At a press conference in Washington, D.C. today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) will formally launch its Guides to Student Rights on Campus, which you can learn about and read at thefireguides.org. If you follow campus politics at all, you know about FIRE--they are the ones who ride in on a white horse when campus administrators and professors are in the act of violating student and faculty civil liberties. They rescue the wronged and lay down the legal and ethical gauntlet for would-be campus demagogues (most recently, FIRE defended Citrus College students against a speech professor who was offering students extra credit for espousing her political views). They are a non-partisan group, though they commonly get mislabelled as conservative, and their work is essential to preserving--or in some cases restoring--the climate of intellectual freedom without which higher education would be a complete and utter joke. Their mission is clear: they defend First Amendment rights on campus. And their strategy is simple: exposure. "Sunlight," Justice Brandeis said, "is the best disinfectant." The phrase is FIRE's motto.

But damage control and rescue missions can only get you so far. They may right wrongs, but they don't prevent the wrongs from occurring, and they don't prepare people to recognize when they are being wronged or show them how to defend themselves when they find their rights encroached upon by illiberal speech codes, partisan funding practices, mandatory sensitivity training, and similar outrages that are becoming the norm on many campuses today.

So FIRE is expanding its role to include education. The Guides to Student Rights on Campus are remarkable tools--students and faculty can use them to figure out what their rights are, and admins can use them to make sure that school policies and procedures respect individual rights. They contain historical background, discussion of relevant case law, and advice for defending oneself or one's group against intrusive or unfair policies. They contain the information that every college and university administrator should be required to know and respect as a condition of employment--but is not. And they contain the information that every college and university student and faculty member should know about their rights and responsibilities as citizens of an intellectual community--but all too often do not.

How significant is the launch of these Guides? Significant enough that at today's press conference, former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese and ACLU President Nadine Strossen will speak in support of them.

Check the Guides out when you have a minute--and make sure you let your kids and your friends and your friends with kids know about them too.

The Guides are a great idea, and FIRE is doing important work. But what *also* needs to happen is to give the general population a better understanding of just what is really going on at these campuses. I have mentioned these incidents to several people, and they tend to react that it must be mis-reporting, or "isolated incidents." I think very few Americans outside of academia understand the degree to which freedom is under assault on our campuses. FIRE, or some other organization, needs to engage in a serious education/PR campaign.