One of the most important civil rights organizations in the US today is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Their president, Greg Lukianoff, was earlier today testifying before Congress about suppression of students' free speech rights on college campuses across the US. His full testimony is here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/58e ... f7e0e6e0ba
And here's an excerpt:
My organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or “FIRE,” was founded in 1999 to defend free speech, academic freedom, and due process on America’s college campuses. FIRE is a principled, nonpartisan nonprofit and this is reflected in both our staff and the cases we take. For example, our litigation project has recently defended the right of students to protest animal cruelty, and advocate for pot legalization, Second Amendment rights, and more.
Just last week, we filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles Pierce College in California, which told a student that if he wanted to engage in free speech activities, he had to limit himself to a tiny “free speech zone.” The zone comprised only .003% of the campus. Put another way, if Pierce College were the size of a tennis court, free speech would be restricted to an area the size of a cell phone.
Since our founding in 1999, FIRE has fought “free speech zones”—efforts by administrators to quarantine freedom of speech to tiny areas. And we’ve defeated many of them, including Texas Tech’s infamous “free speech gazebo,” the University of Hawaii at Hilo’s “free speech swamp,” and this sad little one at Blinn College, which was divided into even smaller halves by a bulletin board. Many institutions even require advance permission for students to speak inside the zones: For example, the University of Cincinnati asked for 10 working days’ notice.
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