Ep 426: Is Free Speech in Trouble? with Connor Murnane of FIRE

[00:00:03] Voiceover: Welcome to the show that gets Christians thinking about faith and politics. Get ready to challenge the status quo. Expand your imagination and tackle controversy head on. Let’s stand together at the intersection of faith and freedom. It’s time for the Libertarian Christian podcast.

[00:00:22] Cody Cook: Greetings! You are listening to or watching the Libertarian Christian Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and a participant in the Christians for Liberty network. My guest today is Connor Murnane. He’s the campus advocacy chief of staff at fire, and I think he had a different title when we talked to you a couple years ago. Yeah. Um, and so we can talk about that as well. So, so fire or the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has a mission to defend and sustain the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought, the most essential qualities of liberty. Uh, fire educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them. And as I mentioned, we did do a brief interview at Freedomfest with Connor two years ago. So thanks for talking with LCI again.

[00:01:11] Connor Murnane: No. Always a pleasure, Cody.

[00:01:13] Cody Cook: Well, so, uh, folks who may have heard of fire in the past might have known you under a different name. So fire changed this name, but kept the acronym. Um, in 2022. So it was the foundation for individual rights in education. And that was I think that was a at the time, that was something that everybody was really talking about. Was our college campuses becoming these places where you can’t really talk. And then, of course, there’s the right wing talking points that it’s woke and, you know, its own kind of culture of, you know, kind of almost like a pseudo religious culture of progressivism. Um, but the name change is now. You’re now the foundation for individual rights and expression. And so what did that change signify? And how has has fire’s mission expanded significantly since making that change? Or is the focus still on, on, uh, individual rights in school.

[00:01:58] Connor Murnane: So we we have always kept the same mission, you know, single issue free speech. Right. But the we always got questions, you know, uh, is just getting at students for those four years enough or, you know, just protecting universities enough to create a culture across the board or, you know, questions like, is there are there issues with the K-12 system putting students into the university and they don’t understand, you know, simple First Amendment rights or academic freedom, uh, topics. So they’re kind of going in and getting swept up in a, a liberal culture. So we we said, okay, we hear you, we hear you after all these years. So we expanded. And the change signified a mission expansion from just free speech in higher ed to free speech nationwide. Right. So that issue didn’t change just the scope. And we didn’t get rid of any of our higher ed programs. In fact, I think our higher ed staff has grown since because the work hasn’t stopped. But this expansion involved the launch of our public advocacy Department. So we have a campus rights advocacy program. We’ve had it for years. It used to be called the Individual Rights Defense Program, and that’s where we’re defending pro bono students and faculty rights on an advocacy basis, sometimes connecting them with our lawyers and our legal network. In all 50 states, we have our own internal litigation capacities. So we stood one up off of campus to defend the rights of, you know, a student who wants to wear.

[00:03:20] Connor Murnane: Let’s go Brandon shirt, uh, to, uh, you know, elementary school field day, um, getting involved in book ban issues. We also expanded our research mandate for a long time. Fire. Had we still do one of the biggest, you know, college surveys on free speech and free expression, student opinion, etc.. But now we’re doing a, you know, a national opinion poll on a I believe it was weekly. I think we’re shifting to monthly basis just to measure the general public sentiment on free speech. And like I mentioned, we also had a huge increase in our litigation capacity, which now sees us in court representing citizen journalists. We were just, you know, writing to the Supreme Court got kicked back down to the Fifth Circuit. But we’re we’re fighting our way back up. We’re defending, you know, Iowa pollster and seltzer from Donald Trump and more across the board. But I do want to emphasize and as my my title, you know, should signal, we recognize that colleges play this incredibly vital role in preserving free thought in a free society. So to that end, we will always, you know, and maybe I’m a little biased, Cody, but we will always place a special emphasis on defending the individual rights of students and faculty members on campus, because that’s where we cut our teeth. And we we do think that, you know, for any good education, free speech is the foundation.

[00:04:35] Cody Cook: Well, yeah, I think academia is also kind of an important pillar of, I think, creating society particularly kind of from a more, more, more at the top level. Right. Like what are our politicians and journalists and, you know, sort of intellectuals, how are they approaching these issues? So it’s important, I think, to think about that. You did mention, um, a book bans. And that’s been an interesting subject in the last few years because there have been some kind of conservative. Uh, well, you have basically, conservatives and progressives tend to see this differently. Right? You’ve had some progressive trying to get books into schools, public schools, elementary schools, um, that, um, talk about kind of LGBT stuff. And then you have some conservatives who reject that and also maybe point out point to some of the more extreme examples and saying, well, actually some of this is arguably pornography, right? And so has has fire gotten involved in any of that kind of stuff or.

[00:05:26] Connor Murnane: K-12. Curriculum is tough, right. We we understand that there are age concerns. You know, a kindergarten library should realistically look a little different than a, you know, a high school seniors library, for instance. But what we what we want to see is a transparent process across the board. Um, and our issue will often come more when it kind of rolls out into a public library. And what, you know, a public library is displaying what kind of events they’re putting on what they have on their shelves. So that’s where most of our work focuses. But same thing, right? You know, if you’re going to go through this kind of process, we want transparency. We don’t want, you know, political grievance to be the side that’s tipping. We want to see something a bit more substantive.

[00:06:06] Cody Cook: Yeah. Because because I mean, I assume, you know, public colleges, we’re talking about adults. Whereas, you know, younger than that. It’s a little more complicated.

[00:06:12] Connor Murnane: We get that question all the time just from a from a pure rights standpoint. You know, a K-12 curriculum is often mandated by the state. Right. You know, a student in a has to meet certain benchmarks. You know, I don’t don’t make me get into it. But standardized testing, all those, you know, fun topics. But then once you get into a college classroom, individual faculty members have a lot more leeway to, you know, design a course. Students get to kind of pick and choose what they’re doing even outside of their own major. So the kind of protections that they have to really pursue an idea or a topic changes. And that’s why, you know, we we started in higher ed because that’s where the First Amendment protection should be. Some of the most substantive and substantial.

[00:06:56] Cody Cook: Well, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense to me. So when fire is you know, maybe arguably only focus was was free speech on campuses. You became, I think, pretty well known for highlighting some liberal speech policies in American colleges and universities. Do you feel like there were certain specific cases that like, put you guys on the map or that ended up maybe serving as important examples of what your mission was?

