FIRE’s 2017–18 annual report now available!
FIRE is pleased to announce that our 2017–18 annual report is now available online.
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WATCH LIVE on Tuesday: ESPN’s Jay Bilas and NCAA’s Oliver Luck Debate Paying College Athletes in First FIRE Debate
The first event in our FIRE Debates series will stream here on FIRE’s website live from Texas A&M University’s Rudder Theatre starting at 7 p.m. CDT on October 20.
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Category: blog
College Student Who Wrote Lusty Essay About Teacher Loses Free Speech Lawsuit
ABC News
A Michigan college student who was suspended for writing an essay called “Hot For Teacher” had no First Amendment right to express his sexual attraction to his creative writing professor, a federal judge ruled.
The lawsuit filed by the student, Joseph Corlett, 57, against Oakland University was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan on Tuesday.
Duggan said Corlett’s “expressions of lust” for his professor, Pamela Mitzelfeld, and “descriptions of her physical appearance are not entitled under First Amendment protection.”
“When Plaintiff referred to his Oakland University English professor as ‘stacked’ and graphically compared her to a sitcom character he [...] » Read More
Category: blog, Media Highlights Schools: Oakland University
OK to be ‘annoyed’ in Arkansas: University backtracks on free speech restrictions
by Bob Kellogg
OneNewsNow
The University of Central Arkansas did a quick about face on its speech code after an academic watchdog group pointed out it was unconstitutional.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, contacted the University of Central Arkansas about its policy which stated students could be punished for “annoying” speech.
“Whenever policy prohibits annoying another person and actually uses the word ‘annoying,’ that is unbelievably subjective,” explains Azhar Majeed, director of Legal and Public Advocacy at FIRE.
Such policies put “protected speech at risk of punishment,” he adds.
He says the UCA policy even tried to prevent certain speech [...] » Read More
Category: blog, Media Highlights Schools: University of Central Arkansas
Federal Campus Sexual Harassment Policy Draws Free Speech Concerns
The Huffington Post
The federal government is facing pressure from civil-liberties advocates to back down from a policy meant to curb sexual harassment at colleges and universities — just as sexual-assault survivors demanded in a protest this week that the Education Department do more to punish colleges that fail to address campus assaults.
A coalition of free-speech advocates, led by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), wrote an open letter to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Justice Tuesday calling for officials to retract a “blueprint” for campus sexual harassment [...] » Read More
Category: blog, Media Highlights
Enforcement for the Enforcers
Inside Higher Ed
WASHINGTON – Annie Clark, a recent college graduate whose activism has helped spur an unprecedented movement to expose sexual assault on college campuses, got a pretty unforgettable present for her birthday this year.
There were only a few dozen students rallying alongside Clark outside the U.S. Education Department here on Monday, but their shouts – which, for the first time in a long time, felt celebratory – were loud enough to lure Under Secretary Martha Kanter from the department’s concrete fortress.
“I’ll deliver these to Secretary [Arne] Duncan right away,” Kanter said as she accepted box after [...] » Read More
Category: blog, Media Highlights
From FIRE, more on that Office of Civil Rights ‘blueprint’
by Walter Olson
Overlawyered
At the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Greg Lukianoff offers “Four Key Points About Free Speech and the Feds’ ‘Blueprint’“. He notes that overbroad notions of harassment have been the key driver of university speech codes and disciplinary action against dissenting and unpopular speakers, that DoJ and ED lack credibility in their new claim that the rules are only meant to encourage reporting as distinct from discipline, and that the implications go far beyond sexually oriented speech or flirtation to include wide swaths of controversial speech having nothing to do with sex. More: “OCR Descends [...] » Read More
Category: blog, Media Highlights
The Crimson Tide Rolls: Right Over Pro-Choice Students’ Rights
PolicyMic
Here’s a bit of non-news for you: The debate over abortion rights isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. This is doubly true in the college community. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has long recognized the importance of keeping public universities fully open to debate and discussion, finding the campus to be “peculiarly the ‘marketplace of ideas’” in 1972’s unanimous decision inHealy v. James. The University of Alabama seems to have missed this memo, however, given itsrecent treatment of a pro-choice student group.
Rewind to April 9 of this year, when a UA student group, the Alabama Alliance for [...] » Read More
Category: blog, FIRE Staff, Media Highlights Schools: University of Alabama
University of Alabama doesn’t respond to calls for policy revision following abortion debate
AL.com
TUSCALOOSA, Alabama — The University of Alabama appears to have no plans to modify its contentious grounds use policy following a public letter admonishing UA’s protection of students’ First Amendment rights and calling for change.
On July 1, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) posted a letter to their website addressed to UA President Judy Bonner on behalf of an abortion rights student group who say police ordered them to stop distributing flyers on campus during the spring semester.
The letter, originally sent in late May, requested comment from Bonner by mid-June. As of Friday, FIRE has received no response from [...] » Read More
Category: blog, Media Highlights Schools: University of Alabama
University reverses speech code following report from watchdog group calling it unconstitutional
by Oliver Darcy
Campus Reform
The University of Central Arkansas (UCA) reversed part of its speech code on Wednesday after an academic watchdog group said a portion of it was unconstitutional earlier that day.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) took issue with the part of UCA’s list of “offenses subject to disciplinary action” which said students could face punishment for “annoying” another person on campus. In a blog post, FIRE contended such speech is constitutionally protected by the First Amendment.
Katie Henry, interim general counsel at UCA, agreed and said the school will remove the language.
“[T]he administration has reviewed the [...] » Read More
Category: blog, Media Highlights Schools: University of Central Arkansas