Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, formerly called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, is a 501 non-profit civil liberties group founded in 1999 with the mission of protecting freedom of speech on college campuses in the United States. FIRE changed its name in June 2022, when it broadened its focus from colleges to freedom of speech throughout American society. The New York Times describes FIRE as an "increasingly prominent free-speech organization".
FIRE is nonpartisan and has challenged Democratic and Republican politicians for threatening First Amendment rights. FIRE also rates academic institutions based on their free speech policies, adjudicates free speech controversies on college campuses, and educates the public in other ways. FIRE's president and CEO is attorney Greg Lukianoff, a regular commentator on First Amendment-related issues. The group has 120 employees, including a litigation department of about 20 lawyers.
Overview
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education was co-founded by Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglate in 1999. They remained FIRE's co-directors until 2004. Kors and Silverglate had co-authored a 1998 book opposing censorship at colleges following the water buffalo incident at the University of Pennsylvania. Silverglate had served on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Kors served as FIRE's first president and chairperson. Its first executive director and, later, CEO, was Thor Halvorssen.FIRE files lawsuits against colleges and universities that it perceives as curtailing First Amendment rights of students and professors. FIRE has been described as a competitor of the ACLU. FIRE was founded to be non-ideological and nonpartisan. According to a January 2025 article in New York magazine, a survey of FIRE email subscribers found 28 percent identify as left-leaning, 32 percent as right-leaning, and the rest as "other." In 2024, 60 percent of FIRE's casework involved people threatened by censorship attempts that came from their political right.
FIRE has received funding from groups which primarily support conservative and libertarian causes, including the Bradley Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Charles Koch Institute, although it receives donations from across the ideological spectrum. Among its other donors is the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation, as well as Jack Dorsey's philanthropic initiative #StartSmall. FIRE president Greg Lukianoff told Politico that the center-left Knight Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies were also donors.
According to New York Times journalist Cecilia Capuzzi Simon, "There are other groups that fight for First Amendment rights on campus, but none as vocal—or pushy—as FIRE." The Times also referred to FIRE as a "familiar irritant to college administrators," and said FIRE "bristles at the right-wing tag often applied to them." New York magazine has reported that the label may result from FIRE’s historic defense of conservative and heterodox professors and students on college campuses where progressives dominate. Cathy Young, a Cato Institute fellow and columnist for The Bulwark, wrote that "FIRE has handled many cases involving speech suppression in the name of progressive values, it is that rare group which actually means it when it claims to be nonpartisan", noting that it had sued on behalf of a professor who was fired because of a negative tweet about Mike Pence.
In June 2022, FIRE announced it was expanding its efforts beyond college campuses, to American society. It was renamed Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, keeping the acronym FIRE. It detailed a $75 million expansion plan over three years to focus on "litigation, public education, and research." Josh Gerstein wrote in Politico that "part of the push may challenge the American Civil Liberties Union's primacy as a defender of free speech." Politico also wrote that FIRE would spend $10 million on "planned national cable and billboard advertising featuring activists on both ends of the political spectrum extolling the virtues of free speech." In April 2023, FIRE hosted a gala in New York City to celebrate its expanded mission. The event featured keynote remarks by rapper Killer Mike, who told the audience, "Right now, in this country, your freedom of speech is at risk."
During the second Trump administration, FIRE has defended private colleges and universities from federal attacks. In May 2025, the group signed onto a nonpartisan coalition letter urging academic institutions to defend “First Amendment rights” from the Trump administration’s “efforts to suppress speech.” In June 2025, FIRE filed a brief in support of Harvard University’s lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s cuts in research funding, despite the group’s past criticism of Harvard’s free speech policies. The group has also supported pro-Palestinian protestors on free speech grounds. Suzanne Nossel, former president and chief executive of PEN America, said that FIRE’s non-ideological, nonpartisan approach "has made for some strange bedfellows for FIRE, but they have not flinched."
Organization
FIRE is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with another office in Washington, D.C. As of August 2025, FIRE has an annual budget of more than $32 million and a team of 120 employees, including a litigation department of about 20 lawyers. Staffers include progressives, libertarians, and conservatives. FIRE’s donations from individuals and foundations increased from $7.2 million in 2015 to $36.5 million in 2024. The group receives about 1,500 case inquiries a year, assisting with roughly 400 of them on average.Leadership
First Amendment attorney and The Coddling of the American Mind co-author Greg Lukianoff serves as president and CEO. Lukianoff has criticized the ideological left and right for attacking free speech rights. Nico Perrino is executive vice president. Ira Glasser, former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, serves on FIRE's Advisory Council. Former ACLU President Nadine Strossen is a Senior Fellow. Will Creeley, son of the poet Robert Creeley, is FIRE's legal director. When asked about his role at the organization in a January 2025 interview, Creeley said, "I look at the job as being an honest broker, kind of like being an ambulance driver in the culture wars. You just show up and do the job. I want to think of myself as a plumber: They don't ask about your politics; they just fix the sink."Policy positions
Campus speech
FIRE rates colleges with a red, yellow, or green light based on its assessments of speech restrictions, with a red light meaning that a college policy "both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech." Since 2006, the group has rated hundreds of public and private higher education institutions. FIRE's percentage of colleges with "red light" speech codes increased in 2022 for the first time in 15 years. In 2025, 73 of the 490 surveyed colleges and universities received a “green light” rating—the highest share since 2012—while nearly 15 percent fell into the “red light” category, promoting policies that FIRE says “clearly and substantially restrict free speech.” FIRE also gives colleges that do not promise their students free speech rights a "warning" rating. In 2007, George Mason University faculty member Jon Gould criticized FIRE's rating methods, arguing that FIRE had exaggerated the prevalence of unconstitutional speech codes.In 2020, FIRE partnered with College Pulse and RealClearEducation to release the College Free Speech Rankings, a comparison of student free-speech environments at America's top college campuses. The rankings incorporate FIRE's speech code ratings, but also include surveys of students at the ranked schools. In their 2025 rankings, FIRE and College Pulse ranked more than 250 schools and surveyed over 58,000 students, with the University of Virginia achieving the top ranking and Harvard University ranking last. Bill Maher, Elon Musk, and other commentators have praised FIRE’s research. FIRE has challenged free speech zones on college campuses, claiming they are unconstitutional restrictions on First Amendment rights. The organization has provided legal support to students contesting free speech zones, while also supporting legislation to eliminate such zones. In his book Speech Out of Doors: Preserving First Amendment Liberties in Public Places, law professor Timothy Zick wrote "in large part due to litigation and other advocacy efforts, campus expressive zoning policies have been highlighted, altered, and in a number of cases repealed."
During campus protests over the Gaza war, FIRE representatives have said that colleges and universities can enact "reasonable time, place, and manner" restrictions but they must be applied in "a content viewpoint neutral manner." In 2020, FIRE created a database to monitor free speech controversies that developed at two- and four-year nonprofit institutions. Between 2020 and 2024, the group tracked over 1,000 efforts to punish students for their speech, finding that speech-related investigations and punishments from administrators and government officials accelerated at an unprecedented rate during that period.