[00:07:16] Connor Murnane: Yeah, there’s a few. You know, we could point back to the are you familiar with the Water Buffalo Incident? I guess even even if you are, your listeners might not be. Um, I sometimes forget when I’m doing a podcast or even a radio. I get sucked into the conversation. I forget that there’s a there’s an outside purpose. Um, so the Water Buffalo Incident was probably fires first case, but really before there was a fire. Uh, so the student and I may, you know, paraphrase around the edges here because it was, you know, 1998, 99, um, the student, an Israeli student, was studying at the University of Pennsylvania in his dorm for finals or writing an essay or something. And there was a group of sorority girls outside the building being very loud, you know. I don’t know if it was an event or they were just out there being, you know, what 18, 19 year old 20 year olds do, you know? And a bunch of students were shouting out, and this student leaned out the window and shouted, you know, shut up, you water buffalo. Now, he was an Israeli student. Turns out this was an all black sorority. And these students decided that, you know, we’re going to, uh, you know, make a complaint to the university because this was a racial comment made at us, um, when security for the University of Pennsylvania went around and knocked on doors, the student happened to be the only one who said, yeah, it was me.

[00:08:27] Connor Murnane: I was yelling, and here’s what I said. Now, I don’t speak Hebrew or anything, but apparently a term for kind of a loud, rowdy person almost directly translates to water buffalo. So he wasn’t using it as a racial epithet. He was just, you know, making the closest translation. And university administrators kind of egged on this kind of hate harassment case, and it dragged on for a long time, and he ended up linking up with Alan Charles Kors, one of fires founders, who at the time and then even after founding fire, was a professor there and of course, was representing him in university disciplinary situations, going to like the New York ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union, all these other entities, and saying, can someone find me anywhere where water buffalo has been used as a as a racial phrase? And they couldn’t, but it really wasn’t a like campus disciplinary process that actually won the day. It was that outside pressure of bringing this kind of this student said a thing didn’t mean, you know, a racial offense, but now it’s being dragged in that direction and kind of look at the silliness speech codes have wrought now.

[00:09:36] Connor Murnane: So that was that was kind of what launched fire. If I am, you know, picking and choosing my own preferred case. Kevin Shaw Shore. I think this was 2015, 2016. He was a student at um, Pierce College, which is a small part of the Los Angeles Community College System. And the L.A. Community College system at the time had something like 150,000 students, and he was handing out little pocket constitutions like, I know I have one on my shelf. I’m sure you and most of your listeners have a ton just handing those out on campus. And they said, no, you can’t do that. But you can go to this tiny, tiny free speech zone and did the math. The free speech zone represented 0.003% of campus. You can’t do that on a public university campus. You can’t say this little thing that’s the size of a parking space is, you know, your your where you can distribute the Constitution, where you can use your free speech rights. And that kind of kicked off, um, fires first lawsuit in what we called the Million Voices litigation campaign, which was really targeted at combating the concept of a free speech zone, especially on public university campuses, so that, you know, that’s my one of my favorites.

[00:10:50] Cody Cook: Yeah, yeah. I wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur of racial slurs or anything, but I’ve never heard Water Buffalo used in a racial context. That’s interesting. But and that sort of shows, I think, where, you know, the university is putting their thumb on the scale to kind of push things in a certain direction, to try to silence free speech and, you know, silence, I think sounds like really even just debate on what was happening.

[00:11:10] Connor Murnane: Yeah, we’ve seen it for decades. You know, speech codes, everyone. Everyone hears speech codes. And, you know, you should get a chill in your spine, right? Because for a speech code to exist, it needs to kind of rely on a double standard, right? It needs to rely on there being, there being protected speech. That is unacceptable here. But also, you know, you look into it and it’s something that I’m not a lawyer. I’ve worked really hard not to not to get a law degree in my life. I work with so many talented lawyers, but something I will always laugh at. I look at, you know, a reasonable person may find offensive language in university speech codes. I like to think I’m reasonable. My my wife may say I’m not, but I’m sure what I find offensive is going to be different than what you find offensive or what my wife finds offensive. So I don’t know how you govern an institution based on something like that, but we see those weaponized all the time on campus to squash speech, you know, the administration or leadership or, you know, even a loud minority students don’t like.

[00:12:07] Cody Cook: Yeah. Well, and I mean, I mean, years ago, I remember this was, I think, when I became really aware of some of these cases about conservatives inviting someone onto campus, even somebody who was kind of inflammatory, like Milo Yiannopoulos. And you’d have, um, you know, progressive demonstrators who would really try to shout down, shut down, make threats, and the universities would side with people who were trying to silence. They would sort of say like, you know, well, you know, we understand and your feelings are more important than, you know, than free speech. And so like, yeah, I and I think some of this stuff became, I think just kind of headline type stuff. And so I think really made a name name for itself as being a group that was willing to take some of that stuff on head on. So we’re starting.

[00:12:48] Connor Murnane: And, you know, it’s so easy and sorry for interrupting, but it is so easy to like, latch on to that and get negative. I, as a born and raised pessimist, I get it. We’re actually starting to see some really positive stuff in the other direction. Um, schools like Dartmouth, an Ivy League. I never thought I’d be on a, you know, a show like this praising an Ivy League school. They’re starting to develop programs to train administrators, you know, uh, senior level faculty. I forget the specific name that they call it, but basically how to ensure an event goes off without a hitch while also ensuring a counter-protest can function. And any student group who’s doing any kind of event like this at Dartmouth can request one of these administrators to attend. And it’s such a great idea because it allows every group to, you know, go through their expressive activities, keeps them in protected boundaries, and prevents the university from having to clamp down because frankly, it’s a rough spot to be in. So these preventative and these educational measures ahead. Awesome. You know a University of South Carolina, they two years ago, maybe three years ago were in like the bottom bottom little percent of our college free speech rankings, which I hope we can get into some.

[00:13:57] Connor Murnane: They went through a huge policy rewrite. They redid their kind of core philosophical statement on free expression and communicated it to the students every step of the way. And then what do you know, the very next semester, I believe it was the Turning Point USA chapter. I might be wrong there, but it was a right leaning student org. They wanted to do a roast of Kamala Harris leading up to the presidential election, and there were so many calls for, you know, you can’t do this. It’s going to be a problem. You know, hate speech, all that. And the university said, nuh uh. And just, you know, pointed to their new new commitment to free expression. And what do you know, it went off without a hitch. And then in our following ranking cycle, we saw huge increases in students belief in the university to protect free speech, and students understanding of the boundaries of free speech of students nonsupport for using violence or shout downs to stop speech. So it’s amazing what you know, institutional leadership can do when it doesn’t just talk the talk, but it can, you know, follow it up with the walk. You know, walking the walk, I guess is the best way to say it.

[00:15:01] Cody Cook: Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think that’s what I mean. A lot of I think maybe older folks especially sort of saw that when they looked at what’s been happening at these colleges and universities is that administrators are sort of afraid to be the adults in the room because they see students as customers, which is understandable. And they’re trying to kind of, you know, keep the customers happy and, and, but but in doing so, you’ve turned what the environment of the university is supposed to be an environment of free inquiry into something else. Um, so yeah, that’s cool. I like that they’re doing a free speech sensitivity training. I suppose you could call it.

