Free speech doesn't defend itself. From fighting censorship in court to defending students on campus, @theFIREorg’s work depends on talented people who believe these freedoms are worth fighting for. We're hiring across several teams! 👇

Listen, I know not everyone is going to agree with @TheFIREorg all the time. That’s unavoidable when you’re committed to being a genuinely nonpartisan institution in a hyperpartisan society, and when you don't shy away from complex cases that divide even the most thoughtful of us. But here’s my take: If you agree with FIRE 50% of the time, you should probably be a donor. If you agree with us 80% of the time, you should probably work here!

Good question. A big reason we do this is to show American audiences how bad things can get without freedom of speech. It’s especially jarring when it’s Britain, America’s mother country, from which we borrowed, and alongside which we developed, so much of the small-l liberal tradition. Britain now arrests thousands of people a year for speech-related offenses, yet the issue receives remarkably poor coverage there. When I bring it up with Brits, too often the response is, “Well, they’re bad people. Who cares?” My mother is British, and the UK and EU’s approach to social problems reminds me of her habit of declaring uncomfortable subjects off-limits at the dinner table. You’ll be shocked to learn that this did not make the problems go away. That same refusal to confront reality is helping fuel the unrest we’re seeing on the European continent, and it will lead to further instability and increasingly draconian measures. Yet European censorship is defended with astonishing arrogance, as though keeping people ignorant of what their fellow citizens actually think is obviously for their own good.