I respect FIRE’s legal advocacy but reporters really need to stop using FIRE’s rankings unless you truly believe that campus speech is most free in southern states that have banned ideas and concepts from being taught in the classroom
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I like how the response to them going mask off now that Trump is in office is to continue insisting they have a very friendly face and you should still trust them
Their lawyering, I think he means.
But most non-lawyers are going to think that means publicly advocating for ideas
Which their public statements are crap that is used to justify Republican censorship as revenge for alleged left wing censorship
FIRE’s legal team represents a lot of leftists persecuted by administration. I have a list of criticisms of the org that’s longer than my arm, but it’s not just conservative speech that their legal team defends.
No doubt that's true, but the damage they do significantly if not wholly counteracts the good that comes from the legal advocacy. It would be better if FIRE was replaced by an organization truly committed to academic freedom, which to me means we ought not complement them at all. They're a problem!
FIRE is a good example of how apolitical free speech advocacy is anything but. You can have an actually liberal society or you can support Nazis advocating their ideology. We get one or the other.
While there are campus variations because Georgia public colleges operate under system policies, having Georgia Tech so high and no other GA school makes little sense. And no, Tech has many, many issues with speech
As the article below explains, their main criterion seem to be whether a university has or hasn't silenced Gaza protesters. (Note that the U. of Texas is near the bottom on the list, alongside Harvard & Penn.)
It's quite a stretch to claim Southern colleges somehow support book-banning, however.
I got my masters at Ole Miss last year, ranked 20th, where free speech meant a crowd of 500 frat boys could attack a pro-Palestinean protest with racial slurs, rape threats, and projectiles. For what it’s worth, the racial slurs were all over the place: anti black, anti Arab, anti jewish.
I’m at top-ranked UVA, and the number of professors who get their personal text messages FOIAd or are falsely accused of antisemitism by people in a conservative org founded by a guy on the university’s Board of Visitors is concerning to say the least. Our speech could be freer, please and thank you
University of Virginia took a guy that was a tenured prof that hired me for a job just to try to make me his wife... & he was already married & living with her when he was fired from VCU. Friend sent them University report showcasing all he did in that, though covered up his stolen funds. Fck them.
It’s truly hilarious that ECU is on there since we are one of the most conservative UNC schools when it comes to free speech and adhering to the whims of our Board of Governors
As someone who is a prof at ECU who has a 9 am meeting to decide what words to use instead of “women’s rights” and “culture” in our course descriptions, you are more correct than you know.
Your assessment aligns with the first impressions I had of FIRE. I’ve gone back and forth on my thoughts about them based on their legal work; but, the general trend has been toward a loss of credibility.
While I am personally aghast that UVA sits atop the FIRE list of "free speech universities", I've successfully used it to argue against MAGA folks. They want to jeer at you being a professor, but get all tongue-tied when you bring this up. They know the FIRE metrics are BS, but can't admit it.
To be fair, in January when someone wrote the N word in the snow in front of a Black students apartment #11 Auburn University didn’t do anything about it, despite there being cameras on the buildings. That seems like “protecting” free speech.
FIRE does not have as its goal free speech. It has as its goal, as does JD Vance, the ability of racists and misogynists and wealthy to use speech as a weapon of oppression. If we can't repress hate it will manifest in institutions, like now.
My alma mater and hometown as well. Sad because the university does bring a beautiful diversity to an otherwise lily-white area, yet can't seem to stop stepping on their own toes to appease loud bigots.
Took my kids to Clemson over Thanksgiving. Definitely pointed out to them who John C. Calhoun was when I saw they preserved his house there. Thank you to all the bigots in S.C. for giving my kids a teachable moment on the relevance of history to the modern day.
They also brought in state troopers to forcibly disperse a peaceful gathering last April because *checks notes* the campus chief of police found umbrellas to be threatening. A bastion of free speech, UVA is not.
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https://thehoya.com/opinion/viewpoint-lets-be-realistic-about-free-speech-on-campus/
But most non-lawyers are going to think that means publicly advocating for ideas
Which their public statements are crap that is used to justify Republican censorship as revenge for alleged left wing censorship
It's quite a stretch to claim Southern colleges somehow support book-banning, however.
😮💨
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-desantis-attack-on-campus-speech?utm_source=publication-search
UF Alumni.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/12/09/nih-nominee-might-base-funding-campus-academic-freedom
cmon now