[00:15:38] Connor Murnane: I don’t want to agree with you, but I’ll give it to you there.

[00:15:42] Cody Cook: Um, okay. So, you know, this is the libertarian Christian podcast, and some libertarian purists would argue, um, that, you know, what we should be shooting for is this ideal of private colleges and universities, um, which would not necessarily they would really maybe treat students more as customers and they would not necessarily be in favor of free speech in the same way, or at least be required to be or expected to be. And so, you know, from from that view, from that point of view, could fires work be seen as kind of a stopgap? Um, you know, while we have public universities, they should be free environments. But another question is, um, even in these kind of more private environments, um, fire, I think, has also been pushing for maybe like a culture of free speech. So I’d be curious to kind of hear how that all washes out in your in your thought.

[00:16:30] Connor Murnane: So it’s a really interesting question. And I’m, I’m going to use the excuse of being a purely nonpartisan organization that has never and will never comment on the content of speech we defend. To say, I can’t comment on the libertarian purist argument, but I’d love to chat about it at some point. But it’s one I’ve never really, really thunk through and debated myself. But for fire and I think this will play across regardless of how you view the university system in our mind, universities can only function at their full potential with maximum protections for free speech. And I’ll give you two real specific reasons, right. We’ve all we’ve all heard the marketplace of ideas. So it was just a Justice Holmes, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., I think. And he wrote a now I’m going to butcher his quote after butchering his name. But something like the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the market. So in a college campus, that means the only way to figure out what’s true is by letting ideas compete openly, fully, without the administration gatekeeping certain conversations. And then, even if truth doesn’t win right away, free speech still plays such an important role to get there eventually. And that’s what fires President Greg Lukianoff calls the informational theory of speech. So he says speech helps us understand what people actually believe, even when those beliefs are troubling. And, you know, without it, we’re flying blind. You know, we can’t diagnose a problem or push for change. And, uh, our, uh, our Bostonian other co-founder, um, Harvey Silverglate puts it, I can’t. I wish I could do his accent, but he’ll tell you, I walk into a room.

[00:18:05] Connor Murnane: I want to know who the Nazis are, so I don’t turn my back to them. Right. So just. Just knowing the world as it is, you know, whether it’s a scientific study, whether it’s someone you’re befriending, whether it’s a potential relationship, knowing who they are, what they think has value. And then on a college campus where you’re, you know, the number one goal should be the, you know, discovery and dissemination of knowledge. You can’t do that. If suddenly there are certain guidelines, guardrails or boundaries put on the exact lines of inquiry or even what you can discuss. It’s why, you know, there are some organizations out there, Hillsdale College, um, you know, pretty good if you want to you want a American government or history education. You know, I’ll say they’re pretty solid. I went to a sister school of Hillsdale. It does a lot of their work, but they don’t actually have a free speech promise on the books. They also don’t take federal money. So there’s no no title, no title. Nine concerns. They’re a private institution. They’re not bound by the First Amendment. But above any commitment they make to free speech is a civility oath. So basically they say, you know, real discourse, real dialog can only fully function if we’re civil. But then I’ll go back to that, that, you know what a rational person may find offensive. I think reasonable people can disagree on what civil dialog is. So it gets really messy. So for for fire, the bottom line is if we really want to pursue knowledge to wherever the end is going to be. We need full protections for that discussion, for that research and for that expression.

[00:19:37] Cody Cook: Yeah, no, I like what you said about, uh, you know, when you walk in a room, you want to know who the Nazis are. I think there’s this sense that, you know, kind of illiberal and censorious people have that if if people aren’t allowed to tell you what they think that means, they don’t. They’re not thinking things that are bad, right? It’s like, well, no, they are. You just don’t know it. Right. And so there’s, you know, I think speech is kind of a, you know, a lagging indicator of thought. Right. And so if you if you want to know what people are thinking and you want to be able to address what they’re saying and what they have, what’s wrong with what their thought process, you have to be able to hear what they have to say.

[00:20:13] Connor Murnane: Frederick Douglass um, and. Oh, jeez, I’m not even gonna guess on the year. Uh, but he gave a speech titled “A Plea for Free Speech in Boston”, where he called free speech the great moral renovator of society and government. Right. The idea of, you where where injustice is found, where people think there’s an issue. Speech calls it out and where speech calls out injustice. Change can be made, right. So you just move that to education. You don’t think we have the answer? Someone needs to ask the question to get us closer to the answer.

[00:20:43] Cody Cook: Yeah, yeah. That’s good. Well, so. So since expanding the mission, what kind of work has fire taken on? They might have not taken on before.

[00:20:52] Connor Murnane: Um. Oh, a ton. Uh, we we actually, early on in our expansion, realized the amount of, like, pure questions we were getting that were suddenly in our new wheelhouse was substantial. So we put together these really, uh, I call them fun, but maybe I’m just a little crazy. These rapid response meetings every morning, some, you know, leadership across various fire departments will get together and analyze kind of the news of the day and figure out fire’s position that’s been cut down a little bit now that we’re, you know, 2 or 3 years into this and we’ve learned a lot of our new positions, but we’re taking on cases I mentioned. Let’s Go Brandon, You know, a middle schooler attended a field day with a. Let’s Go Brandon. You know, the euphemism for f Joe Biden? I don’t know the, you know, the the audience rating for this, so I’ll say f unless I’m told otherwise. Um, uh, and we, you know, represented them because they’re sent home from field day. You know, you can’t do that. It’s an inflammatory shirt. Well, no, it’s political messaging. We have, you know, decisions like Tinker that, you know, allow students to wear these things. I mentioned we’re representing Ann Selzer. She was the Iowa pollster who predicted Donald Trump was going to lose Iowa by 13 points. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Now Trump is you know, Trump and another organization in Iowa are suing her. We’re representing Ann. I mentioned some book ban cases we’ve taken on. Some of my favorites have been town council issues. Uh, you know, Franklin, Tennessee, they had a LGBTQ pride parade that they did every year for a long time, and a new permit was requested to do it again.

[00:22:26] Connor Murnane: And they said, you know what? We’re gonna we’re gonna hold off on deciding on the permit. And first we’re going to debate whether or not we should put in a, a, you know, a town behavioral ordinance to determine what kind of behavior is acceptable in Seville and meets our community decency standards. And then again, who gets to decide what’s decent in the community? Well, the five people on this board of aldermen. So, you know, we said, no, you can’t do that. It’s unconstitutional. If you’re going to make these calls, they need to be done on a viewpoint neutral way, not based on what you consider decent behavior, etc.. So those have been fun. Um, all all over the place, you know, picking up cases with First Amendment auditors who are, you know, making sure police are following the law when it comes to First Amendment rights. We just launched a case, uh, Allentown, Pennsylvania, where a gentleman was out on a public sidewalk, um, filming police officers. And the video shows a member of the police driving onto the curb, like, in his direction and saying, you can’t, you can’t film me from this public space. So it’s been really interesting. And, you know, we could go down any number of those rabbit holes, but it’s, you know, if you thought our breath on campus was pretty wide, it’s, you know, quadruple that off of campus.

