Three big pieces for your New Year’s reading!
Some year-end thoughts, ERI highlights, and my vision for FIRE and free speech in 2025
Folks, you’re going to hear a lot from me this week. I’ve got two pieces I wanted to get out before the end of the year, both of which take a look back at 2024 and also look ahead into 2025. There’s also a third, very important recent piece in the LA Times you should read, by FIRE Executive Vice President and
podcast host , about artificial intelligence and free speech. More on that one in a moment.For Fox News, I highlighted the unfortunate fact that — as my FIRE colleague
and I publicly predicted as far back as March — 2024 has surpassed 2023 in being the worst year ever for campus deplatforming attempts. This is based on FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database, which logs these kinds of incidents dating back to 1998.On November 20, just as the Fall semester was ending, FIRE’s database reached 157 deplatforming attempts for 2024, just passing 2023’s 156. As we close out the year, that number is now 164. What’s worse, one out of five cases in FIRE’s entire database right now represent deplatforming attempts that occurred in the last two years alone.
To give you some perspective, in 2013, the year before what my “The Canceling of the American Mind” co-author
and I mark as the beginning of the Age of Cancel Culture, our database has 54 recorded deplatforming attempts. In 2012, it was 33 attempts.In my piece I also highlighted Silence in the Classroom: The 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey Report, which is the largest faculty free speech survey ever conducted. The study asked 6,269 faculty members at 55 major colleges and universities a variety of questions regarding their comfort expressing themselves on campus. Sadly but not surprisingly, we found that self-censorship on U.S. campuses is currently four times worse than it was at the height of the McCarthy era.
This is all a real bummer, I know — especially at the end of the year, when it’s important to try and give a hopeful eye to the future.
That’s why, for The Dispatch, I decided to take a different tack. While I still had to mention the bad news I outlined above, I also note the progress that has been made with respect to free speech in higher education (and I like to think FIRE’s work had more than a little to do with that).
That piece should be out on New Year’s Day, but in brief, I laud the growing number of universities that have rejected diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements; the fact that many schools have begun to adopt policies of institutional neutrality; and perhaps most importantly, that this year marked the end of higher education’s illusion of invincibility.
I hope you’ll give that piece a read once it’s posted, because despite the bad news we have to grapple with and the work we still have ahead of us, I am still finding myself hopeful about 2025. I’m also very excited about what’s in store for FIRE next year.
As I noted on X recently, FIRE will emphasize two closely-related themes in the new year: Safeguarding free speech in innovation and technology, and strengthening our systems for producing knowledge. There is simply no disentangling free speech and academic freedom from knowledge creation. After all, without freedom of speech you have virtually no chance to understand the world as it it really is.
The frontiers of artificial intelligence will be the most crucial place the battle for freedom of speech and a reliable knowledge creation system will be waged. As I mentioned earlier, my FIRE colleague Nico Perrino had a great piece on this very topic recently. He writes:
The Constitution shouldn’t be rewritten for every new communications technology. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this long-standing principle during its most recent term in applying the 1st Amendment to social media. The late Justice Antonin Scalia articulated it persuasively in 2011, noting that “whatever the challenges of applying the Constitution to ever-advancing technology, the basic principles of freedom of speech and the press … do not vary.”
These principles should be front of mind for congressional Republicans and David Sacks, Trump’s recently chosen artificial intelligence czar, as they make policy on that emerging technology. The 1st Amendment standards that apply to older communications technologies must also apply to artificial intelligence, particularly as it stands to play an increasingly significant role in human expression and learning.
Artificial intelligence could either liberate and expand our collective understanding or empower those eager to lock in their own orthodoxy as unchallenged truth. Ensuring robust free speech protections is essential to avoiding that latter, troubling scenario. In 2025 and beyond, this issue should be top of mind for anyone interested in free speech. It certainly will be for FIRE.
With all that said, I want to take this one last opportunity in 2024 to look back at some of my favorite ERI artwork — courtesy of my FIRE colleague
, who produces stuff from week to week that makes this Gen-Xer go, “Dag!”My favorite AdGo art for 2024
Adam Goldstein — or AdGo, as we affectionately call him — is FIRE’s Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, a fantastic lawyer and researcher, an encyclopedic comic book fan, a hilarious writer, and a supremely talented AI artist. You’ve seen his work from week to week on ERI, and he has a lot of bangers in his catalogue, but here are just a few of my favorites:
From our Weekend Free Speech Update for July 14, 2024, we have “FIRE Shouting Itself”:
For the October 6, 2024 Weekend Free Speech Update, we have “President Bun Bun”:
Last but not least, we have not one, but two Dune-themed pieces. First, for the May 19, 2024 Weekend Free Speech Update, “God Emperor of Dune: Crikey, Mate, Look at the Size of That One”:
And second, for the May 11, 2024 Weekend Free Speech Update, “Certainty is the Mind-Killer”:
I’d like to give a very special thanks to AdGo for brightening up our ERI posts every week with his excellent and hilarious artistic creations.
And while I’m meting out gratitude, I can never thank you all enough for supporting FIRE, free speech, and ERI. Without you, this work obviously wouldn’t be possible, but it also wouldn’t be so fun!
If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll consider donating to FIRE and becoming a FIRE member so we can keep this thing going and growing for many years to come.
Have a happy and safe holiday, and we’ll see you in 2025!
SHOT FOR THE ROAD
Speaking of The Dispatch, I recently joined Jonah Goldberg on “The Remnant” podcast to discuss the current state of free speech writ large, the legal distinction between defamation and free expression as it relates to artificial intelligence and deepfakes, and what it really means to defend morally reprehensible speech.
Check it out on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
It's no longer deplatforming that's the critical problem anymore—rather it's what ideologies, promoters, and celebrated heroes are being freely (and permanently) platformed that should keep you up at night. When you get liberal/conservative/non-partisan ratios down to 1:1:1 in the American university professoriate, you'll have accomplished something. Otherwise, you're just adding more volume and range to the background noise of modern political blather.