THREAD: My latest Eternally Radical Idea newsletter responded to @DavidColeACLU’s review of my & @RIKKISCHLOTT’s newest book, The Canceling of the American Mind in @nybooks. 1/16

simonandschuster.com/books/The-Canc… While it was a mostly positive review (thanks David!) & I have tremendous respect for the author, I did take issue with a few claims. 2/16

nybooks.com/articles/2024/…

THREAD: With FIRE’s expansion to off-campus work, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about #freespeech philosophy. My series with former ACLU President, the great Nadine Strossen answers common arguments against free speech. 1/18

thefire.org/tag/free-speec… Part 1: Free speech does NOT equal violence. We discuss whether freedom of speech rests on a false notion that words & violence are distinct. SPOILER: It doesn’t!. 2/18

thefire.org/free-speech-do…

Much virtual ink is spilled over the term “cancel culture.” Conservatives complain about it while perpetuating it, some progressives deny that it exists. @TheFIREorg’s @Komi_Tea & I explain in our recent piece for @thedailybeast. 1/12

thedailybeast.com/dont-stop-usin… Last week, @nytimes published an editorial on America’s “#FreeSpeech problem,” citing a poll that showed that over the past year, 55% of respondents self-censored for fear of retaliation or harsh criticism. 2/12

nytimes.com/2022/03/18/opi…

THREAD: Free speech culture didn’t come out of nowhere, it’s been built on the foundation of centuries of conflict, philosophy & law. If you want to brush up on the history, look no further than my #FreeSpeech Culture Study List. 1/18

thefire.org/gregs-recommen… With a unique & international perspective, @JMchangama’s timely & thorough “Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media” shows how ancient & global the fight for free speech has been. 2/18

amzn.to/3BoqFfF

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…

THREAD: This week I am in @reason Magazine with a feature on ‘The Second Great Age of Political Correctness.’ By the mid-90s “PC” had become a joke, derided across the political spectrum See: the (not good) Jeremy Piven movie PCU. 1/14

reason.com/2021/12/13/the… Many students stopped calling it “PC,” but the trend it described didn’t disappear, it just went off the public radar in the “ignored years” of campus #freespeech. During that time problems persisted & got worse. 2/14

New on ERI: @AdGo & @pebonilla on why a Yale lecturer targeted for her ‘dehumanizing’ comment about coffee in rural Ohio should be a wake-up call for campus leadership. 1/26

thefire.org/yales-treatmen… This semester, most of the attention on free speech at Yale has been focused on two words: “trap house.” See @aaronsibarium ‘s excellent coverage here: 2/26

freebeacon.com/campus/a-yale-…

THREAD: Just out! Part 3 of the official Afterword for Coddling of the American Mind (by me & @jonhaidt): Increased persecution on campus since 2018. 1/5

thefire.org/coddling-the-a… When COVID hit, instead of a lull @TheFIREorg saw a surge in cases like none we’d ever seen in our history. 2/5

THREAD: @JonHaidt & I are proud to present pt 1 of our Afterword to our 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind, examining the decline in mental health among Gen Z. 1/5

thefire.org/coddling-the-a… We set out to write an Afterword for inclusion in COTAM’s 2nd Ed but it ended up so many pages as to raise the price of the book. So instead we’re releasing it in 9 parts on @TheFIREorg’s website for the next two months. 2/5

Wondering about the controversy surrounding "anti-CRT” bills popping up all over the country? You’re not alone. It’s taken me several weeks & 3 co-authors to write this 5000+ word piece (1/34)

thefire.org/13-important-p… .@AdGo @RynoWeiss & Bonnie Snyder have put together 13 points you should know about the “anti-CRT” law debate. (2/34)

After tabulating the votes, the winner of my first EXCESSIVELY Prestigious Award for book of the year is @jon_rauch’s Kindly Inquisitors, what I've called the most important on #freespeech of the last 50 years! 1/6
thefire.org/jonathan-rauch… For the honor, I had @TheFIREorg’s @aaron_reese make this dope gif, explaining Rauch’s Commandments — two core tenets of liberal science! 2/6

THREAD: The great @IonaItalia asked me to participate in @AreoMagazine’s #FreeSpeechFortnite, so I wrote a listicle of 12 answers to common, bad arguments against #freespeech. Here’s the short attention span version! 1/14

areomagazine.com/2021/05/25/ans… First there’s that XKCD comic that people trot out to justify just about any censorship. It wrongly conflates the First Amendment, which is the legal framework for free speech in the US, & free speech generally. It also doesn’t even get the 1A right! 2/14

NEW Prestigious Awards: My book of the month goes to @juliagalef’s The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Clearly & Others Don’t, a book with powerful tools for fighting self-deception! 1/9

thefire.org/the-scout-mind… The book helps rein in the toughest self-deception: motivated reasoning, i.e. realizing when we’re weighting evidence based on what we WANT to be true.