[00:23:40] Cody Cook: Right? Well, and just another question about kind of the expansiveness of fire’s mission. Um, you’ve referenced, you know, different cases where, you know, you supported people from across the political spectrum. But I think one of the things that’s been a surprise for many, and you can correct me if when I use this word, is that most I think of the policies that you pushed back against, especially in schools, have targeted conservatives. And so the left has traditionally been associated with free speech policies and seems to, um, maybe have come back around to that mission a little bit more lately over concerns about, you know, conservatives banning books in public schools and, uh, you know, legal immigrants being deported over criticism of Israel, stuff like that. Um, do you think that at this stage of American political discourse. Free speech is a Partizan issue. And and and this is maybe just your opinion I don’t know. I don’t know that fires put out anything like this. Um, would you give a what grades would you give the political left and the political right? Uh, on free speech right now.

[00:24:37] Connor Murnane: Um, that those are really good and really tough questions. I, I think free speech has become a Partizan issue insofar as both sides of the aisle like to sweep it under the rug when possible. Right. If there’s an opportunity to push their agenda and disregard free speech protections, it seems to happen, um, for for a grade, you know, not good. I have a tough time looking at the Biden years and saying, you know what? Good. You know what what good speech protective thing came out of the Biden administration. It’s tough to find. And then with Trump 2.0, you know, we’ve seen some of the greatest attacks on free speech on and off campus in my lifetime. You know, just to point to one, uh, you know, a student, Öztürk, I always forget her first name, so forgive me. But at Tufts University writes an op ed basically endorsing not even her own opinion, just endorsing the student government’s, you know, BDS push. And she gets grabbed by plainclothes officers and thrown in the back of a car and arrested for an op ed. And when, you know, the trial was going and they wanted evidence, the only evidence submitted was the op ed, right. So she was an international student, you know, law says international.

[00:25:47] Cody Cook: And to be clear, that’s evidence that she may be a terrorist sympathizers. Yeah.

[00:25:52] Connor Murnane: Bingo. Because an op ed she wrote and Tufts University, to their credit, issued a really funny statement where they said, if you look at that issue of the student paper, you will find more inflammatory language coming from other students on this exact same point than on Turks. And it was kind of a bland article, but I, I can’t think of, you know, much more unAmerican action than arresting someone for words on paper. Right. You know, if this was an actual violent protester or, you know, putting money behind a terrorist organization, that’s a different conversation. But pure expression. Um, but to to hit your first point for, for a long time, um, fire had what we called a marriage of convenience with conservatives on campus. And it’s because, you know, free speech is always, always going to be a tool of the minority. You get 51%. You have the muscle power. You have the votes. Right? You don’t you don’t need persuasion. You need persuasion when you’re in the minority. So for a long time, conservatives were out of power. They were the minority in the student population. Definitely the minority in the faculty, definitely in the administration. So we were probably, you know, if I had to guess, I’m not a betting man, but I would bet decent money. We’ve helped out more Turning Point USA chapters than college Democrats, just because they’re the ones, you know, in the minority with the kind of calls for censorship coming. And that script is kind of flipped off campus. We find ourselves in more red states defending, you know, uh, town, you know, regular people trying to talk at a town council meeting and getting shouted down or kicked out.

[00:27:28] Connor Murnane: You know, there was a dad in Uvalde, Texas, who went to the school board meeting to ask questions about, you know, the hiring of security guards for the school. And he was dragged out and arrested just for trying to ask questions and exercises, speech rights, something that that has happened. And it’s kind of the beauty of fire spot right in the middle. You know, we don’t comment on the speech we defend. We comment on its constitutionality, but it means we’re getting just kind of bludgeoned with the pendulum when it swings back and forth. But every time it swings back, we get a few people on that other side who say, wait a minute, maybe fire is on to something. So I was just talking about, you know, some of the the really bad stuff coming from the Trump administration. You know, that Overton window has shifted and suddenly people who thought fire might have been, you know, screaming, the sky’s falling. A year or two ago are now saying, wait a minute, maybe, maybe fire was reasonable here, all things considered. And we’re having a ton of success now working in tandem with college administrators, you know, college faculty coming on board in greater numbers, which is great. I wish we could have gotten their house in order five years ago. But, you know, we’re going to be here and we’re going to be consistent. So I’ll take whoever wants to come when they want to come.

[00:28:41] Cody Cook: Yeah. No, I yeah I think you’re right. There’s, there’s, there’s too many people who only care about free speech when they’re in the minority. Um, and so yeah. So do you think that because we mentioned the, the, the case about the op ed, do you think that non-citizens should be given the same free speech protections? And I think, you know, the my inclination would be to say, yes, but there’s an argument, I think, that, um, has some weight to it that, you know, if you’re bringing in people that you find out are expressing support for terrorist organizations. Maybe they’re not criminals themselves, but they’re bringing that kind of point of view, um, people who don’t actually share a belief in freedom. I mean, should there be free speech? Should there be like kind of tests like that for for who’s allowed to be here?

[00:29:28] Connor Murnane: I so yeah, the Supreme Court, I believe, in 1945 said freedom of speech and of press is accorded to aliens residing in this country. Um, so from a should they have these protections? Absolutely. Um, when you get into illegal conduct, that’s different. But a lot of what we’re seeing aren’t, you know, I’m going to go march in the streets and try to burn something down. It’s, you know, protected protest on campus. Some some are going too far. Like fire will be the first to say, you know, building occupations, some encampments, you know, preventing students from accessing parts of campus. Go far beyond protected speech. And, you know, if if that is what the charges are going to be, that’s fine. But bring them. You haven’t seen that yet. There was the, uh, the Khalil case at Columbia. You know, he was a student protester at Columbia, didn’t wear a mask. He was one of the ones more upfront and open, willing to be like a public face negotiator with the administration. And, you know, they were going through his trial. Show us evidence of actual unlawful conduct. And we only got expressive conduct. We got well, he was at this protest, not oh, he was busting down the doors of this administrative building and, you know, occupying it. So I think there’s a clear distinction there. And then again, you know, the First Amendment protects advocacy of violence as long as it doesn’t cross the line into that conduct.

