The summer issue of our newsletter, The FIRE Quarterly, is now available here. This edition focuses on highlighting FIRE’s recent cases at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis, Tarrant County College, Harvard University, and Lake Superior State University. We also provide you with a recap of the 2008 Campus Freedom Network Conference, when over 40 college students from across the country came to Philadelphia to learn about defending their rights on campus.
FIRE’s co-founder and chairman Harvey Silverglate provided this issue’s "From the Board of Directors" article and discussed that while FIRE has been successful "in winning an overwhelming number of individual clashes with the campus totalitarians," the culture of censorship on college campuses is much harder to change. He writes:
[T]he enemies of academic freedom and due process almost always cave in when FIRE exposes them, but they don’t really change their minds, nor do they deeply understand why their actions disserve higher education as well as liberty. This being so, we wonder how and when are we going to actually change these administrators’ (and all-too-many faculty members’) minds—thereby changing the culture.
The short answer is that we need to effect a radical transformation of the way college administrators see their roles.
FIRE’s achievements provide us with more opportunities to continue with our defense of and education about individual rights on campuses. For more on the continued successes and campaigns of FIRE, be sure to check out The FIRE Quarterly.
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