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The Senate is gearing up to vote on the Kids Online Safety Act as early as tomorrow. FIRE urges opposition to both the Senate (S. 1409) and House (H.R. 7891) versions of the bill because they treat Americans’ speech not as a fundamental right and an indispensable ingredient of human progress, but as a hazardous product. This…
“Shoot, if they go for him again, I hope they get him.” No, that’s not a tweet about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. They’re the words of Ardith McPherson, a Texas police department clerk who made the remark more than 40 years ago after a failed assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan….
Victor Thorne is a rising junior at Grinnell College and a FIRE Summer Intern. In recent years, the transgender community has gained a reputation for championing cancel culture. Unfortunately, this is largely true. In FIRE’s 2024 College Free Speech Rankings, a sample of 454 students who identified as nonbinary overwhelmingly reported support for illiberal protest tactics. (The survey…
At this year’s BET Awards, when Usher went up to accept his lifetime achievement award, he announced, “Sorry, I’m gonna curse and let you know how I really feel.” As the R&B artist famous for singing, “Just when I thought I said all I could say,” launched into his 13-minute speech, audiences watching at home on television…
This article first appeared in The Teaching Professor on August 19, 2019 © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. Try a FREE three-week trial of The Teaching Professor! A new academic year is about to begin, and, well, there’s this course—maybe more than one—that you’re not exactly bristling with excitement to teach. What should you do?…
Ahead of what could be another tumultuous year for free expression on college campuses, forthcoming FIRE/College Pulse survey data shows just a fraction of undergrads have a solid understanding of their own campus’s protest policies. Conducted near the end of the Israeli-Palestinian campus protests, between May 17 and June 25, 2024, the survey sampled 3,803 undergraduates at 30 four-year…
Nicholas Baum is a rising sophomore at Columbia University and a FIRE summer intern. Many factors go into making accurate and educated monetary policy decisions, but one crucial factor seems to slip under the radar of many economists: freedom of speech. After all, in any policy area, you must familiarize yourself with a diversity of…
Should the Supreme Court overrule Hill v. Colorado? That is how the issue is presented in the certiorari petition Paul Clement and Erin Murphy filed in Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale. Think of it as Justice Antonin Scalia’s posthumous revenge. Hill v. Colorado is a case he dissented in nearly a quarter-century ago. And to think that such a reversal…
61% of Democrats and 52% of Republicans at least slightly agree that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. Half of Democrats — but only one-fifth of Republicans — think America is on the right track when it comes to free speech. PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 1, 2024 — Fifty-three percent of Americans…
Can someone employ a voice actor, or even use artificial intelligence, to copy your voice and then use that audio likeness to sell a service without your permission? And does the First Amendment protect the copycats? That’s what actress Scarlett Johansson alleged happened in May 2024 when she accused OpenAI of appropriating her voice for ChatGPT’s…