[00:30:49] Connor Murnane: So we, you know, was it a two years ago now? Geez, I think 2022, when the Harvard, MIT and Penn president were in front of the anti-Semitism Committee in Congress and were asked, you know, our calls for violence protected speech. And a lot of them said it depends on the context or. Yes, and it’s true. The problem is, you know, you can only really rely on the it depends on the context answer. When you have consistently shown to follow the free speech line, and these schools have historically been really bad at it. So you know a bad time to be called a hypocrite. Um, rightfully so in my mind. But, uh, so I have a tough time as a pure free speech advocate. Show me the conduct. And it’s a different conversation if we’re just talking about un-American ideas. Right. Like, you know, our country was founded on the premise of criticizing a politician and a ruling government, right. You know, I kind of want to see that in our country. I want to I want to get better. Was it John Stuart Mill who said, if you can’t debate your idea, you know, it’s no better than a dogma or a conspiracy theory, you know?

[00:31:59] Cody Cook: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I mean, I think if we were having a conversation about, um, you know, Congress people who are advocating for attacking another country, you know, is that is that protected speech? That would be an interesting conversation to have.

[00:32:17] Connor Murnane: That is very interesting conversation. Please don’t ask me that question.

[00:32:21] Cody Cook: Um, okay. So there was a case I thought was interesting in 2023. It was a case that fire intervened in involving a high school student who received attention for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. And that’s an interesting case to me, because I was also a high school student who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance. And, and and there was also an interesting, really interesting Supreme Court case in 1943. I know you said you weren’t a lawyer, but I’d be curious to hear what you think about this. Um, over a school district, um, expelling Jehovah’s Witness students for refusing to say the pledge. And there was also, I think, a lot of general hostility and bullying. You kind of had the community sort of turn against these Jehovah’s Witness families in their communities, uh, even some violence. Um, and so in light of Scotus president, how did that become an issue again in 2023? Is this just issues where schools just don’t really understand the law and the protections that the these kids have of free speech or what’s what’s happening there?

[00:33:15] Connor Murnane: I, I think there’s a two questions. First, let’s let’s address the first one. And I pulled up the quote because it’s so good. And I’ve butchered quotes already the past 30 minutes we’ve been talking. So from that court case. Justice Robert Jackson, writing for the majority, said, quote, if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. And I think that is such a good kind of fixed star. So people, you know, you could you could take that to the Dei conversation. Right? Buyer doesn’t care about diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. You know, what we care about is when you’re trying to mandate a faculty member, you know, sign a statement that prescribes the faculty member to the university’s definition of DEI right. That’s compelled speech. So, you know, at our core, at the core of the First Amendment protections is a protection against a citizen like you or I being forced to parrot a belief of the government. And that trickles all the way down to the Pledge of Allegiance. Um, why we keep seeing it, you know, come back. Uh, I think on one hand, you know, uh, pride in our country is pretty good.

[00:34:32] Connor Murnane: So I think some people at least have the right intentions, right? They they want, you know, what we’ve built here to, you know, be recognized and preserved, I get that, but on the other hand, I don’t think we’re doing a good enough job educating on the kind of norms around First Amendment rights and the protections therein. And we’re seeing it all the time, right? On the college campus. I was saying we’re graduating students from K-12 without a strong civic background and expecting them to function. We’re also not educating them on these things on a college campus. So they’re going right into the workforce, and then they’re the ones making these, these calls in a K-12 system. So it’s this vicious cycle, right. And until we really start taking these things seriously and educating accordingly, and it’s one of the first things a university administrator asks, what can I do to to, you know, get students in line? First off, I hate that kind of get in line language. But I say you have a captive audience, especially at orientation. Teach them the boundaries. Tell them, because they’ve never been told before. So if you don’t outline protected versus unprotected and how to do it properly, they’re just going to go with the flow. And the flow has been going in a bad direction for a long time.

[00:35:41] Cody Cook: Yeah. No I like what you that that quotation from the Supreme Court case because yeah, I mean there’s, I think there’s the sense that if you force kids to say the pledge somehow you’re, you’re creating a more patriotic student body. Like, if you make someone say the pledge, that doesn’t mean you’ve convinced them to love America. You’ve just forced them to keep their dissent private. And, you know, patriotism isn’t real, and it doesn’t make America, you know, greater by creating it. Um, so, um, we mentioned this kind of earlier, and I’d like to get into it a little bit more. Fire produces these regular campus free speech rankings and the most recent one, and this might be out a bit, a bit after this has come out. So there might be a little bit of a delay on this. But um, at the time that we’re talking, fire has just released a spotlight on speech codes. I think if you start Spotlight on Speech Codes 2025, you’ll be able to find it. Yes, sir. And so maybe, um, let’s say I’m a I’m a I’m a TLDR too long don’t read didn’t read kind of person. What’s what’s the uh, the long and short of it is, is the climate of free speech improving or getting worse?

[00:36:45] Connor Murnane: Yes. Yes and no is the really crummy answer I’m going to give you here. So fire does two big campus reports. One is, one is spotlight, um, which we rate the speech codes, speech policies on just under 500 college campuses in a red, yellow, green light scale, red being, you know, terrible for speech, arguably unconstitutional public yellow being that that rational person language I keep coming back to for some reason, you know, ones that are ripe for abuse or, you know, could potentially be applied arbitrarily and then green, very speech protective. Good. Um, and then the second one is the college free speech rankings. And I’ll get to that in a second. On the spotlight ratings. We, for the first time in our history, have more green light schools than red light. Now that means, you know, we’re going in the right direction. There’s still a huge batch of yellow, but like purely speech, restrictive policies are going away. And that’s good. Now I said good and bad because that’s great, right? Just like a country, if you don’t have a foundation of laws and norms, your culture is going to be questionable on a college campus. With that foundational policies, speech protective policies, you’re never going to get to that free speech culture question. Um, so we like to see policies as step one. Right. But it’s just a stepping stone. It’s just the foundation. The second big thing, if you don’t mind me getting into it.

[00:38:02] Connor Murnane: Cody is the College Free Speech Rankings, which is comprised of three components, one of which is the Spotlight rating. The second is the largest student survey of free speech, opinion and beliefs out there. This past year, just over 255 schools and over 68,000 students surveyed. And we ask about tolerance for speakers of different political persuasions on campus. We ask students support for shouting down speakers. We ask, you know, how much do they self-censor on campus? And then the third component of the rankings is a kind of administrative action category. So how often are students and scholars being sanctioned and punished for protected speech? How often are shout downs or disinvitation successful on campus? Um, we also we try to give points, so we give points if like that, that South Carolina example from before, if there are calls to cancel, uh, you know, a speaking event or something like that, and the university says, uh, uh, here we value free speech and they give a strong kind of rebuttal and position their university as a speech first kind of campus. We’ll give bonus points. Um, this upcoming year, we’ll release probably in early September. We’re going to give some bonus points for schools that have adopted a good free speech statement, like the Chicago Statement on Free Expression or adopted, you know, institutional neutrality, a commitment not to weigh in on social or political issues.

