The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a non-profit group founded in 1999 and focused on civil liberties in academia in the United States. Its goal is "to defend and sustain individual rights at America's colleges and universities," including the rights to "freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience--the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity".
One of FIRE's main activities has been criticism of university administrators whose activities have, in FIRE's view, violated the free speech or due process rights of college and university students and professors under the First Amendment and/or Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. FIRE lists over 170 such instances on its website.
FIRE was founded by Alan Charles Kors, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvey A. Silverglate, a civil-liberties lawyer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Silverglate remains the chairman of FIRE's board, while Kors is Chairman Emeritus. Since March 23, 2006, FIRE's President has been Greg Lukianoff, who previously served as interim president.
FIRE has no stated political affiliation, and has represented the causes of parties with varied political viewpoints, ranging from conservative, liberal, and religious student groups to other activists such as members of PETA and Professor Ward Churchill.
Read more about Foundation For Individual Rights In Education: Issues, Leadership, Memberships
Famous quotes containing the words foundation for, foundation, individual, rights and/or education:
“Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is difficult for me to imagine the same dedication to women’s rights on the part of the kind of man who lives in partnership with someone he likes and respects, and the kind of man who considers breast-augmentation surgery self-improvement.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Our basic ideas about how to parent are encrusted with deeply felt emotions and many myths. One of the myths of parenting is that it is always fun and games, joy and delight. Everyone who has been a parent will testify that it is also anxiety, strife, frustration, and even hostility. Thus most major parenting- education formats deal with parental emotions and attitudes and, to a greater or lesser extent, advocate that the emotional component is more important than the knowledge.”
—Bettye M. Caldwell (20th century)