Nico Perrino
FIRE Staff Speaker
Nico Perrino is FIRE's executive vice president and the creator and host of FIRE’s So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast. Prior to his current role, he led FIRE's Communications department for nearly a decade, most recently as its senior vice president of communications.
Nico's writing has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Politico, The Boston Globe, and The Guardian, and he regularly appears on radio and TV to speak about free speech and other civil liberties issues. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Civil Libertarians: How a Generation of Lawyers, Writers, and Activists Created America’s Free Speech Century (BenBella).
As a documentarian, Nico was co-director and senior producer of Mighty Ira (2020), a feature-length film about the life and career of former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser. He also worked as a consultant on Can We Take a Joke? (2015) and The Coddling of the American Mind (2024).
Originally from Chicago, Nico now lives and works in the Washington, D.C., area.
Selected television appearances
- CNN’s This Morning (2025)
- CBS Evening News (2025)
- Glenn Greenwald’s System Update (2025)
- The Jim Acosta Show (2025)
- CNN’s The Lead (2025)
- CNN’s The Lead (2023)
- Zeteo’s Mehdi Unfiltered (2025)
Selected speeches
Selected podcast appearances
- The Reason Interview (2025)
- The Goldwater Institute (2025)
- Ron Paul Liberty Report (2025)
- Bankless (2024)
- What is Money? (2024)
- The Editors (National Review; 2022)
Selected writings
- California and other states are rushing to regulate AI. This is what they’re missing (Los Angeles Times, 2024)
- Colleges shouldn’t usher in a new era of speech codes (The Boston Globe, 2023)
- College campus hecklers, your disruptions don’t count as free speech (Los Angeles Times, 2023)
- Right-Wing Activist Christopher Rufo Became the One Thing He Claims to Hate (The Daily Beast, 2023)
- What happens when America’s future leaders reject the liberty on which it was founded? (Washington Examiner, 2023)
- Talking the First Amendment with Nico Perrino of FIRE (SPIN, 2023)
- Florida Gov. Rick Scott is right to stand up to 'vigilante censors' and fight for free speech USA Today, 2017)
- Why Even Nazis Deserve Free Speech (Politico, 2017)
Recent Writings
- Violence must never be a response to speech,
- This isn't just about Harvard,
- California and other states are rushing to regulate AI. This is what they’re missing,
- FIRE to Congress, university presidents: Don’t expand censorship. End it. ,
- What happens when America's future leaders reject the liberty on which it was founded?,
- In defunding Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, legislators force academic freedom back into the closet,
- No, a heckler’s veto is not ‘more speech’,
- Defending Free speech is a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it: SPIN magazine interviews Nico Perrino of FIRE,
- Free speech was under fire in 2022,
- Free speech culture, Elon Musk, and Twitter,
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