[00:39:24] Connor Murnane: And here’s where the bad comes. So while policies and the foundation on campuses are getting a lot better, um, the acceptability of shouting down a speaker or blocking entry to an event and physically using violence to stop speech have ticked up slightly. And, you know, slightly sucks. But they’re also all record highs now. So students, you know, thinking it is acceptable to, you know, Cody Cook comes to campus. I’m going to go and shout down every time you try to talk because I don’t think you you deserve the platform. Not good. Uh, we also, for the first time in our history, uh, a majority of students opposed allowing all of the controversial speakers we proposed. So we split them into, you know, conservative Democrat, you know, a student or speaker who’s coming to say Black Lives Matter is a hate group or a speaker coming and saying, we should allow, you know, any student or anyone, no matter what their age, are, to get gender affirming care. Students across the board are saying no to controversial speakers. Those are not good signs for a culture. So it is this weird middle ground of where, like I think universities have got with the program and realize there’s a serious problem. But the cultural issue of students, that is that’s very downstream. And we need to make sure that catches up.

[00:40:40] Cody Cook: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear that are like explicitly religious schools. Um, that might require like a statement of faith. Are they included in these rankings or is this focus more like on public colleges and universities?

[00:40:50] Connor Murnane: We did I mentioned Hillsdale earlier. So we have a category called a warning school where we’ll, uh, Historically, we’re not doing it this year where we would survey, you know, schools like Baylor, Pepperdine, um, Hillsdale, Hillsdale, not a religion, but they have that ability. So schools that are private, they have this religious commitment. Uh, BYU is another good example. They’re allowed to do that, right. You know, we don’t make a judgment on whether or not they can freely associate. Right? It’s a it’s a protected right. We just, you know, the primary focus of our rankings are for prospective students and parents to kind of get a snapshot view of the climate on campus. So we in previous years would survey them and include all their data, but just pull them out of the rankings and say, here’s here’s what you’re getting. You know, we included quotes from the students, anything you’d get at another school? Um, but we just didn’t want to rank them because it didn’t seem fair. Right? You know, to to put, uh, BYU with a religious commitment next to a school like Purdue, for instance.

[00:41:51] Cody Cook: Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah, because. Yeah, totally. That makes sense. Yeah. And I think, you know, I went to a, you know, private, uh, kind of a conservative theological school. And I think that there’s, there’s value in doing that, associating with people that you sort of have something that you want to work on, where you sort of have things in common. As long as you know, you understand that that’s what that’s what you’re getting going, that’s.

[00:42:12] Connor Murnane: What you’re getting. And that’s that’s the big one. We don’t want students to be sold a wrong bill of goods, I guess.

[00:42:18] Cody Cook: Yeah, yeah. You don’t want to think I’m going to go to, you know, Yale and I’m going to get this sort of free environment of inquiry, and then that’s not what you get. Um, okay. So I’ve heard, um, you know, some fire supporters, uh, say that fire is like the new ACLU that, you know, the ACLU used to be known for defending free speech in all its forms. They would defend, you know, even the rights of neo-Nazis and stuff. But but that, that that the ACLU has arguably abdicated that responsibility in recent years to just basically promote progressive politics. And so fire has kind of come in and taken up that free speech mantle. Is that how you think of fire or do you see it differently?

[00:42:53] Speaker4: Like. So the ACLU, they still do good work and we partner with.

[00:42:56] Connor Murnane: Them often on on amicus briefs and other other casework. Um, the difficult thing for them that fighters have to deal with is they have, you know, 16 or 17 different issue areas. And when you’re juggling that many different priorities, naturally things are going to have to fall behind. So are they are they picking one day, you know, a reproductive rights over speech or are they gonna pick, you know, speech over reproductive rights? That’s not a decision I’d ever want to make. It’s why I like fire being a single issue organization. And, you know, actually, right before our expansion in a New York Times article, the former free speech director at the ACLU said that fire had kind of grown so quickly on college campuses because of that. Right, because we were laser focused on one issue. So we kind of took that as a okay, you know, they recognize that we do too. Maybe that can help with our expansion because we were so lasered in, you know, we could fill in the holes that might have been missing because the ACLU was spread thin on 1617 and maybe missing 1 or 2 there. But more priorities than fire has. And that’s. Yeah, it’s their choice. Um, we here are a bunch of, you know, free speech, for better or worse. It’s one of the most politically diverse organizations I’ve ever worked for. But we’re so on that singular mission. It is a fascinating, fascinating building.

[00:44:17] Cody Cook: Yeah, yeah, yeah it is. Well, I think I think too, it’s, you know, once an organization, even if an organization cares a lot about free speech, if they’ve aligned themselves, as you know, we’re on the left or whatever, there’s a or on the right. There’s a lot of issues on the left and right that the people, people, conservatives and progressives care about, that actually could be sort of conflict with free speech. And so how do you balance those conflicts? I think it becomes a difficult question.

[00:44:41] Connor Murnane: It’s why we have never and will never, you know, we we’ve defended every you name a political belief. We’ve probably defended someone on that side of the aisle. Everything from, you know, socialists to Republicans to, you know, the church of Satan, you know, to to religious student orgs. But we don’t comment on it. You know, for us. Speech is protected or not. We will editorialize around a story. Right. Because everyone everyone loves the story of the underdog triumphing over, you know, a censorial government. We’re never going to touch the content, because the minute we start dipping our toes in the content or, you know, uh, it’d be a damn shame if we ever said that speech is yucky, but it’s still protected. We undermine our own arguments.

[00:45:24] Cody Cook: Yeah, well, I would assume Satanists would always be welcome in the fire. Um, so.

[00:45:29] Connor Murnane: I guess I’ll take that as a compliment. Cody.

[00:45:31] Cody Cook: No, no, no, no, I’m glad that you guys are defending them, too. Um, so, um, at least their speech. So, um. Well, to be clear, their freedom of speech. Um, so. But that being said, you know, you have had some, you know, people you’ve defended that have been more controversial. And we talked earlier about how at least on campuses, that tended to sort of skew toward the right. And there are some who would accuse fire of being essentially a right wing movement. And it seems like I think you’ve kind of talked about this a little bit, but I might ask more directly. I mean, do you think there’s any validity to that charge? You mentioned kind of a marriage of convenience with conservatives on school issues in the past, but that might not be the case on some of these more local government levels.

