Fire's Guide to Free Speech on Campus

A great book about our most cherished right. The book is perfect for students, parents and teachers. From Tinker to the "heckler's veto", the book combines free speech knowledge and the corresponding cases in a great read. Every college freshman should buy the book!

I know what you're thinking: whoop-de-doo, a boring book by a bunch of lawyers on complicated legal gobbeldygook. And that's not a bad pre-supposition, as pre-suppositions go: free speech law is indeed complicated, and the authors of FIRE's Guide to Free Speech are indeed lawyers. But contrary to what one might logically expect, this book is a page-turner indeed. Having read the tome, I can truthfully say that it rocks. And having worked for its authors (FIRE intern, summer 2003), I wasn't surprised that they were able to transform convoluted legal jargon into a compelling and immensely readable moral case for free speech. They trace the history of censorship in America -- did you know, for example, that some of the primary targets of restrictions on free-speech rights have been "good guys" like abolitionists, Jeffersonians, and civil-rights activists? Kind of gives the lie to the present-day fiction that there is some "tension" between civil liberties and civil rights, eh? The authors -- crack attorneys all -- provide detailed (but not too detailed!) explications of exactly what speech is protected by the First Amendment, and also the reasons why private universities should care about protected speech. And, of course, the book includes many examples of present-day censorship in the academy, more of which can be found at FIRE's website, www.thefire.org. Anyone who is even thinking about attending to college, sending a loved one to college, donating to a college must read this book. What is taking place in today's academy in terms of denials of fundamental individual rights is a national scandal, and it's high time those who inadvertently fund that scandal become informed consumers.