Thread by @glukianoff

THREAD: Former @TheFIREorg intern @emmma_camp_ published a terrific essay in @nytimes about the stifling climate on college campuses. As if to prove her point, her piece was met with outrage & denial in a predictable culture war pattern. 1/16

nytimes.com/2022/03/07/opi…

.@TheFIREorg’s @JordanmHowell & Sean Stevens came to @emmma_camp_’s defense with a detailed refutation of false (& mostly recycled) criticisms of the @nytimes piece. 2/16

thefire.org/critics-of-fir…

As @JordanmHowell & Sean argue, most of the critiques of the survey data @emmma_camp_ cited are baseless. The detractors misrepresent the cited campus free speech survey’s methodology. 3/16

.@JordanmHowell & Sean point out that despite @nhannahjones initial claim that it’s unclear what type of students are self-censoring, @TheFIREorg makes its detailed demographic data available for free online, with raw data available by request. 4/16

thefire.org/research/publi…

If you want to see how often students report self-censoring broken down by race & sexuality, check out these graphs. Sample size is 37,000 (the largest ever of its kind) students across 159 institutions. 5/16

The data is there & it is reliable & corroborated by findings of other studies, including by @knightcolumbia . 6/16

knightfoundation.org/reports/the-fi…
heterodoxacademy.org/campus-express…

To her credit, @nhannahjones accepted the correction but objected that the data shows students across the political spectrum self-censor. That’s our point! That’s @emma_camp_’s point! Students reporting self-censorship across the board is a problem! 7/16

https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1501671121791373316

Other criticism tried to paint @emmma_camp_ as conservative due to her association (she was an intern a year ago) w/ @TheFIREorg.

Ironically on the same day we released a video about a student who was made to remove a BLM flag from his window. 8/16

https://twitter.com/TheFIREorg/status/1500860486145003521

ZERO TWEET: FIRE has a podcast series called Free Speech Out Loud with audio versions of landmark First Amendment decisions (incl. Tinker v. Des Moines read by @marybtinker herself!) & popular FIRE articles. See episodes here! 0/16

https://twitter.com/glukianoff/status/1486046316111220739

… AND announced a lawsuit on behalf of a historian fired by Collin College for criticizing the school’s mask policy, & advocating the removal of Confederate statues. 9/16

Others claimed FIRE is “silent” on censorious state laws from Republican legislatures targeting race & gender education. The very same day we were trying to stop the unconstitutional FL HB7, and testifying to stop a bill in SC. 10/16

https://twitter.com/TheFIREorg/status/1500866705773453315

Despite some Twitter users’ ignorance of our work, few have fought as hard or as effectively against bills imposing unconstitutional higher ed curricular bans, & we will continue to do so! 11/16

thefire.org/not-all-anti-c…
thefire.org/new-wave-of-bi…

Some critics said we’d “never” defend @nhannahjones’ rights when she faced unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination at UNC. We did, & that incident & its fallout landed the school on FIRE’s 2022 list of the 10 worst schools for free speech. 12/16

thefire.org/fire-urges-tra…

Even if that all of that were not the case, labeling anything you disagree with “conservative” so you don’t need to respond substantively is both childish & extremely intellectually lazy. 13/16

https://twitter.com/glukianoff/status/1500922122423648266

If people spent even half the energy they use to dunk on the other side to help students & profs in trouble (EVEN JUST WHERE THEY LIKE THE TARGET’S POLITICS) that would be a much better outcome than constant wrangling over what "the real problem" is. 14/16

Free speech issues hurting people across the political spectrum isn’t news to anyone who does this work. I urge you to consider that “It happens to us too!” isn’t a gotcha — a problem with a broad base is WORSE than a narrow one. 15/16

So I urge you to take the students who say there’s a problem, like Emma, the students in our survey, or the one’s in @ijbailey’s classes, seriously. 16/16

https://twitter.com/ijbailey/status/1501268067967328256

BONUS: Read about how @uwoshkosh is muzzling the student press by requiring student journalists to seek permission from the university marketing office before speaking to ANY faculty or staff. 17/16

thefire.org/muzzling-the-c…