Since the 2008 election, our President and CEO Greg Lukianoff has written to each new president upon their inauguration, offering FIRE’s perspective on how they can help defend free speech and academic freedom.
Read LETTER FROM Greg Lukianoff to President DONALD Trump
As President Trump enters office today, there is much work to be done. Free speech is under attack on college campuses. In fact, last year was the worst on record for free speech on college campuses, as more attempts were made to deplatform speakers on campus than any year since FIRE began tracking in 1998. And professors are censoring themselves more now than at the height of the McCarthy era.
Off campus, the situation is alarming as well.
Greg’s letter to President Trump highlights some policies his administration can implement to help remedy the situation and protect free speech over the next four years, on campus or off.
1. Support the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act
A 2024 FIRE study found that only 15% of public colleges and universities’ speech policies comply fully with their First Amendment obligations. This should be a national scandal.
But there’s a simple way for the Trump administration, working with Congress, to better protect the free speech rights of our nation’s students.
FIRE to Congress: More work needed to protect free speech on college campuses
News
FIRE joined Rep. Murphy’s annual Campus Free Speech Roundtable to discuss the free speech opportunities and challenges facing colleges.
We ask that Trump support the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act — or another piece of legislation to protect campus speech rights — to codify speech protective standards including ending “free speech zones” that limit where students can hold demonstrations, the levying of viewpoint-based security costs to punish student groups seeking to host “controversial” speakers, and encouraging institutions to adopt the Chicago Principles on Free Expression.
At least 23 states have enacted some of these commonsense provisions, but student free speech rights deserve federal protection. Legislation to ensure that all of our nation’s public colleges and universities finally protect the basic free speech rights of their students should be a top priority.
2. Address the abuse of campus anti-harassment policies
In the landmark 1999 decision Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, the Supreme Court defined student-on-student harassment as behavior that “is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims’ educational experience, that the victims are effectively denied equal access to an institution’s resources and opportunities.”
After 25 years of advocating for students’ rights on campus, FIRE knows all too well how definitions of student-on-student harassment that fail to meet the Davis standard will inevitably be used to punish protected speech. Consider the 2022 case of eight law students at American University who were put under investigation for participating in a heated back-and-forth following the leak of the Dobbs v. Jackson draft opinion, after another student said their pro-choice commentary harassed and discriminated against him based on his religious, pro-life beliefs.
As president, Trump inherits the privilege and the obligation to defend the First Amendment rights of all Americans, regardless of their viewpoint
But properly applied, the Davis standard ensures that institutions protect students against actual discriminatory behavior as opposed to punishing students who merely express controversial viewpoints.
3. Rein in government jawboning
Leaks and disclosures over the past few years have brought to light demands, threats, and other coercion from government officials to social media companies aimed at suppressing particular viewpoints and ideas.
This practice, known as jawboning, is a serious threat to free speech. But the Trump administration can prevent jawboning by federal officials with the following steps:
- Prohibit federal employees from jawboning;
- Support legislation to require transparency when government officials communicate with social media companies about content moderation. FIRE’s SMART Act is one such model bill.
- Refrain from threatening or pressuring social media platforms to change their content moderation practices or suppress particular users.
And, of course, refrain from making calls for investigations, prosecutions, or other government retaliation in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights outside of the social media context as well.
4. Protect First Amendment rights when it comes to AI
Over the course of history, technologies that make communication easier have aided the process of knowledge discovery: from the printing press and the telegraph to the radio, phones, and the internet. So too have AI tools revealed their potential to spark the next revolution in knowledge production.
What is jawboning? And does it violate the First Amendment?
Issue Pages
Indirect government censorship is still government censorship — and it must be stopped.
The potential power of AI has also prompted officials at all levels of government to move towards regulating the development and use of AI tools. Too often, these proposals do not account for the First Amendment rights of AI developers and users.
The First Amendment applies to AI just as it does to other technologies that Americans use to create and distribute writings, images, and other speech. Nothing about AI software justifies or permits the trampling of those rights, and doing so would undermine its potential as a tool for contributing to human knowledge.
Trump’s administration can prevent this by rejecting any federal regulation of AI that violates the First Amendment.
Conclusion
The Trump administration faces historic challenges both at home and abroad. But the United States is uniquely capable of solving our challenges because of our unparalleled commitment to freedom of speech.
As president, Trump inherits the privilege and the obligation to defend the First Amendment rights of all Americans, regardless of their viewpoint — and FIRE stands ready to help in that effort.