[00:46:10] Connor Murnane: I we’re always going to get it right. That is the natural problem with being a nonpartisan single issue. And it’s something we also really. Are you familiar with O’Sullivan’s law? Have you heard of this? I don’t know. So it’s a that our Fire President CEO Greg Lukianoff talks about this a lot. Um, I believe it originated, you know, across the Atlantic in the UK, but it’s the idea that any any nonprofit organization that isn’t explicitly right leaning will inevitably drift left over time. And we’ve taken that concern to heart. You know, fire for a long time had Greg Lukianoff at the top as a as a pretty public liberal atheist, and his number two guy was a, you know, a Christian Trumper. And we we kind of practiced that. It’s one of the only places where in the interview we try to get at not I don’t care what your politics are, but I care, you know, hey, why are you coming to free speech and how you’re going to handle defending someone from the other side of the spectrum? So we look for that kind of political swing in our hiring because we don’t want to be on one side or the other. We want to be able to sit around a table and always have someone disagree. The most uncomfortable thing here at fire is when we’re looking at a case and everyone’s in agreement, and it could be because it’s just a clear cut violation of someone’s First Amendment rights.

[00:47:31] Connor Murnane: But we still take a step back and go, wait a minute, we’re all agreeing. Is there something we’re missing? And I don’t think you get that at a lot of nonprofits. You know, we we look for political diversity to make sure we’re being persuasive to every audience. And we’re chasing down every lead and not putting those kind of partizan blinders on. Um, so I always ask people, you know, show me cases that you think fire should have gotten involved in or we didn’t. You know, people will will point to Palestinian or Israeli support on college campuses. And I have a laundry list of cases. Um, but it it is natural, you know, our work is always going to piss somebody off and will make them a friend the next day just to piss them off again. Come, you know, next Monday. But, you know, the world needs that kind of straight shooter here. And our tent is big enough for anyone who wants to come in. Because I’m sure for every case, you may not like that we take we’ll have one in our our history that really liked.

[00:48:28] Cody Cook: Yeah. Well, um, here’s maybe this is a slightly silly question, but but I’ll ask it anyway because it’s good to good to create little 15 second clips for YouTube. Um, your organization is called fire. Do we actually have a right to yell fire in a crowded theater?

[00:48:47] Connor Murnane: Yes, but. So the the. That line gets misquoted all the time. Right. What it actually is the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man for falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater and causing a panic. Right. So two things are missing from that. First, it has to be false. If there is a fire. Why would. Why would you get in trouble for alerting everyone that there is a fire? But moreover, it has to cause a panic. So you know, if you are falsely sure and then you’re causing a panic and people get hurt. Of course. But if there’s a fire, you can absolutely shout fire in a crowded theater and warn people that there’s a fire in a crowded theater if there is a fire.

[00:49:27] Cody Cook: Got it. Um, you know, you guys have been kind of charting kind of free speech for a while at this point. So I imagine you’re seeing some trends and you have some suspicions about maybe where things are moving. Um, where do you think most of the battles over free speech are going to be in the future. Let’s say the next ten years.

[00:49:46] Connor Murnane: I will give you my current boogeyman. Um, the government under both Biden and Trump is operating under this kind of new cumulative theory of harassment, and it’s really threatening campus speech and student and faculty rights. So the the idea is that schools can now be punished under Title VI. You know, Title VI is the protecting from racial ethnic discrimination for not cracking down on constitutionally protected speech. It’s a weird one, right? So basically they’re saying, um, here’s an instance, a singular instance of protected speech that someone might label as harassment. Historically, harassment on a college campus needs to be severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive to deny a student access to equal education opportunities. Right. That’s a high bar. It’s three different things. The and’s important. They’re now saying that that hostile environment of harassment can be formed if you take one plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one. Individual instances which may be protected or may not. Each each one’s facts may be different, but the schools don’t know at what point they’re going to hit that number and suddenly, oh no, we have a hostile environment on our hands. So if I’m running a college or university, I’m terrified of this imaginary number because I don’t know what I’m going to potentially meet it. So I’m going to start, you know, clamping down on protected speech to ensure we never get there.

[00:51:15] Connor Murnane: You know, it creates this silence first ask questions later mindset. So instead of serving as this this real place of intellectual risk taking, campuses are going to start looking more like compliance departments, almost in an effort not to potentially step out of line. So, you know, to to real world example here, if you look at the the, you know, the Columbia accusations before the recent resolution, which has some issues in and of itself. If you look at the accusations of what caused this, you know, Title VI discriminatory environment 50 over 50 on whether or not each instance is protected speech or not. But by lumping them all up, they’ve created this big monstrosity. So I’m I’m worried that that is going to be weaponized to continue this kind of extortion campaign that Trump’s on. But we saw it in the Biden years, too. Um, and it’s going to cause more bureaucrats to be hired by colleges and universities, which is never a good thing. And then these bureaucrats are going to be justifying their jobs by, you know, shushing protected speech just to make sure that they don’t accidentally, you know, get the government spotlight when they hit that imaginary number and they, you know, are suddenly, uh, following that cumulative harassment window. So that is my boogeyman right now.

[00:52:38] Cody Cook: And so somebody who wants to research that more, it’s referred to as cumulative harassment. Yeah okay. That’s interesting.

[00:52:45] Connor Murnane: It’s a shift. You know we’ve seen and sorry for a bit more but an issue we’ve seen you know, come any any real government first reform targeting colleges and universities. They kind of have to acknowledge first that they helped colleges and universities get to the point of being this bad. Right. You know, I’ve been doing this work for 8 or 9 years, and I’ve seen multiple different definitions of harassment coming out of the government. You know, when you have that flip flop, you suddenly need to staff campus administrative departments to make sure they’re compliant. And then these people, you know, need to justify their jobs and make sure they stay compliant. So, you know, speech police suddenly come out, right. So the government, in trying to do some of these things, has a tendency to go too far and cause greater problems that are going to just, you know, keep me employed five years down the road, unfortunately.

[00:53:40] Cody Cook: Gotcha. Um, so it’s kind of this last half of, um, 20, 25 is releasing a few books, or at least is involved in the release of a few books. And so as we speak, the most recent is by Greg Lukianoff, who I believe is your president. Is that the title, um, who also worked on that great book with Jonathan Haidt on, um, on um, uh, what’s the name of the book.

[00:54:02] Connor Murnane: “The Coddling of the American Mind”?

[00:54:04] Cody Cook: That’s right.

[00:54:05] Connor Murnane: I don’t know if you’ve read the the follow up book, “The Canceling of the American Mind”.

[00:54:09] Cody Cook: I haven’t, but it’s on my list. I’ll get to it. The coddling is.

[00:54:11] Connor Murnane: Great. Stuck with the American mind language now.

