From Josh Gerstein (Politico):
"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." …
The new initiative includes $10 million in planned national cable and billboard advertising featuring activists on both ends of the political spectrum extolling the virtues of free speech, officials said.
One TV spot includes a former Emerson College student, K.J. Lynum, whose conservative group was suspended by the school's president for circulating "China kinda sus" stickers promoting the theory that a Chinese government lab caused the oubreak of Covid-19. "Freedom of speech is our right as Americans and we must do everything we can to protect it," Lynum says over images of Martin Luther King Jr. and a young anti-abortion activist.
Another ad features a Montana State University student, Stefan Klaer, who was ordered to take down a Black Lives Matter banner from his dorm room window. "If you silence people, you never get to hear the other side," Klaer says….
[Former ACLU executive director Ira] Glasser, who serves on a FIRE advisory board, said in an interview that he "strongly encouraged" FIRE to broaden its free-speech work in part because the ACLU seems to be abdicating that role….
