Protecting free speech on campus from attacks from both sides

Greg Lukianoff has learned the value of defending free speech on college campuses from both sides of the aisle — sometimes to the anger of his own donors.  

Lukianoff, the head of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), is the son of a Russian refugee and says first-generation immigrants from totalitarian regimes “really take seriously things like freedom of speech, because we came from places that didn’t have it.” 

His organization has battled both conservatives and liberals over threats to the freedom of speech on campus, pushing back against both school policies and laws passed at the state level.  

“The idea was partially to have a group that represented both the right and the left in its staff, so they were excited to hire me as the first legal director as a nice sort of counterbalance to the more conservative-leaning executive director, and so I joined in 2001,” Lukianoff said about his first days at FIRE.  

He said his biggest early case — and one the organization knew would be “unpopular” — was defending Kuwaiti-born college professor and political activist Sami Al-Arian, who was targeted by conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly over accusations of links to terrorist groups and the Muslim Brotherhood.   

“The allegation against him was not his speech. It was that he actually did have ties to terrorism, but the University of South Florida decided to fire him for his speech, which meant that FIRE … it was time for FIRE to fight and we knew it,” Lukianoff said in a recent interview with The Hill.  

“We knew that this would be a case so unpopular, that it might very well lead to the failure of FIRE because, essentially, we knew that at that young age, defending someone that unpopular, that might mean that nobody would want to donate to us anymore,” he added. “And we said, ‘OK if this is the end at the beginning, we can live with that,’ and had a motto come out of it that said, ‘We’d rather crash this bus into a wall rather than be unprincipled.’” 

Al-Arian was fired by the University of South Florida, indicted on criminal charges and eventually deported, but Lukianoff emphasizes that the case was different “as long as” his termination “wasn’t focused on his speech.”

And he says defending unpopular and controversial figures and speech is just as important today, with FIRE targeting both diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and policies in Republican states restricting certain topics and discussions on campus.  

FIRE last year celebrated the University of Massachusetts-Boston removing requirements for faculty applicants to support certain sentiments about DEI after pressure from the group.  

It also came out against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) “Stop WOKE Act,” with a federal judge blocking the law in 2022 after a challenge from the group. The act would have made so there could not be instruction on certain topics related to “race, color, national origin, or sex.” 

“Faculty members are hired to offer opinions from their academic expertise — not toe the party line,” FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh said at the time. “Florida’s argument that faculty members have no First Amendment rights would have imperiled faculty members across the political spectrum.” 

Lukianoff said, “The biggest threat from the right is some state legislatures.”

“But a bigger meta-problem is that there is an attempt to change the political valence of free speech from leftwing to rightwing, while at the same time on the right, the libertarian segment is losing power to a more populist faction,” he said.

The fight to be a truly nonpartisan organization is a difficult one, Lukianoff said, and it requires support from an increasingly rare breed of First Amendment backers.

“The first thing is having a lot of experience being willing to displease donors who would prefer us to be more partisan. We have cultivated a large list of donors who want us to be genuinely nonpartisan. Any donor that wants us to put our thumb on the scale one way or the other, we are always willing to part ways with,” he said.  

But aside from the money aspect, Lukianoff has also had some difficult personal problems in his time with the organization.  

“2007 was also when I got suicidally depressed because it was really exhausting to make this transition, and I felt very isolated in Philadelphia,” where FIRE’s headquarters are located, Lukianoff said. “I don’t have any family in or around Philly so right before I moved up to New York, I was hospitalized.” 

While he was doing cognitive behavioral therapy for his anxiety and depression, he recalled thinking “administrators seem to think that students should engage in mind reading, fortune telling, overgeneralization, binary thinking, all of these cognitive distortions that will make you depressed and anxious if you do them too often. But, thank goodness, young people weren’t listening and they were sort of rolling their eyes,” Lukianoff said.  

But he said that started to change around 10 years ago, with college students “arguing for new restrictions on freedom of speech, including deplatforming speakers that they didn’t like, asking for new speech codes that included provisions against microaggressions, required trigger warnings, for example.”

“And all this happened — like not subtly at all, it wasn’t like a slow development. It was like a lightning strike,” Lukianoff said.  

He says he’s an optimist about free speech ultimately prevailing on campus, but he predicts a rocky road to get there.

“I’m worried that, no matter who wins in 2024, we’re entering a less stable political period. I’ve been told by people on both the right and the left that when things get that serious, principles like free speech become less important, and that’s precisely wrong. In high-stress contexts, the rules of the game become more, not less, important. I do think things are going to get worse before they get better.” Lukianoff said.  

To ensure the failure of attempts to restrict the First Amendment, Lukianoff called for its importance to emphasized both in K-12 and higher education.

“For people who are concerned for the less privileged and disadvantaged, free speech has consistently been the best recourse for minorities and those with unpopular opinions. I think something that would help would be if students were required to do a formal debate, maybe in their junior year of high school, where they had to take the opposite side of what they believe. That would help challenge the idea that everyone who disagrees with you is stupid or evil,” Lukianoff said. 

“I worry that there wouldn’t be a great appetite for something like that, because the list of ‘correct’ views which can’t be challenged grows every day,” he added.  

—Updated Wednesday at 11 a.m.