Lesson 1: Be willing to drive the bus into a wall

How does FIRE stay nonpartisan? Part 1

In a recent article on “How Free Speech Failed at Harvard — and How to Rescue It” in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Ryan Enos wrote, “It is important to note, though, that not all organizations failed to defend free speech during the recent on-campus turmoil. FIRE, for example, has been constant in its content-neutral defense of free speech and academic freedom […] We should ask what accounts for their admirable consistency.”

How has FIRE been able to stay consistent these past 25 years? The first and perhaps most important thing is that we’ve always been willing to walk away from donors who wanted us to play partisan favorites. This idea is encapsulated in a weird, unofficial motto FIRE has had for most of its existence: “We’ll drive this bus into a wall before we compromise our principles.” 

While it may not exactly sound inspirational, I can attest that it is to staff, and to me.

The motto goes back to when I first started at FIRE, which was just after September 11, 2001.  Because of that unparalleled national tragedy, a lot of my first cases at FIRE were defending the free speech of university professors who had said insensitive things about the attacks. Other cases involved students who oftentimes said little more than “let's get those bastards” or erected patriotic displays. There was one professor, however, whose case was particularly unsympathetic: Sami Al-Arian, a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida. A few weeks after the attacks, Al-Arian had a contentious interview with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, in which O’Reilly confronted Al-Arian with a 1988 recording of him shouting, “Jihad is our path! Victory to Islam! Death to Israel! Revolution! Revolution until victory! Rolling to Jerusalem!”

That became the justification for the USF to fire Al-Arian. There had been previous allegations that he had ties to terrorist groups, but the university and the government exonerated him through investigations that, frankly, could best be described as a whitewash. So here, FIRE had a dilemma: A professor who might have credible ties to terrorism was being fired — not for his potential ties to terrorism but rather for protected, even if extremely unsympathetic, speech.

FIRE was still a very young and small organization in the aftermath of 9/11, and emotions were understandably high. Going public with such an unsympathetic case could have killed us in the cradle. But we reached out to Professor Al-Arian nonetheless, leaving it to him whether or not he wanted our help. He called us back, and as we were deliberating whether we should take a case that could end the organization before it even really got started, I said, “We need to be willing to drive this bus into a wall.” In that moment, I would rather the organization have flamed out in a burst of noble glory than survive on compromised principles. Thankfully, my colleagues agreed.

While this is easy enough to say, walking the walk is harder. You have to deal with angry donors, university presidents, and administrators — all pointing out, in this case, that we could have just let the Al-Arian situation go. We could have said that the university’s decision to fire Al-Arian was really about the allegations of his ties to terrorism and left it at that. But to remain principled our response always had to be — and always was — “Well, if it’s about his ties to terrorism, then fire him for that.” The university’s unwillingness to be clear and straightforward was no excuse to justify going after him on the basis of speech.

We lost donors. People declared us dead to them. And, at the time, it seemed like we really were driving the bus into a wall.

But something good started to happen in the following months and years. People began to realize that our dedication to principle was actually priceless. Many people, even some of those who railed against us for our position in the Al-Arian case, started to count on our consistency. They came to understand that even if they themselves disagreed with a particular case we took, the country still needed a reliable, honest, nonpartisan defender of freedom of speech who simply called balls and strikes. And that this was critical for higher ed and indeed for the nation as a whole. 

And the ultimate resolution of the Al-Arian case was interesting. We’d been going back and forth with the USF administration, being told in private that the real motivation was the belief that Al-Arian had ties to terrorism to which we repeatedly said, “if that's the reason you want to fire him you have to say that.” And, after several months, USF did exactly that.  In the end, Al-Arian was in fact convicted for assisting a terrorist group in 2006, went to prison, and was eventually deported to Turkey in 2015. The bottom line here, though, was that the argument that this was about his speech was abandoned. USF focused on the thing that they could fire him for completely appropriately, thanks in part to our stand on principle. Our decision to defend Al-Arian’s First Amendment-protected speech certainly led to many stressful months, but as far as we were all concerned it was undoubtedly the right call.

Of course, we’d continue to face the challenge of explaining why even particularly unsympathetic cases deserved our defense, especially in times of serious national panic or trauma. But foundations and donors eventually started to understand that we weren't going to budge on this principle, and pretty soon they stopped asking us to.

Still, I don't want to pretend that this is always an easy thing to do. At times, our commitment to principle kept me up at night. I’ve often worried if a particular decision I made would end up destroying the organization. I worried that all these amazing employees we had gathered together, some of whom had families to support, would be forced out of their jobs.

It weighed on me, but I also started to realize something: The kind of people we were attracting to this gig were the kind of people who understood what it took to really be consistent and honest. They wanted to work for us — not despite our risky commitment to principles, but because of it.

The only downside of FIRE’s (no longer very) secret motto is that, in the event that one day we do in fact drive this bus into a wall, the snarky, grave-dancing headlines will practically write themselves. But again, if it's for the right reasons, we will proudly lay flowers and light candles at the crash site and consider it a job well done.

In the next post of this short series, I'll write about some of the other lessons I have learned over the years regarding how a free speech organization can remain principled in the face of public scorn, donor pressure, and the chaos of the culture war — beginning with Lesson 2: Promote and preserve viewpoint diversity.

SHOT FOR THE ROAD

Last week I wrote about how intellectuals often rationalize their need for more power by claiming to act on behalf of the marginalized. I first started to articulate this theme, and why it’s a trend that should concern us all, in my “Fight the Guardians” speech from FIRE’s 2023 gala.