The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is a non-profit group founded in 1999 that focuses on protecting free speech rights on college campuses in the United States. Its goal is "to defend and sustain individual rights at America's colleges and universities," including the rights to "freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience".
Issues
One of FIRE's primary focuses is opposition to campus "speech codes". Another issue is opposition to campus "security fees" that some campuses impose on organizations hosting controversial or unpopular speakers on the theory that they should pay for extra security the colleges deem necessary due to the likelihood of demonstrations and disruption of the events. FIRE bases its opposition to such fees on the Supreme Court ruling in Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement; the Supreme Court stated that "speech cannot be financially burdened, any more than it can be punished or banned, simply because it might offend a hostile mob." The group also targets situations where students and faculty are adjudicated outside the bounds of due process afforded to them by Constitutional law or stated university policy.
University ratings
In April 2007, Jon B. Gould, an author and George Mason University faculty member, criticized FIRE's rating methods, claiming that FIRE had grossly exaggerated the prevalence of unconstitutional speech codes. As of January 2016, FIRE rated most of the eight universities in the Ivy League, "red"; one was rated "green", five were rated "red", and the final two were rated "yellow".
Leadership
FIRE is composed of professors, policy experts, and public intellectuals who span the political spectrum. FIRE was co-founded by Alan Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate, who were FIRE's co-directors until 2004. Kors served as FIRE's first president and chairperson. Its first executive director and, later, CEO, was Thor Halvorssen.
Cases
Public universities
FIRE joined with a number of other civil liberties groups in the case of Hosty v. Carter, involving suppression of a student newspaper at Governors State University in Illinois, and has been involved in a case at Arizona State University where it condemned the listing of a class as open only to Native American students. FIRE sparred with the University of New Hampshire in 2004 over its treatment of student Timothy Garneau, who was expelled from student housing after he wrote and distributed a flier joking that female classmates could lose the "freshman fifteen" by taking the stairs instead of the elevator. After FIRE publicly criticized the decision, Garneau was reinstated. He had been living in his car for three weeks. In May 2007Valdosta State University expelled T. Hayden Barnes, who had protested against the construction of two new parking garages on the campus which he saw as encouraging the use of private transportation. University president Ronald Zaccari misconstrued a caption of the proposed garages as the "Ronald Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage" as a threat to himself. With FIRE support, the expulsion was overturned and a court found VSU to have violated Barnes's due process rights. In 2008, college professor Kerry Laird was ordered by Temple College to remove the quote, "Gott ist tot", a famous quote from Nietzsche, from his office door. FIRE wrote a letter to the Temple administration hinting at the possibility of legal action. In October 2011, Catawba Valley Community College suspended a student for complaining on Facebook about a new policy that required students to sign up for a debit card to get their student ID and grant money. CVCC decided that the comments were "disturbing" and a "threat", and used that reasoning to suspend the student. FIRE took the side of the student. Charges were dropped in December 2011.
Private universities
FIRE has criticized Columbia University's sexual misconduct policy; according to FIRE, the policy "lack even the most minimal safeguards and fundamental principles of fairness". The controversy led to the resignation of Charlene Allen, Columbia's program coordinator for the Office of Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Education, whose policies were at the center of the controversy. Allen's resignation was considered in part due to FIRE's activism. FIRE criticized Brandeis University on both free speech and due process grounds in early 2008 over its treatment of veteran politics professor Donald Hindley. Provost Marty Krauss informed Hindley in October 2007 that comments he made in his Latin American politics class violated the school's anti-harassment policy. Krauss placed a monitor in Hindley's class and ordered him to attend racial sensitivity training. FIRE, along with Brandeis' own Committee on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities, has criticized Krauss for never explicitly telling Hindley what specific in-class comments constituted harassing speech and for not granting Hindley a process by which to appeal the decision. According to Brandeis' student press, Hindley is rumored to have used the epithet "wetback." An anonymous student-witness, quoted in the Brandeis Hoot, called Hindley's remarks "inappropriate." Other students praised Hindley's pedagogical approach as encouraging "students to face racist narratives head on" and that any disagreement "is a dispute for students and faculty to solve through rational dialogue, not one for the administration to settle in secret inquisitions."
