For the Media
August 18, 2005
FIRE believes deeply in Justice Louis Brandeis' famous maxim that "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." The organization is nonpartisan; its staff, Board of Directors, and Board of Advisors comprise individuals from across the political spectrum.
For media inquiries, please contact us at 215-717-3473 or at media@thefire.org.
What is FIRE?
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, is a non-profit educational foundation based in Philadelphia, PA. It was founded in 1999 by Alan Charles Kors, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvey A. Silverglate, an attorney in Boston. They created FIRE after co-authoring The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses in 1998 and subsequently receiving hundreds of pleas for help from victims of illiberal policies, double standards, intolerable violations of their rights, and intrusions upon private consciences on college campuses. FIRE's mission is to defend and sustain individual rights at America's increasingly repressive and partisan colleges and universities. These rights include:
- freedom of speech;
- legal equality;
- due process;
- religious liberty; and
- sanctity of conscience
Indeed, such rights are the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE protects the unprotected and educates the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them.
FIRE executes its mission in the following ways:
- Individual Rights Defense Program:
- FIRE directly defends individual students and professors, as well as campus groups, against violations of their rights;
- This program includes the Speech Codes Litigation Project, through which FIRE has coordinated six successful lawsuits against public universities' unlawful restrictions on free speech.
- Individual Rights Education Program:
- FIRE's Guides to Student Rights on Campus: FIRE publishes handbooks written by experts on due process, free speech, and other individual rights and makes them available free to students;
- Public Awareness Project:
- FIRE continually exposes campus abuses of civil liberties in the media and on our website, which includes our weblog, The Torch, and Spotlight: The Campus Freedom Resource, a comprehensive online guide to the state of liberty on individual college campuses. FIRE also reaches out to the public through videos and podcasts.
- Campus Freedom Network (CFN)
- FIRE's Campus Freedom Network is a loosely knit coalition of students and faculty members dedicated to advancing individual liberties on their campuses with the aid of grassroots support from FIRE. CFN members communicate with each other through online social networking and through the annual CFN conference, held in Philadelphia.
FIRE President Greg Lukianoff
Learn more about Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE): View Greg's biography, most recent press statements, and contributions to outside media outlets. More»