Press Releases

Western Illinois University's free speech zone was declared dead 16 years ago — but it still lives on in university speech codes. Read more

When Mike Brown polled fellow students about legalizing marijuana, he hoped to spark a dialogue on civil liberties. Instead, he was deprived of his own. Read more

Alcorn State revised speech policies that conflict with the First Amendment, becoming the fifth institution in Mississippi to earn FIRE's highest rating. Read more

The New School has cleared a professor of charges of racial discrimination for quoting literary icon James Baldwin during a classroom discussion. Read more

Author James Baldwin wrote that Americans need to conduct an “unflinching assessment of the record” in reckoning with the nation’s racial past. But when a professor used Baldwin’s writing to do just that, her university launched a racial discrimination investigation against her. Read more

A professor at AUC has fled Egypt after a fight to defend his academic freedom rights and a run-in with Egyptian security forces. Read more

FIRE is relaunching its Legal Network, calling on attorneys across the country to join the fight for student and faculty rights. Read more

Intrepid student reporters regularly use open records laws to request information from public colleges. But in a bizarre reversal, Southwestern College in California is trying to use the law to demand its student newspaper turn over videos taken at a student government meeting. Read more

Can Doane University faculty teach without fear? No comment. That was Doane’s troubling response to a letter of concern from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the National Coalition Against Censorship. FIRE and NCAC sent a joint letter to Doane last month after its administration punished a faculty librarian for “discriminatory harassment” due to her use of archival photos from the university’s own archives. FIRE and NCAC asked the school to clarify whether it actually honors the strong promises of academic freedom it makes to faculty. Read more

FIRE's analysis found that the Rutgers policy defunding the newspaper is unconstitutional in at least four ways. Read more