College students today are lucky to have an organization like FIRE to back them up.

From the FIRE blog.

Censored on Campus? FIRE Will Defend You

A pair of articles published online by The New York Times today—titled “Fighting for the First Amendment on America’s Campuses” and “Want a Copy of the Constitution? Now, That’s Controversial!”—reviews FIRE’s work defending free speech for students and faculty members nationwide.

Author Cecilia Capuzzi Simon interviewed FIRE’s Harvey Silverglate, Greg Lukianoff, Peter Bonilla, and me to provide readers with a sense of FIRE’s aims and methods. We’re proud of the victories we’ve won for free speech, and we’re very pleased to share our successes with the Times:

There are other groups that fight for First Amendment rights on campus, but none as vocal — or pushy — as FIRE, which has gone public with 421 interventions on behalf of aggrieved students and faculty members over almost two decades (many more have been resolved privately).

The organization, which has headquarters in Philadelphia across the street from Independence Hall, has nearly doubled its staff, to 35, in the last two years. In 2015, FIRE received 807 inquiries from students and professors seeking assistance in fighting perceived civil rights violations, up from 719 in 2014. About 50 will fit FIRE’s “narrow focus” on civil liberties defense, said Peter Bonilla, director of its individual rights defense program. The most egregious get litigated through FIRE’s two-year-old litigation program, which targets violations at public colleges (only public institutions, which are arms of the government, are directly bound by the First Amendment).

A lawsuit is FIRE’s tactic of last resort, especially when it comes to speech codes. In about 90 percent of cases, it uses “persuasion,” as staff members call it, to get administrators to revise or revoke questionable parts of a code. Depending on the level of “obstinacy,” Mr. Bonilla said, “the levers of publicity” — news releases, op-eds, media appearances — kick in. Most administrators, wary of bad press or an expensive suit, eliminate the speech codes.