FIRE!

FIRE is most definitely on to something. Oh? You don’t know who FIRE is? Ok then, I will tell you. FIRE is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. You can find them on the web at http://www.thefire.org. If you are in any way involved with higher education, be it as an administrator, teacher, student, parent of a student, or anything else, I encourage you to drop by and take a look at their site. They have published some guides for students that are intended to educate them about their rights on campus. These guides are free for students and quite reasonably priced for everyone else. They deal primarily with First Amendment issues, but also touch on a few others.

I ordered the guides from their site awhile ago because I was curious about their stance on things. Was I ever surprised! These are the most thorough and balanced pieces of literature I have ever read.

I guess it is really not surprising when you look at the people on the “Board of Editors” (text taken directly from one of the FIRE Guides):

Vivian Berger – Vivian Berger is the Nash Professor of Law Emerita at Columbia Law School. Berger is a former New York County Assistant District Attorney and a former Assistant Counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She has done significant work in the fields of criminal law and procedure (in particular, the death penalty and habeas corpus) and mediation, and continues to use her expertise in various settings, both public and private. She and her late husband, Professor Curtis J. Berger, are coauthors of “Academic Discipline: A Guide to Fair Process for the University Student,” published in the Columbia Law Review (volume 99). Berger is General Counsel for and a National Board Member of the American Civil Liberties Union and has written numerous essays and journal articles on human rights and due process.
T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr. – T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr. is the President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a nonpartisan, educational organization dedicated to furthering the American ideal of ordered liberty on college and university campuses. He served as Counselor to the Attorney General of the United States and later as Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs during the Reagan administration. Cribb is also President of the Collegiate Network of independent college newspapers. He is former Vice Chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Alan Dershowitz – Alan Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School. He is an expert on civil liberties and criminal law and has been described by Newsweek as “The nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights.” Dershowitz is a frequent public commentator on matters of freedom of expression and of due process, and is the author of eighteen books, including, most recently, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge, and hundreds of magazine and journal articles.
Paul McMasters - Paul McMasters is the First Amendment Ombudsman at the Freedom Forum in Arlington, Virginia. He speaks and writes frequently on all aspects of First Amendment right, has appeared on various television programs, and has testified before numerous government commissions and congressional committees. Prior to joining the Freedom Forum, McMasters was the Associate Editorial Director of USA Today. He is also past National President of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Edwin Meese III – Edwin Meese III holds the Ronald Reagan Chair in Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation. He is also Chairman of Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Meese is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at The University of London’s Institute of United States Studies. He is also Chairman of the governing board at George Mason University in Virginia. Meese served as the 75th Attorney General of the United States under the Reagan administration.
Roger Pilon – Roger Pilon is Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Cato Institute, where he holds the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, directs Cato’s Center for Constitutional Studies, and publishes the Cato Supreme Court Review. Prior to joining Cato, he held five senior posts in the Reagan administration. He has taught philosophy and law, and was a National Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Pilon has published widely in moral, political and legal theory.
Jamin Raskin – Jamin Raskin is Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, specializing in constitutional law and the First Amendment. He served as a member of the Clinton-Gore Justice Department Transition Team, as Assistant Attorney General in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and as General Counsel for the National Rainbow Coalition. Raskin has also been a Teaching Fellow in the Government Department at Harvard University and has won several awards for his scholarly essays and journal articles. He is author of We the Students and founder of the Marshall-Brennan Fellows Program, which sends law students into public high schools to teach the Constitution.
Nadine Strossen – Nadine Strossen is President of the American Civil Liberties Union and Professor of Law at New York Law School. Strossen has published approximately 250 works in scholarly and general interest publications, and she is the author of two significant books on the importance of civil liberties to the struggle of equality. She has lectured and practiced extensively in the areas of constitutional law and civil liberties, and is a frequent commentator in the national media on various legal issues.

They come from all across the political spectrum, but all have one thing in common. They all have a deep respect and reverence for individual liberty and freedom.

Hopefully they won’t mind me stealing their biographies form the Guides!
Go get them and read them now!