“YOU CAN’T SHOUT ‘FIRE!’ IN A CROWDED THEATER” is such a tedious cliché that First Amendment defenders can’t help but roll our eyes when we hear it. This sketch from FIRE’s legal director, Will Creeley, should clear up some of the most common misconceptions:

ANTI-SEMITISM IN HIGHER ED IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM… but the “Antisemitism Awareness Act” is unconstitutional.

NEVER FORGET JUNE 4, 1989: Zhou Fengsuo, a Tiananmen student leader, reflects on the day that shook the conscience of the free world.

FRUSTRATED WITH THE CHEAP RHETORICAL DODGES THAT PARTISANS USE TO SHORT CIRCUIT DEBATE? Rikki Schlott & I tried to create a comprehensive list of these dirty tricks in “The Canceling of the American Mind.” Before the paperback comes out, we’re looking for your feedback. Let us know what we missed!

DATA SHOWS THAT THE FARTHER LEFT YOU LEAN, THE MORE ANXIOUS, DEPRESSED, AND UNHAPPY YOU ARE. Dig into the data on “The mental health consequences of social justice fundamentalism” in my latest post for The Eternally Radical Idea.

ANYONE WHO’S READ OR SEEN ‘DUNE’ KNOWS THE LITANY AGAINST FEAR, BUT HAVE YOU HEARD THE LITANY AGAINST CERTAINTY?Take a look at the Eternally Radical Idea Weekend Update for a behind-the-scenes look at my experience delivering USF Health’s commencement address and Angel Eduardo’s original Litany Against Certainty.

CERTAINTY IS THE MIND-KILLER.Check out my speech from USF Health’s commencement last Thursday, a new episode of So to Speak, and a whole lot more in the Eternally Radical Idea Weekend Update.

HIGHER EDUCATION NEEDS REFORM, AND NOW IS THE TIME. On my Substack, the Eternally Radical Idea, today I survey the chaos that has embroiled college campuses across the US and beyond, doing my best to call balls and strikes between protected and unprotected political expression in the midst of an absolute hailstorm of protests and demonstrations.

“Not coincidentally, trust in higher education and respect for it have plummeted in recent years, while the cost has absolutely exploded. Someone attending Columbia today might expect to pay as much as $95,000 a year when including room and board. And where has this gargantuan increase in cost per student gone? It has overwhelmingly gone to the ranks of administrators and bureaucrats that have created the orthodoxy, the free speech problems, and the gross double standards in the first place.”

ONCE THE STRONGEST CONSTITUENCY ON CAMPUS, COLLEGE STUDENTS HAVE BY AND LARGE TURNED THEIR BACK ON FREE SPEECH. Take a step back from the recent campus turmoil and dig into the data with Sean Stevens and me in the latest chapter in our ongoing series, ‘The skeptics were wrong, Part 3.”

AMERICAN HIGHER ED’S FREE SPEECH PROBLEMS DIDN’T START ON OCT 7, 2023. My newest Substack piece looks at the absolute bedlam rocking college campuses across the country (Columbia chief among them), the ‘hypocrisy projection’ of people who didn’t care about free speech until it was their ideological comrades being censored, and more.

SILLY WALKS & FREE SPEECH TALKS: The full video of my interview with the legendary John Cleese is now available. Enjoy!

“WHILE HIS PROPOSALS APPEAR ON THE SURFACE TO BE AIMED ONLY AT MINORS, IN REALITY, THEY WOULD IMPLICATE THE RIGHTS OF ADULTS, TOO.” Check out my review of my good friend & previous co-author Jon Haidt’s latest book in which I address some First Amendment concerns with some of his proposed solutions.

‘THE ANXIOUS GENERATION’ IS AN EXCELLENT AND IMPORTANT BOOK … [h]owever, as a free speech advocate and First Amendment lawyer, I believe some of Jon’s proposals that reach beyond norms and into government legislation go too far and would restrict free speech rights.”

MY FIRST AMENDMENT CONCERNS WITH WITH MY COAUTHOR JON HAIDT’S NEW BOOK ‘THE ANXIOUS GENERATION.’

GURRI’S NEGATION: My term to convey Martin Gurri’s observation in his book, “The Revolt of the Public,” that the explosion of social media and information technology that coalesced to accelerate “The Fifth Wave,” has tremendous power to tear down institutions, ideas, and people, but, as of yet, very little ability to create or sustain.

GURRI’S NIHILISM: My term to describe the kind of nihilism Gurri describes in his book, in which negation is the primary approach and the lack of constructive or realistic suggestions or proposals amounts to a kind of de facto, and sometimes explicit, nihilism.

Martin Gurri’s “The Revolt of the Public” wins my highly-coveted “Prestigious Ashurbanipal Award” for the month of April!

MARTIN GURRI’S “THE REVOLT OF THE PUBLIC” WINS MY ‘PRESTIGIOUS ASHURBANIPAL AWARD’ FOR APRIL 2024. This book helps make sense of the chaos that social media has wrought on global communication and politics. It’s also beautifully designed and illustrated!

“OUR MEDIA REVOLUTION HAS ONLY BEEN ABLE TO TEAR THINGS DOWN. WE NEED TO LEARN HOW TO BUILD.” Check out my review for Martin Gurri’s “The Revolt of the Public”, the winner of April’s Prestigious Ashurbanipal Award!

COME SEE ME IN VA! AMY WAX DEBATES! GUERNICA GUERNICAS ITSELF! AND MORE! Bringing you the latest free speech news.

AND THE PRESTIGIOUS ASHURBANIPAL AWARD GOES TO… Abigail Shrier’s “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up.” Check out my latest ERI post to see why Shrier’s follow-up to Irreversible Damage is the most important book of the year.

JOHN CLEESE PUT ‘UNFUNNY’ COMEDY CENSORS IN THEIR PLACE, and lots more in the Eternally Radical Idea’s newest free speech weekend update.

LONDON CALLING: ERI’s newest free speech weekend update features come concerning free speech news from abroad and, for the first time ever, commentary on new First Amendment jurisprudence from FIRE’s very own general counsel, Ronnie London.