The nonpartisan advocacy group formerly known as The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is broadening its efforts. After focusing solely on the defense of free speech on campus, it will now work to include threats off campus, the organization announced in a press release Monday.
As part of the broadening effort at the organization, FIRE, founded in 1999, is changing its name to 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,” the group said in the statement.
“To say the least, we have not solved the campus free-speech problem, but we started to realize if we wanted to save free speech on campus we have to start earlier and we have to do things not on campus,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff told Politico.
FIRE’s newly expanded role fighting threats to free speech both on and off campus expands into a sphere previously primarily occupied by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
“Once the ACLU backs off its traditional role, who else is there?” Ira Glasser, a former executive director of the ACLU and a current member of FIRE’s advisory board, told Politico.
Recently, the ACLU claimed, “Racism is foundational to the Second Amendment and its inclusion in the Bill of Rights.” (RELATED: ‘Justifiable Intrusion’: ACLU Claims Vaccine Mandates Further Civil Liberties)
Racism is foundational to the Second Amendment and its inclusion in the Bill of Rights.
Learn more from experts Carol Anderson and Charles Howard Candler on this episode of the At Liberty podcast.https://t.co/9AjGALT1GH
— ACLU (@ACLU) July 25, 2021
In November 2020, an ACLU official reportedly called for the censorship of a book critical of transgenderism. The organization also sued several Texas cities in 2020 that have passed ordinances which would ban abortion in their city. In 2018, the ACLU again waded into the abortion debate, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into pro-choice ads in anticipation of then-president Donald Trump’s nominee for Supreme Court.
“The notion that you have to reduce your vigor with which you defend First Amendment rights or you will damage the strength of your advocacy for equal rights for women, gays, and Blacks, et cetera is just demonstrably not true and, yet, they’ve done that,” Glasser said. “It has created a vacuum in the viewpoint-neutral defense of free speech, which FIRE has filled.”
FIRE’s vice president of communications, Nico Perrino, told the Daily Caller the free speech advocacy organization would continue to work with the ACLU in its efforts to protect free speech.
“Our off-campus work is focused squarely on defending freedom of expression. The ACLU has 19 issue areas, we have one,” Perrino said, “We regularly work with the ACLU on campus and now look forward to doing so off campus, as well.”
“We aim to be an unapologetic defender of free speech culture in America, and we seek to use litigation, public education, and research to support this mission,” Perrino continued. “This mix of programming, coupled with our unique brand of public messaging around the issue, distinguishes us from other organizations doing free speech work, all of whom we already collaborate with toward shared goals, and will continue to do so.”
The ACLU did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.