demand of educators that it required protest. FIRE also contacted Cornell University this year following a resolution proposed by the student assembly which would require faculty to include trigger warnings on their syllabi. FIRE claimed this would send a chilling effect and not allow faculty members to teach the material they need to in their courses. This is, of course, patently false–trigger warnings do neither. Trigger warnings put the onus on students to decide where and how to engage in course material. They do not tell faculty what they can or cannot teach.
Cornell College has no entries in their database at all.
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FIRE changed their name in June 2022 to exchange “Education” for “Expression,” as they decided to expand beyond college campuses into the broader American landscape. It is interesting that their use of “expression” here mirrors that of PEN America, who are also defendants of free expression–something that is important to know because free expression differs from free speech. Free expression can be whatever they want it to mean, whereas free speech is specific, guided by the constitution and court cases throughout American history.^^
It should be of no surprise then that FIRE is far from a neutral organization, and it is also not an organization which is without political bias. Indeed, one of the reasons FIRE should raise alarms is that mimic–if not create–popular right-wing media rhetoric that emerges in response to actual book banning and censorship: but what about on college campuses?
In April 2022, Congressman Jamie Raskin held a three-hour briefing on Capitol Hill about censorship. The panelists included librarians, teenagers, parents, and author/activist Ruby Bridges. All of them presented both evidence and anecdotes about their experiences with having books removed or being persecuted for demanding truth in history. For expecting that all humans, regardless of race or gender or sexual identity, be treated equally and be able to access material on these topics at publicly-funded libraries, school and public. Rounding out the panel was conservative Jonathan W. Pidluzny, Vice President of Academic Affairs, American Council of Trustees and Alumni. The majority of Pudluzny’s time at the mic was spent talking about the ongoing persecution of conservatives on college campuses. Book bans and the legitimate chilling effect on public education emerging through bills being passed in several states weren’t real but were instead ways to obscure the true victims right now.^^^
“There is no epidemic of censorship, book banning, or viewpoint discrimination in K-12 education today. Parents, school board members, and state legislators are simply making good faith efforts to align public school curricula with the suitability concerns and priorities of the constituents served by local schools,” Pudluzny said, conveniently leaving off the laws which have in turn banned courses like AP Psychology from classrooms in Florida and made historically and scientifically factual textbooks and supplemental books from being accessible. “This contrasts sharply with what is occurring in higher education, where self censorship is endemic, viewpoint discrimination is the norm, and students and faculty are routinely targeted for investigation, including by school-sponsored bias response teams, for the political content of their speech.”
Apparently, conservatives are fearing for their lives when they’re told they can’t sit in their offices and spout Ben Shapiro’s talking points or when their right-wing agitators brought in as speakers are met with pushback from students and faculty exercising their own right to protest. Their default to self censorship is convenient, too, as self censorship has no paper trail to provide evidence.^^^^
FIRE is a dream organization for folks like Pudluzny and others like him, even as they expand their purpose beyond higher education. You’ll find the phrase “cancel culture” peppered throughout their publicity and website, once again parroting the popular right-wing victim screed.
Despite being founded by someone who had his start with the ACLU, FIRE’s goal is to put the ACLU to the fire and incinerate one of the few organizations calling the right out on their authoritarianism. The ACLU is far from perfect and has found itself in the conundrum of attempting to protect the rights of marginalized people while also supporting white nationalists.^^^^^
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“America needs a new nonpartisan defender of free speech that will advocate unapologetically for this fundamental human right in both the court of law and the court of public opinion,” says the president of FIRE in their press release about the group’s expanded mission.
Except, FIRE is not nonpartisan. And long-standing nonprofits like PEN or the ACLU apparently don’t do what FIRE’s new mission claims that only they can. Neither do dozens of other organizations on the ground who may not have the name recognition, the history, or–and here’s the important piece–the funding.
FIRE is funded by an interesting array of groups, and they’re not without their biases. These include:
The Bradley Foundation–a conservative group who has been involved with amping up school voucher programs (and thus destroying public education). Jane Mayer noted in her book Dark Money that the Bradley Foundation has also played a key role in moving toward changing election rules, making it harder for people to exercise their fundamental right as Americans: voting. One of the original members of the Bradley Foundation was one of the founding members of the John Birch Society.
The Sarah Scaife Foundation–a conservative group that puts money into conservative groups that work to change national policy. So somewhere, whether historically or now, FIRE was engaged with pushing for conservative policy at the national level.
The Charles Koch Foundation–surprise, the Koch brothers have helped give the group a boost, too. At this point, it’s likely more surprising they’re at the bottom of this list rather than at the top.
