Academic Freedom Watchdog Group Appoints New Point Man
by Jim Brown
June 3, 2004
(AgapePress) - A group known for protecting the academic freedom of university faculty members and student groups has named a new president. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has appointed attorney David French to the post.| | 
David French |
French has served as Religious Freedom Counsel for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and has successfully litigated two FIRE cases against unconstitutional censorship at Tufts and Shippensburg Universities. He says there is no organization quite like FIRE, an organization "whose unique position ... makes it uniquely effective."According to French, "administrators at universities are not able to dismiss FIRE as being a group with any particular political agenda, and therefore have to pay attention to our actual arguments for academic freedom and for the rights of students and teachers. And often they can't counter the arguments that we make."
The attorney says he would like to see the speech and harassment codes that are so often used to stifle dissent from "the university line" totally eradicated, and the pervasive level of thought reform on campuses put to an end.
"From the beginning of many students' admission to school," French contends, "they will attend orientation sessions that basically teach them to discard any belief system they brought into college with them in favor of the college's approved belief system. Through their classes and even up to graduation, they'll be taught that there is only one right way to think about many important issues on campus."
In addition to fighting this kind of intellectual oppression, French says his goal is to eliminate the ongoing scandal of ideological discrimination in faculty hiring. FIRE's newly appointed president, who is also the co-author of the organization's forthcoming Guide to Free Speech On Campus, will assume his new post June 28.
