It looks like FIRE is angling to become the new ACLU. Good for them, they will probably be better at it.
Politico reports:
Free-speech group will spend millions to promote First Amendment casesAn advocacy group that has spent more than two decades fighting for free expression on college campuses is broadening its efforts to fight so-called cancel culture and other perceived threats to free speech across American society.The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is renaming itself the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and keeping the “FIRE” acronym as it launches a drive to promote greater acceptance of a diversity of views in the workplace, pop culture and elsewhere. Part of the push may challenge the American Civil Liberties Union’s primacy as a defender of free speech.“To say the least, we have not solved the campus free-speech problem, but we started to realize if we wanted to save free speech on campus we have to start earlier and we have to do things not on campus,” the group’s president, Greg Lukianoff, said.Lukianoff said FIRE has raised $28.5 million for a planned three-year, $75 million litigation, opinion research and public education campaign aimed at boosting and solidifying support for free-speech values.“There’s a very strong belief in not just the First Amendment, but a culture of freedom of speech that — black or white, liberal or conservative — that most Americans think you should be entitled to your own opinion and not have to lose your job over that,” Lukianoff said. “The voices that think of free speech as a dirty word on campus or on Twitter are actually a pretty small minority.”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY