Talk:Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

First Amendment
You realize that all of those Supreme Court cases you cited relate to the rights of minors in grade and high schools, right? - Smerdis of Tlön, for the defense. 19:02, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * FIRE is also opposed to some anti-bullying codes in high schools, so my choice of cases is entirely relevant. Wykked Wytch (talk) 15:57, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * You are in favour of limitations on non-threatening speech? FIRE has defended the rights of leftists and conservatives equally, and is really, just in favour of the right to think freely. Remember that time when the University of Georgia censored pro-life students with threats of suspension and expulsion? Are you in favour of that kind of control over the thoughts of students? брэндэн (talk) 06:42, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Someone thinks bullying is both non-threatening and limited to speech? One of the most common forms of bullying involves threats or actually physically attacking someone. User:PsychoGecko 9:29, 21 November 017 (UTC).

"conservative agenda"
They take cases on behalf of conservative causes, because it is the conservative causes that are often being marginalized on grounds of "offense". They have also taken liberal causes, on the rarer occasion it is a liberal cause being silenced. брэндэн (talk) 20:54, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * So you admit that they are a conservative group? Typhoon (talk) 21:00, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * They have conservative backers, which is unsurprising. However, they take on liberal cases with just the same vigour, so, I don't see how they as a group are part of a "conservative agenda". Furthermore, the number of conservative causes they back makes sense - statistics show an overwhelming number of students on campus are liberal, and university policies tend to reflect those progressive attitudes, marginalizing conservative viewpoints. брэндэн (talk) 21:04, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, you went and tried to remove the info on their conservative backers with your revert. If you have a problem with me using the phrase "conservative agenda" then edit that part, and not the rest that is in no way controversial. Typhoon (talk) 21:12, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * They are against any kind of anti-sexual harassment or anti-bullying rules whatsoever. That's what they give schools a "Red" rating for, meaning that they're horrible about free speech. Meanwhile, their religious liberty cases are chock full of defending groups who limited membership based on religious views. And those tend to be ones well after the 2004 NAACP thing, as well as after the 2007 article about how FIRE became increasingly ideological. Plus, their list of Disinvitations has a bit of spin in it. Any protest against a speaker is enough to get someone on that list, and at least a couple of them involve speakers who were disinvited by the Right but it was listed as N/A instead. But perhaps I'm just reading into it when a college of Evangelicals doesn't want Mormon Mitt Romney speaking at their college because he's the wrong religion, or when Michael Moore's disinvited because he was supporting Democrat politicians. By the way, it also includes protests that come from off-campus groups, which seems like an odd thing to include in a list about preventing colleges from cracking down on student free speech rights. Even stranger than that is how they count student protests as enough to get someone on a disinvitation list, even though the students are utilizing their right to free speech. So I guess the ideal situation for this group of Free Speech advocates is if students didn't use their right to free speech? Just odd how they classify that in such a way as to make the exercise of free speech into a negative if it's aimed at someone like Jordan Peterson or Milo Yiannopoulos. As it stands, there's already a group that focuses on defending the First Amendment for people on either side of the political aisle at colleges and schools, and FIRE chose to be a separate entity that defends people restricting group membership by religious affiliation while painting protest as a negative. User:PsychoGecko, 8:31:09 and 3/4, November 2017 (UTC)

The wingnuts are deeply aggrieved
Patrick Popehat got the wingnuts and Gamergaters roused. Can we fact-check, polish up and extend this one? - David Gerard (talk) 19:32, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't really see why we need to bother; no matter what we do with it, Clark and Patrick (and probably Ken) will still poo-poo it because of fan-boyism. --Castaigne (talk) 23:40, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Because it'd be nice to have an obviously good article when idiots like that go off at it - David Gerard (talk) 08:25, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey, sugartits...
'' Because apparently some asshole shouting "Hey, sugartits!" at a female classmate is just as worthy of First Amendment protection as students peacefully protesting their college's choice of commencement speaker.'' Actually, the point of First Amendment law is to keep the power to keep that kind of value judgment out of the hands of officialdom at every level. (And let's not confuse First Amendment law with the broader topic of freedom of speech, either.) - Smerdis of Tlön, A ⇒ ¬A. 00:37, 27 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Exactly correct on all counts. The question isn't whether it's desirable, ethical, or socially worthy to say stupid or offensive things; the question is whether it's acceptable for the government to judge the desirability, ethical nature, or social worthiness of speech based on its content. 172.7.49.82 (talk) 20:12, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Question about the McAdams Case
I was looking at the Claims of Conservative Bias section and I noticed that it said that McAdams allegedly violated FERPA. Is there a citation for this? All I've seen from FIRE and AARP is that Marquette violated their disciplinary procedures and never mentioned the FERPA violation. - AmericanExceptionalism2016 (talk) 12:19, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Looking into that contention, it seems unverified. The section on the McAdams case has been edited to just briefly mention that contention as a contention and flesh out FIRE's contention of a violation of due process.

Seriously‎
Seriously, you've dedicated most of the article to a witchhunt about how they might be secretly conservative?

Looking through their site, they've defended professors who mocked religion, showed a documentary about porn, or advocated marijuana. They've defended students for forming a chapter of the NAACP, or trying to start a gay and lesbian group on campus, or celebrating Roe vs Wade. They claim in their letters to unite "civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum", and claim to be "consistently nonpartisan" and secular. The main guy is an atheist and their staff includes people who worked with Democrats, AIDS Law Project, Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, ACLU, LGBT & AIDS Project, Foundation for AIDS Research, and someone who identifies as genderqueer.

Yup, that sounds pretty conservative to me. Hmmph (talk) 04:53, 16 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Oh, and they have an article explicitly about it, too: https://www.thefire.org/fire-increasingly-ideological/  Hmmph (talk) 04:57, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Yep, this article is damn weak and it's been that way for a long time. I'd be fine with a Hmmph makeover. 16:10, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Sigh. I don't even know where to start.  And if someone comes along and starts revert-warring I'm just going to get stressed out and abandon ship.  :/  Hmmph (talk) 03:14, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Claim that conservative speech is more likely to need defending
Given that left-leaning professors are more often disciplined for their speech than conservative professors, the defense against claims of conservative bias ought to be reworked. Some mention should be made of the influence of large donors or more conservative-leaning administrations to challenge the idea that conservatives are more likely to be targeted.