In the ongoing fight against campus speech codes, I have both good news and bad news. The good news is there has been a notable drop in the percentage of colleges that have speech codes on the books. The bad news is over 70% of surveyed colleges and universities still...

I was working on an update to my last post on the First Amendment shenanigans going on at Southwestern College in California, but I realized I could not do a better job than my colleague Peter Bonilla has done. So, enjoy Peter's blog originally posted on The Torch...

Today my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), is proud to join a broad coalition criticizing Yale University's decision to censor the Muhammad cartoons from a book about the cartoons. The statement is included in Duke University Professor Gary Hull's new book Muhammad: The "Banned...

If speaking your mind about issues facing the college where you teach--or even just joining a group of students doing the same--sounds to you like a reasonable thing for a professor to do, then you might want to stay away from Southwestern College in California.

That's...

Today, as part of a national ad campaign, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education placed a half-page ad in Michigan State University's student newspaper criticizing the university's absurdly overbroad spam policy:

The ad refers to the case of

Yesterday I announced a national ad campaign by my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, calling out colleges across the country that have consistently and unapologetically stood by actions that violated the free speech rights of their students or faculty. At the same time, we placed...

Today, my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education launched an extensive national advertising campaign highlighting five colleges that have unapologetically punished students and faculty for what should be clearly protected speech. The ad below appeared today directly adjacent to U.S. News & World...

Today the good folks over at the Law Librarian Blog (LLB) picked up on the recent kerfuffle surrounding a student-authored case comment that appeared in the April issue of the Harvard Law Review. The HLR comment -- published unsigned, per the journal's policy -- strongly criticized the United...

Today, my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), released a new video featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist Dave Barry. In the video, Dave discusses the importance of freedom of expression, the state of free speech on college campuses, and the culture of censorship. He...

Jay Mathews of The Washington Post has a great column on the Stanford University Teacher Education Program's (STEP's) shameful treatment of a dissenting student blogger, Michele Kerr.

Michele's Kerr's strange odyssey began shortly after she was admitted to STEP in 2008, when Kerr attended an open...

Since late April I have been following the case of Professor William I. Robinson at UCSB, who became the subject of an official university investigation after sending the students in his Sociology of Globalization class an e-mail comparing the Nazi treatment of Jews with Israel's actions towards Palestinians. The...

Back in May, I reported on the case of William I. Robinson, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara who is being investigated for writing his students an e-mail comparing the Nazi treatment of Jews with Israel's actions towards Palestinians. At that point the investigation seemed somewhat...

Back in March, I uncovered that members of the Oklahoma state legislature had launched an investigation of a March 6 speech at the University of Oklahoma by noted evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. The investigation was preceded by an attempt by another Oklahoma legislator to pass two bills condemning...

Academic freedom is once again in the news, this time because a professor at UC Santa Barbara is being investigated for sending his students an anti-Israel e-mail blast.

At the middle of the controversy is sociology professor William I. Robinson, a self-proclaimed "scholar-activist," who sent an...

Two weeks ago, I was working as a staff member at a Buddhist retreat in New York City. On the way to lunch, I was discussing with our instructor for the weekend the passions and anger often ignited when fighting for free speech on campus. He was surprised to...

There are a whole host of little lessons one learns when working in First Amendment law: What is vulgar to one person might be poetic to another, occasional offense is a small price to pay for a pluralistic democracy, without a free press there can be no meaningful democratic process,...

The week is not quite over, and it's already been a lousy one for free speech on America's campuses. Yesterday, angry students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst were caught on video stealing a conservative student newspaper, while a police officer stood by and not only watched, but excused the...

On Friday, I posted about the revelation that members of the Oklahoma Legislature are investigating the March 6th speech given by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins at the University of Oklahoma. This investigation came after a state representative tried to pass two resolutions condemning Dawkins and evolution. This morning...

Well, it's official: Oklahoma's state legislature is investigating the University of Oklahoma for hosting a speech by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

As I noted in a post over the weekend at Dawkins' website, the legislature first considered two resolutions condemning both Dawkins and the theory of evolution...

I spent most of the summer of 1996 on my brother's couch in Long Beach, California. I had just graduated from college and was discovering that it's extremely difficult to find a job in the greater L.A. area without a car. I remember watching the evening news one night: four...