FREE SPEECH: If it's protected, we'll defend it. No apologies.

FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley delivered this address at the annual FIRE Gala on April 18, 2023.

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Thank you so much, Kmele, and thank you so much, everyone, for celebrating with us tonight. It’s an honor, and we’re thrilled to have you here. What a crowd! My people! 

I gotta say: This is surreal for me. I first joined FIRE as a legal intern way back in the summer of 2004, right after my first year of law school. I think I was employee number ten. You could say I got in on the ground floor, but I was working out of a basement apartment across the river in Brooklyn.

And if I could have told myself back then that nearly two decades later, in the year 2023, I’d be overseeing a legal shop fresh off securing preliminary injunctions in California, Florida, and New York… standing up here in a tuxedo in front of heroes like Floyd Abrams, Nadine Strossen, and my new coworker Bob Corn-Revere… at a fancy event celebrating FIRE’s expansion beyond campus…  with Killer Mike on deck to give the keynote? 

I’d say wow, future self! That sounds like FIRE fan fiction! Holy moly!

Maybe I should ask you, future self, what the hell happened to the country between 2004 and 2023 to make the demand for FIRE’s work so intense, but I guess I’ll find out? So I’ll just say it sounds like a hell of a party. 

And these days, I love parties. Because whenever I meet folks — and I mean civilians, not First Amendment nerds like all of us here tonight — whenever I meet regular people, and they ask me what I do, I tell them I’m the legal director of a First Amendment nonprofit. 

Right away, their eyes open a little wider, they kinda cock their head to the side a little bit, and they say:  “Oh yeah?” 

And I say listen, here’s the deal: We just met. I don’t know what your politics are. I don’t know who you voted for. I don’t know where you’ve been deployed during the culture wars.  

And frankly, I don’t need to know. 

Because no matter what your commitments are — I mean no matter what you believe in — I can tell you about five FIRE cases that will make you want to shake my hand and thank me for fighting righteous fights in honor of all that’s good and true in these United States.

Of course, First Amendment being what it is, I can also tell you about five cases that will make you think I’m the devil incarnate, taking the nation straight to hell in a handbasket. 

But that’s the job! That’s what it means to do this work right. 

And so if, after all that, this poor person I’ve just met still wants to talk to me, hey now! I know I’ve found one of us. Time to ask for a donation, baby! 

***

Because you all know FIRE: We’ll defend everyone. And that means everyone. 

Since 1999, we’ve played by one rule: If it’s protected, we’ll defend it. No apologies. No throat-clearing. 

It’s not always easy — you know, people say the darndest things — but it’s always interesting. And we always stand on principle. FIRE’s case archives speak for themselves. Like third grade math students, we show our work. 

Staring down expulsion from your grad school for Twitter posts about a Cardi B song? Call FIRE.

College president personally ordered your pro-life, anti-communist flyers taken down? Call FIRE.

Administration about to take over your 129-year-old, independent student newspaper? Call FIRE.

Suspended from your new job for criticizing the President’s Supreme Court nominee? Help me out: Call FIRE.

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And now we’re applying the lessons we’ve learned over 20 years of defending free speech on campus to the whole country. It’s a new era.

Not a moment too soon, because folks, it’s crazy out there. We are busy. We’re trying to put ourselves out of business, but business is booming. 

We’re fighting for the First Amendment rights of citizens of Eastpointe, Michigan who were told to sit down and shut up by their very own mayor. 

We’re fighting for academic freedom in Florida and free speech online right here in New York. 

We’re fighting for the freedom to read in Texas and Virginia and the freedom to gather signatures in a public park in Pennsylvania. 

And if you or someone you love is ever arrested for holding up a “God Bless Homeless Vets” sign in front of City Hall down in Alpharetta, Georgia, please give us a call. We’ve got your back. 

Since our expansion, I’ve learned that campus controversies — whether last-minute cancellations of charity drag shows in West Texas or shoutdowns of Article III judges in Palo Alto — well, they serve as pretty good preparation for the new fights we’re taking on today.

And good thing. Because right now, we have our work cut out for us. 

