Who’s afraid of the printed page?
FIREside No. 1
Expression
The stories that shape free speech in America, brought to you by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
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The Pentagon, the press, and the paywall
FIREwire No. 42
How universities turn scandal into censorship
Ryan Tsapatsaris is a doctor in communication and a master of laws candidate and dean’s scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
Court backs parents punished for wearing pink ‘XX’ wristbands in silent protest of trans high school athletes
New Hampshire school likely violated parents’ rights by silencing silent protest based on viewpoint
Is Britain bringing blasphemy laws back under another name?
A Facebook meme, a protest sign, and a big mess
The U.S. military is at war with its own newspaper
A military paper matters most when commanders disagree
Massachusetts has a better approach for book challenges: due process
A complaint about a library book should start a conversation, not end one.
Nebraska school district censors anti-ICE cartoon, forces prior approval on student press
A Nebraska school district censored a student newspaper over a political cartoon criticizing U.S.
This Michigan city threatened critics over ‘cyberbullying.’ Now it’s hiding the evidence.
Officials say it’s too ‘emotionally offensive’
Thank you, Brendan Carr
Bob Corn-Revere is chief counsel for FIRE and he served as chief counsel to former FCC Chair James H.
When the cure is worse than the disease
FIREwire No. 41
If everything’s a conspiracy, nothing’s a conspiracy
How a Reconstruction-era law built to crush the Klan, and tested against the Mafia, ended up silencing people for journalism and memes
Violence is up and tolerance is down. What comes next?
What are your predictions for free speech in 2026?
The Jason Arday tragedy cannot justify a crackdown on the press
His death leads to hard questions. But it must not lead to censorship.
Professors are being squeezed on all sides. The GUARD Act can protect them.
Old-school censorship never went away.
Foreign journalists to face social media vetting for U.S. visas
Plus: France’s under-15 ban comes to screeching halt
Campus hecklers are silencing pro-Israel speakers. Speech codes are not the fix.
Max Friedman studies at the University of Memphis Cecil C.
FIREwire: The freedom suite
Durags, Draco Malfoy, and dystopian AI
Americans left and right agree: Higher ed has an ideological-diversity problem
New FIRE polling finds liberals, conservatives, and moderates converging on a rare point of agreement
Tuskegee tells students to suit up and leave the durag at home
Tuskegee can teach professionalism without policing culturally expressive clothing in classrooms and cafeterias.
How the unraveling of Jason Arday’s career and the UK’s censorship collided
A burgeoning academic controversy, costly libel law, and overactive speech police walk into a bar…
Pete Hegseth wants the Pentagon press corps on a leash
The Pentagon cannot use press credentials to punish reporters for asking questions or publishing unwelcome news.
NYU’s crackdown on affinity graduations solves a problem that isn’t there
NYU canceled 13 affinity ceremonies and restricted alternatives — after the federal anti-DEI directive was already dead.
Countries are hiding censorship in ‘cybercrime’ bills. A UN treaty could make things worse.
Late last year, the United Kingdom, France, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and dozens more nations signed the United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime, a treaty ostensibly intended to improve global cooperation to fight crimes taking place over computer systems.