SerenityJade

If anybody has heard of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), they know that it's an organization that pretty much speaks up for those who have their freedom of speech oppressed on college campuses. I was looking at the site and found their rating system and decided to look up some of the more "popular" schools (mostly the Ivies that people here are obsessed with) and found that...

Just imagine a stoplight...

Stanford has a rating of yellow
Harvard has a rating of red
Yale has a rating of yellow
Princeton has a rating of red
MIT has a rating of yellow
Caltech has a rating of red
Amherst College has a rating of yellow
UMass - Amherst has a rating of red
UTexas - Austin has a rating of red
Johns Hopkins has a rating of red
Cornell has a rating of red
Columbia has a rating of red
Brown has a rating of red
UPenn has a rating of GREEN
Dartmouth has a rating of GREEN

That was just an order of colleges that came to my head as I was going through...

Now, I want to be clear here that I didn't go through the reasons why each of these are given the rating they are.

I just found this interesting and wanted to see if anyone else might be surprised by some of these rankings...


Welcome to FIRE?s Spotlight - The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - FIRE

invasion

This is hilarious. Please don't tell me that you take this as a serious civil rights organization, because it seems to me that it's just another far-right fringe group that happens to have a better-designed website than most.

Harvard and Princeton are penalized because they have stricter policies on sexual and racial harassment than Penn. Naturally, they are worse universities, right? None of the yellow/red schools are rated poor because of any actual oppression. No one is being told they can't speak out against the administration, or hold protests for a political cause, or anything like that.

runallday4

This is dumb. A lot of the schools in red are only red because they forbid students from using campus resources to "haze, harass, or stalk" over people...

SerenityJade

1) I thought it was interesting and funny
2) I severely doubt the organization is far right

barrk123

Yea if it was far right it wouldn't have given TAMU a red rating

Wordworker

Two professors started this after a student at Penn got into trouble for calling a group of noisy young women "water buffalo." There was a big ruckus, and Alan Kors defended the student with help from his college friend who had become a law school professor elsewhere. He also took leadership when Penn subsequently rewrote its speech code (maybe why Penn has a green light now).

Alan teaches history at Penn and has for about 40 years. I took several classes with him and found him to be a terrific teacher who always was fair.

Certainly there is room in the world for a ranking system like this. How useful it is to a student picking a college, though, is unclear.

SerenityJade

I would never say someone should delete a school from their list for their FIRE Spotlight rating however it does show why the schools are rated that way and that is interesting. I looked up the school I want to go to and it has a red rating for a code in its handbook saying demonstrations must be registered five days in advance and be in a certain area of campus as to not restrict other students' access to their classes. I guess this is a restrictive policy but looking at the nature of the school, I would suspect it has just never been questioned.

dodgersmom

Most of these policies have never been questioned.

But because of their vagueness, they can be applied in a discretionary fashion . . . meaning that if the administration wants to get rid of a particular student (or teacher), there's a way to do it. And there's really no way to anticipate how or when one of these policies will be used against someone. I mean, really - if there's a school rule against "using language that might offend someone." how in the world is one supposed to predict what language might or might not violate that rule?

And I tend to agree - this is probably not something that most students would consider in choosing a college. As a parent, though, it's something I would definitely be concerned about. At a "red light" school, using the wrong words or voicing the wrong opinion can have significant consequences.

I am amazed that protecting free speech rights is now viewed as something that only a "far-right fringe group" would take an interest in.

HarvestMoon1

The erosion of free speech in this country is nothing short of shocking to someone who "came of age" in the late 60's and early 70's. I am truly saddened and angered to observe the suppression of what used to be a guaranteed right in this country.

SerenityJade

I learned of FIRE from Penn & Teller's ******** episode about college as an organization they supported and were commending and agreeing with...Anybody who knows anything about Penn Jillette's political views knows he would not be likely to support a "far right fringe group"...

annasdad

Some of the public colleges' codes are vague and probably would not hold up were they challenged on First Amendment grounds. Private schools, of course, need not worry about that.

And it's a strange argument indeed to claim that an organization advocating freedom of speech is a right-wing fringe group.

invasion

Fine, maybe I should have said "libertarian fringe group" then.

Let me ask everyone a question, then: which group is usually associated with political correctness and defending women, minorities, etc.? Because these are essentially the policies that this website is rallying against.

...as it should, especially if you sexually harass someone, or use racial epithets.

Let me guess... are you white? And male? And straight?

Do you think Harvard and Princeton, both of which have red ratings, would have anything against a student demonstration in support of gay rights, or a protest against the War on Terror? Which rights, exactly, do you feel are being suppressed by these institutions? The right to call a woman a w***e and a gay person a f*g?

annasdad

How about a student demonstration against gay rights? Or in favor of terrorism? Or opposed to affirmative action?

IMO, all those positions are despicable. But they would all be protected speech if done at a public university, regardless of any policies to the contrary. And, I would argue, that a private school that prides itself on fostering the free exchange of ideas has no business censoring speech just because some - even a large majority - find offensive.

There was a time in this country when speech that most now would find perfectly acceptable, even commendable, was censored. The post office refused to deliver The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, to slave states on the grounds it was offensive and incendiary. Those who would today censor speech are operating in that same disgraceful tradition.

If someone's speech offends you, counter it with speech of your own. That's the way things are supposed to work in a democracy.

invasion

Yeah, let's let the KKK hold rallies at our universities, too!

You're drawing a huge false equivalency. Holding a pro-LGBT rally is not offensive to students; it doesn't make anyone feel personally victimized. Even fundamentalist Christians can just ignore it because such a rally is not personally directed at them.

An anti-gay rally? That's promoting hate speech. It's directly insulting the millions of people who are gay and telling them there is something wrong with them. That's not the same thing as holding a pro-gay rights rally AT ALL.

There comes a point where completely unrestricted speech becomes a bad thing. And please don't act like there are only two options: 1) completely unrestricted free speech and 2) oppression. No, the issue is more complex than that.

Blckmgc

So you would permit a pro-LGBT rally and ban an anti-LGBT rally? There are some serious free speech issues with what you are suggesting. See Snyder v. Phelps, 2011.

Educational institutions have some more leeway in restrictions on speech to preserve a learning environment, but you can't take sides on issues like LGBT rights. Hate speech is LEGAL in the United States. It is unconstitutional to ban hate speech, as established by decades of Supreme Court precedent. If you permit a pro-LGBT rally, you MUST permit an anti-LGBT rally, or yes, even a KKK rally if there are students who hold those white supremacist beliefs, UNLESS the rally incites or promotes specific acts of violence or victimizes specific individuals.

I support LGBT rights, but I also believe in the Constitution. Hooray for the pro-LGBT rally, but "boo-hoo wah-wah, I feel personally victimized by the GOD HATES FAGS sign?" Please. To paraphrase Justice Brandeis, the solution to speech that is distasteful to you is more speech, not enforcing silence on your opponents.