Talk:Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression/Archive1

This is an archive page, last updated 19 February 2024. Please do not make edits to this page.

Archives for this talk page:  , (new)(back)

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)