The speech and the cocktails flowed freely at the first faculty conference held by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, better known by its combustible acronym, FIRE. The two-day event, held recently in Dallas, came at a time when controversy over campus speech — once a niche issue — has turned into prime-time cable-news fodder and helped push FIRE into the national spotlight.
The conference brought together academics who, like April Kelly-Woessner, a professor of political science at Elizabethtown College, wished to commiserate about the atmosphere on college campuses, which they believe has grown increasingly hostile to dissenting views. “So many of the faculty said they felt like the lone voice on their campus,” said Kelly-Woessner, who presented research suggesting that college students have become less politically tolerant. “It was a surreal experience to be with people who share these concerns.”
The event was surreal, or at least curious, in several ways. When professors gather in hotel ballrooms, as they often do, they usually stick to their own disciplinary kind. Here there were professors of psychology, law, social work, philosophy, biology, journalism, history, and biology. It was an ideological mix as well: While many identified as more or less liberal, the event attracted a smattering of right-leaning academics as well. One professor preferred the label “nonleftist”; another described herself as “extremely moderate.”
Among the attendees was Bret Weinstein, a former professor of biology at Evergreen State College. He became a symbol of the struggle over campus free speech last May after refusing to take part in the college’s proposed Day of Absence, which encouraged white students, staff, and faculty members to leave campus. At the FIRE conference, he was treated like a celebrity; one professor called him a “folk hero.” When asked how he felt about the adulation, he shook his head. “It’s been a strange few months,” he said.
Since its founding, in 1999, FIRE has advocated on behalf of professors from differing slivers of the political spectrum. In the past few months, it has defended the right of a satirist at George Washington University to mock a conservative group, and it has sided with a student organization at New Mexico State University that had invited David Horowitz, a conservative writer and activist, to speak on campus.
And yet, despite this bipartisan advocacy, FIRE draws nearly all its financial support from conservative foundations. The funding for this conference was provided by the John Templeton Foundation, which has been criticized for injecting religious ideas into science, and from the Institute for Humane Studies, at George Mason University, which has received millions from Koch family foundations over the years. A representative of the Charles Koch Foundation was spotted at the FIRE meeting, a fact that made more than a few professors uncomfortable. “Gaaaaaahhhhh,” one liberal attendee wrote in a text message.
Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s longtime president, has heard the funding critique countless times. And, as he does each time he hears it, he points to the organization’s record as proof that the money it receives doesn’t influence the cases it champions. “I would like to be an organization that manages to bridge the divide and get funding from both Koch and Soros,” he says. “Believe me, it’s not for lack of trying.”
Tom Bartlett is a senior writer at The Chronicle.