And I don’t just mean FIRE. I mean all of us across the country who still believe in the power of free expression; who still believe the answer to speech you don’t like is more speech, not censorship or violence; who still believe in the moral imperative in speaking out, even when it’s lonely, because words change the world; who still believe that John Milton was on to something: 

“Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”

That’s why at FIRE, we stick to our rule: If it’s protected, we defend it.

Speaking personally, my dream is for every American to see themselves in a FIRE case. 

No matter their politics, their color, their faith, their gender, their beliefs, their lived experience, or how much money they have, I want folks to see someone we’ve defended and say to themselves, “Hey, that person is a lot like me. Thank goodness for free speech. Thank goodness for FIRE.” 

When all of us feel confident in the First Amendment’s protection, we’ll come together to make sure free speech is once again the paramount American value, beyond party or faction. 

With your help, I know we can do it. We’re going to keep winning. 

And for all the victories FIRE has won in defense of freedom of expression, and all those still to come, I want to thank one person in particular: Harvey Silverglate. Folks, without Harvey, we wouldn’t be here tonight. Harvey, please stand up so we can give you a very well-earned round of applause. 

Together with Professor Alan Charles Kors, Harvey founded FIRE in 1999 after the publication of The Shadow University. My copy has a place of honor on my bookshelves at home, and I imagine some of you can relate. 

Harvey’s steadfast commitment to justice has been a model for FIRE’s work, but he’s been a principled defender of civil liberties his entire career. They only gave me ten minutes up here, but even if they’d given me an hour, I’d still be hard-pressed to convey the breadth and depth of Harvey’s work in defense of freedom. So I’ll simply say that Harvey’s the most principled person you’ll ever meet. Certainly he’s the most principled person I’ve ever met. (Sorry, mom.) 

If you’ve ever talked to Harvey for more than five minutes, you know he has that classic civil libertarian disposition: empathetic enough to give a damn, pessimistic enough to stay alert at all times, optimistic enough to take on impossible fights, and – thankfully, for all of us – smart enough to win them. He is an inspiration. He is FIRE’s lodestar. 

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As a fitting tribute to Harvey, and to recognize those who exemplify his commitment to the power of freedom of expression for all, it is my distinct honor to announce the recipients of the first Harvey A. Silverglate Award: Nicholas and Erika Christakis. 

Nicholas and Erika are lifelong scholars and educators with a deep understanding of the vital importance of free speech for human flourishing. 

A physician and sociologist, Nicholas has written compellingly about the universality of certain aspects of human society, a kind of evolutionary altruism – for example, the “innate propensity for friendship in humans,” movingly described in his 2019 book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. 

A scholar of social networks, Nicholas works toward a more robust understanding of our common humanity and “the fundamental good that lies within us.” That fundamental good has been advanced and empowered by human beings talking to each other. As Nicholas makes clear, teaching, building, befriending, and ultimately surviving have all depended on unfettered communication, and still do today.  

Erika – an expert on early childhood development, and a licensed preschool director – has likewise explored the essentiality of dialogue – for kids. In her 2017 book The Importance of Being Little: What Young Children Really Need from Grownups, Erika makes a powerful case for the importance of, as she puts it, an “open style of communication,” marked by observation, discussion, contextualizing, child-driven creativity and free-range play. “Deep human connection” is the point – and that connection relies on speech. 

The same is true for adults, and perhaps particularly young adults, as both Erika and Nicholas know well. 

To ensure difficult conversations can still happen on campus, Erika has argued that universities must “declare that ideas and feelings aren’t interchangeable.” “Without more explicit commitment to this principle,” Erika writes, “students are denied an essential condition for intellectual and moral growth: the ability to practice, and sometimes fail at, the art of thinking out loud.” 

To that end, Nicholas has called on his fellow faculty to “step up and show students a way forward: to learn to be harder on the problems we face in our society, but easier on each other.” 

Right on. Or as Harvey would say: Onward!

Folks, please welcome the recipients of the Harvey A. Silverglate Award: Nicholas and Erika Christakis.