It should be noted that FIRE has done good work. You could read “good” here as work that supports the left if you want or you could read it as it is: defending free speech. Their list of cases has a little of everything, including being instrumental in ending the “Stop WOKE” act in Florida, to which New York Magazine also notes that FIRE is often engaged in conservative battles. But FIRE’s core, even as they expand beyond college campuses, continues to lean right.
“We need to remind older Americans that freedom of speech is still a value worth fighting for,” adds FIRE’s president. “[A]nd we need to teach younger Americans that everything from scientific progress, to artistic expression, to social justice, peace, and living authentic lives requires the staunch protection of freedom of speech for all.”
Their staff is about as white as you can imagine.
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Is FIRE going to be a danger or threat to free speech? I don’t know, and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. They’ve defended cases and helped bolster the rights of those who have truly had them challenged. But FIRE has also built their foundation on right-wing money and have given those same right-wingers talking points over a campus censorship crisis that does not exist.
What FIRE is presenting itself as, though, is disingenuous.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech. Your rights do not supersede the rights of others. You can legally scream fire in a theater, but if you cause harm for it, you’ll be prosecuted. You can quote Hitler in your organizational newsletter but you might not be able to rent a hotel banquet room or a private museum garden for an event. That’s the right of the entity to decide whether or not such a citation is out of alignment with their mission or beliefs; it’s not an infringement on your rights, as you were able to say precisely what you wanted to. If you don’t like that your employer, a private university, is going to make you learn how not to be a bigot in the classroom, you can say that, just as much as they have the right to say you’re not meeting job expectations because, well, you’re not.
A freedom of speech crisis is happening now. This is true. Books are being removed from shelves, queer people are being persecuted for being queer, public educators are being told what they can and cannot teach (while also being told their paychecks can only be used in certain ways^^^^^^), and “go woke, go broke” nonsense has upended lives across the country. Legislation is permitting educators to completely ignore student pronouns, trampling not only free speech but also that supposedly sacred notion of freedom of expression. There’s that word again.
No one is telling Professor Ben Shapiro that he is going to be sent to jail for his beliefs and his identity as a conservative straight white man is not being legislated–it’s being further codified as the standard.
FIRE is taking advantage of this time to get their brand out there and they’re doing so with a lot of money that those on the ground do not have nor have any hope of getting access to. Yet, despite their lofty goals and rhetoric, they are going to face the same challenges that ACLU does or that PEN does. They’re going to be defending cases which inflammatory hate speech has ruined an innocent person’s life while at the same time defending the rights of that now-harmed innocent person to defend the inclusion of a book about the Tulsa Massacre in their public library.
The first should–and does–have consequences.
The second bears them in the name of “free speech.”
Notes:
^There is no information about where all of this advertising money came from. The organization is not required to disclose that, and their annual report from last year does not thank donors nor disclose that information. We know the funders named because those funders have disclosed connection in the past. You can read their press releases about their hot dog promo event in Chicago last month, their hot chicken promo event in Nashville last month, and their $3 million campaign in Philadelphia this spring.
^^Interestingly, FIRE and PEN have had their own contentious history with one another.
^^^It should not be surprising that he’s written a whole paper about how it is gender ideology ruining today’s kids and lays out the same boring and bigoted nonsense about trans people in high school sports.
^^^^Self censorship is a reality. But the fact is has no paper trail is precisely why we have no idea how bad book banning is right now. It is right-wing nationalists inciting self-censorship, not experiencing it.
^^^^^This sort of abutting of rights should be a reminder of who wrote the Bill of Rights and their place on society at the time. They weren’t interested in the rights of anyone other than their straight, cisgender, able bodied, white, male selves (some of whom enjoyed owning other human beings). Any time a right infringes on another right is a reminder that intersectionality, that inclusivity, and that thinking beyond the bounds of one’s own self was never part of this country’s foundation. That is why far right nationalists so ardently defend “their” rights and get off to the Constitution as written.
^^^^^^I’ve yet to see anyone write about the states which have implemented or are planning to implement the “paycheck protection act” for public educators. Anticipate seeing that here in the future–it’s a nice-sounding law that is a covert means of defunding and destroying teacher unions.
+ I do wonder why we haven’t seen FIRE showing up to school board and library board meetings. They’ve not been a defendant yet on any of the ongoing litigation to stop dangerous legislation nor in schools which are being sued for censorship. If they care so deeply about expanding their mission, it’d be nice to see them do this and to advertise their success in doing so. A contextless billboard at the train station in a community doesn’t tell that community why they should care–especially if their schools and libraries are removing books because of the crisis actors.
+ Last note: I have several respected colleagues who work for PEN and their work is tremendous. Unfortunately, some of PEN’s leadership has made disappointing statements or pushed narratives that run counter to protecting intellectual freedom and freedom of speech–and that is because they are about expression.