[00:54:15] Cody Cook: Right, right. It’s got to be it. Yeah. I’ve, I have a I had a couple cousins who graduated high school and were going into college, and I got them copies of that book. Um, and so he wrote that with this new book with Nadine Strossen called “The War on Words: Ten Arguments Against Free Speech and Why They Fail”. That one just came out right. And then and there’s a couple other ones, too, including one about, uh, the ACLU’s defense of neo-Nazis, I think in Skokie.

[00:54:38] Connor Murnane: Yeah, we’re republishing defending. I’m going to step to the side. Yeah, yeah, I have it printed off. We’re republishing “Defending My Enemy” by Aryeh Neier. Okay. It’s a it’s a book that came out. I don’t I don’t remember the original date. And I wonder if I can get it. 1979. It has been published. You could still find copies, but they were, like 3 or $400 a pop. And, you know, it’s such an important story to tell, right? Like being willing to defend someone who, you know, wants you, you to not exist anymore is such a powerful story that we wanted to bring that out. So we’re, you know, “Defending My Enemy” by Ari and I are getting a republication, um, Sara McLaughlin on our, uh, on our team. She’s our senior fellow in global free expression. She publishes the Free Speech Dispatch once a month, which covers international censorship stories. She has a book coming out in August, I believe, called them authoritarians in the Academy, which is talking about Chinese influence on American universities, which would be a very interesting one.

[00:55:38] Cody Cook: Um, this is this is not Sam McLaughlin, the folk singer.

[00:55:40] Connor Murnane: No. Uh, yeah. Unfortunately for the folk singer, uh, is publishing a book. And, you know, I get to talk about it, which is fun.

[00:55:49] Cody Cook: Yeah, yeah, well, I think I think the folk singers tied up with the ASPCA right now or whatever it is.

[00:55:53] Connor Murnane: Yeah, that is her, isn’t she? Yeah. Okay, I, I. Cody, I have to confess, my pop culture knowledge is like 30 years behind.

[00:56:01] Cody Cook: Uh, most of mine is, too. Uh, but but if you ever, you know, want to talk about, you know, Don Rickles or or, uh, James Mason or something. Give me a.

[00:56:08] Connor Murnane: Call. That’s my right there, Lenny Bruce. Let’s talk.

[00:56:12] Cody Cook: Um, so speaking of these books, um, specifically the one that just came out as we’re recording this, “The War on Words: Ten Arguments Against Free Speech and Why They Fail”, and we talked a little about the book, um, or the the neo-Nazis. I mean, why should somebody who’s a libertarian Christian, for example, uh, check these books out? What will they find in them?

[00:56:29] Connor Murnane: You’re going to find, you know, a consistent. Anyone who’s engaged in political discourse, anyone who is talking about free speech, is going to inevitably hear things like, you know, words are violence. Hate speech isn’t protected, right? Like all these same old cliches. And what Greg and Nadine Strossen, former former head of the ACLU, who helped write these books, um, they did. It was like, all right, what are what are the ten arguments that we roll our eyes at when we hear? And how can we get a succinct response together with case citations, with all the kind of data backup you may need to go to the Thanksgiving dinner table and argue with your family and put it in this condensed. You know, uh, the war language makes me laugh in the title because it’s really what it is, right? You know, it’s giving you the ammunition you need to beat back these, these bad arguments. But that’s exactly what it is, right? So anyone who cares about these issues, if you want some of the, you know, my my personal favorite thinkers on these issues to kind of spoon feed you an argument, to kind of counter things like, you know, hate speech isn’t protected or words or violence. Um, this book is for you. It is a short, fun read. Um, you know, Greg is a is a character. He always is able to connect the free speech principles to things I love, whether it’s comic books or old Russian history. And, you know, Nadine, if you’ve never watched Nadine Strossen talk about free speech, it’s one of the most inspiring things you’re ever gonna you’re ever gonna be able to listen to.

[00:58:01] Cody Cook: Awesome. So. So you recommend them, then?

[00:58:02] Connor Murnane: Oh, well, of course.

[00:58:03] Cody Cook: Yeah, yeah.

[00:58:05] Connor Murnane: We’ll buy all the copies, five star reviews on Amazon or wherever your, uh, place of purchase choices.

[00:58:10] Cody Cook: Yeah. So “The War on Words: Ten Arguments Against Free Speech and Why They Fail” is out now. Buy this. By the time this releases, the next one might be out, which was the, uh, the one on, um, by Sarah McLaughlin, I think. Is that the one.

[00:58:18] Connor Murnane: Uh, authoritarians in the academy sometime in mid to late August.

[00:58:22] Cody Cook: Okay. And then the third book, Defending my Enemy.

[00:58:24] Connor Murnane: Yeah. I don’t actually know the date on that. That is a shame on me moment.

[00:58:28] Cody Cook: Um, I have a bookmark that I got at Freedomfest that tells me that I don’t have it with me right now, but it’s still there. Yeah, I’ll put it in the show notes. That’s the third book coming out this year, so that probably won’t be out by the time people are hearing this. If they’re hearing it first.

[00:58:40] Connor Murnane: And then coming up in 2026, if you’ll allow me to, because this one I’m personally interested in. Our executive vice president, Nico Perrino, uh, basically is doing an oral history on the old free speech movement. He’s interviewed a ton of Aryeh Neier, Nadine Strossen, Ira Glasser, a lot of old ACLU folks, old free speech civil libertarians. And he’s kind of telling the story of that free speech generation and what we’re in danger of losing. Um, but it’s all done through personal interviews with, you know, those that are still around.

[00:59:12] Cody Cook: Oh, that sounds cool. Okay, so where can folks find the work of fire? How do they support it?

[00:59:17] Connor Murnane: Uh, you can find us online at thefire.org. Also, on almost any social media platform you can think of at the Fire Org, Um, we have a membership program. $25 and up. It gets you in. We do things like rapid response, you know, news about Harvard court case. You can hop on with our experts. We do a monthly kind of open Q&A with any member who can come and sit in with a, you know, a rotating cast of fire characters, and we just take questions for an hour. It’s one of the most exhausting but fun parts of the job. I think. You know, anyone who wants to can come ask, um, but more importantly, get involved. Pay attention. Look, know your rights. Look around. If you if you see something a little funky, whether it’s on a college campus or your town board meeting, go to thefire.org and submit a case. We’ll get back to you within 24 hours.

[01:00:08] Cody Cook: That’s great. At the bare minimum, follow fire on social media and retweet their tweets. Right?

[01:00:13] Connor Murnane: Yes. Bare minimum. But we want more.

[01:00:15] Cody Cook: Yeah. Uh, it’s a it’s a fire that will never be kindled. All right.

[01:00:20] Connor Murnane: Too many puns.

[01:00:22] Cody Cook: Connor, thank you so much for talking with us. It’s Libertarian Christian Podcast.

[01:00:25] Connor Murnane: Now. Thank you for having me, Cody. Keep up the good work.

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