FIRE’s Expanded Mission

FIRE's new billboards:

FIRE is now the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, reflecting its newly expanded mission. Defending free speech in schools is still critically important, but the new mission has been expanded.

June 8, 2022 Statement by Greg Lukianoff, FIRE's President and CEO:

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Educationbecomes the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

America’s leading defender of free speech, due process, and academic freedom in higher education is expanding its free speech mission beyond campus. The $75 million expansion initiative will focus on three main areas of programming: litigation, public education, and research.

“America needs a new nonpartisan defender of free speech that will advocate unapologetically for this fundamental human right in both the court of law and the court of public opinion,” said FIRE President & CEO Greg Lukianoff. “FIRE has a proven track record of defeating censorship on campus. We are excited to now bring that same tireless advocacy to fighting censorship off campus.”

Continue ReadingFIRE’s Expanded Mission

Gettysburg Address and Lincoln Bust Woke-Washed at Cornell University

A Cornell University Library has removed a display containing a copy of the Gettysburg Address and a bust of Abraham Lincoln from its library based "on a complaint."

A bust of President Abraham Lincoln and a plaque of the Gettysburg address have been removed from a Cornell University library.

"Someone complained, and it was gone," Cornell biology professor Randy Wayne told the College Fix of the matter.

The bust of Lincoln and the bronzed plaque of the former president’s historic 1863 address had been in the Kroch Library, where the university’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections is located, since 2013.

Continue ReadingGettysburg Address and Lincoln Bust Woke-Washed at Cornell University

The News Behind the News

Michael Tracy shows us one of the many ways that American "news" is contrived and controlled. This episode from the NATO summit challenges deeply embedded narratives, such as: A) War against Russia Good, Negotiated Settlement Bad, and B) Biden Good, Erdogan Bad. The world is nuanced, yet the "news" is not interested in chasing down nuance when preordained narratives are at stake.

More on the Biden WH controlling the free flow of information:

Continue ReadingThe News Behind the News

Camille Paglia on Transgender

Camille Paglia (2017):

It is certainly ironic how liberals who posture as defenders of science when it comes to global warming (a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence) flee all reference to biology when it comes to gender. Biology has been programmatically excluded from women’s studies and gender studies programs for almost 50 years now. Thus very few current gender studies professors and theorists, here and abroad, are intellectually or scientifically prepared to teach their subjects.

The cold biological truth is that sex changes are impossible. Every single cell of the human body remains coded with one’s birth gender for life. Intersex ambiguities can occur, but they are developmental anomalies that represent a tiny proportion of all human births.

In a democracy, everyone, no matter how nonconformist or eccentric, should be free from harassment and abuse. But at the same time, no one deserves special rights, protections, or privileges on the basis of their eccentricity. The categories “trans-man” and “trans-woman” are highly accurate and deserving of respect. But like Germaine Greer and Sheila Jeffreys, I reject state-sponsored coercion to call someone a “woman” or a “man” simply on the basis of his or her subjective feeling about it. We may well take the path of good will and defer to courtesy on such occasions, but it is our choice alone.

Continue ReadingCamille Paglia on Transgender