It’s also everything popular nonfiction should be: clear, well-written, thoughtful, funny, & full of stories. 2/9

NEW: Catching Up With Coddling Pt 17. Hearing disturbing reports of K-12 programming with no respect for the individuality of students or the diverse points of view of students, I created a beta version of 10 principles for a healthier K-12 system. 1/12

thefire.org/the-empowering… 1. No compelled speech, thought, or belief. It is usually bad to tell someone what they cannot say. It is usually far worse to tell someone what they must say, & it is always wrong to tell people what they must think or believe. 2/12

NEW: “Catching Up With ‘Coddling’”! @AdGo & I theorize how ideological litmus tests in education schools may have contributed to the changing ideas about #socialjustice we saw arriving on campus around 2013. 1/10

thefire.org/catching-up-wi… This is the FOURTEENTH part in the series where we revisit the topics in @JonHaidt & my 2018 book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” with new data, developments, & caveats. 2/10

amzn.to/39w0DLr

A new “Catching Up With ‘Coddling’”! We’re looking at the effects of bureaucratization on campus. In other words, as colleges evolve into megacorporations, what does that mean for inquiry, education, & #freespeech? 1/21

thefire.org/catching-up-wi… This is the TENTH part in the series where we revisit the topics in @JonHaidt & my 2018 book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” with new data, developments, & caveats. 2/21

amzn.to/39w0DLr

THREAD: The winner of my Prestigious Ashurbanipal award for February 2021 is @mgurri’s prophetic book “The Revolt of the Public,” specifically the extended 2018 edition. 1/10

thefire.org/gurris-negatio… Recommended to me by @kmele, it has had a profound effect on my thinking on the state of the world.

The book introduces two key concepts I’ve incorporated into my “modular argument” for #freespeech. 2/10

THREAD: This week, we got an email from someone who found our Catching Up With “Coddling” (CUWC) series on thecoddling.com & asked why we stopped the series after 2 articles. Concerning, b/c we’ve published 8 of them so far! 1/12 cc: @JonHaidt It was our fault that the articles were not as easy to find as they should have been, so we’re making navigation tweaks with the help of FIRE's great web dev @jpmerig. If YOU didn’t know about them, read on! 2/12

THREAD: For some fun TGIF fare let’s highlight some great @TheFIREorg gifs (TGIGIFs?) made by our AMAZING comms staff! (All of which are available through the gif button on Twitter & Facebook!) 1/8 I LOVE this animation of the logo for my blog, the Eternally Radical Idea! It salutes 3 once-radical ideas — the earth’s elliptical orbit around the sun, the structure of hydrogen AND Doctor Manhattan’s iconic symbol! 2/8

thefire.org/category/etern…

THREAD: In our 8th installment of Catching Up With Coddling, our series updating trends @JonHaidt and I covered in Coddling of the American Mind, we’re covering free play & childhood independence with help from @FreeRangeKids & @DianeRedleaf. 1/10

thefire.org/catching-up-wi… Since 2018, studies have continued to confirm the positive effects of free play on childhood development. For example, Feb 2020 meta-analysis of 16 studies showed a variety of benefits of outdoor free play vs structured indoor play 2/10

journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…

Today on ERI: @AdGo calls out @UCF for its attempt to fire tenured prof @CharlesNegy in a way that "will undermine the concept of academic freedom." (1/22)

thefire.org/ucf-is-killing… In Dec. 2019, students complained about Negy’s tweets, calling them racist & harmful; @UCF said they were #freespeech. In June 2020, students complained again. This time, @UCF solicited more complaints & opened an investigation. (2/22)

ucf.edu/news/addressin…