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Despite the sad loss of the ACLU as an institution that cares about civil liberties, we can remain hopeful due to other organizations like FIRE. https://www.th

Despite the sad loss of the ACLU as an institution that cares about civil liberties, we can remain hopeful due to other organizations like FIRE. https://www.thefire.org https://www.thefire.org

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Nicksil 5y ago
>Despite the sad loss of the ACLU as an institution that cares about civil liberties, we can remain hopeful due to other organizations like FIRE. You're just going to leave it there? What/who is FIRE? This isn't one of those unique words easily discovered during a web search.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  "fire org" and "fire civil liberties" both return the correct result in the first ranking. It really isn't that difficult
  - notwedtm 5y ago
    Perhaps, but then YOU are not doing it the service it deserves by simply slapping it in there and not providing any context. This is the problem with the whole "DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH" retort that lots of political arguments deteriorate into. If YOU have already done said research, and you have an informed opinion from said research, then you should share it directly in the conversation at hand. Not only do you avoid looking like a jerk by trying to end a conversation with "look it up" or something similar; you are also able to potentially be the reason someone changes their mind on the subject because you evangelized something that you believe in instead of leaving them potentially thinking "People who like FIRE must be jerks."
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
      > Not only do you avoid looking like a jerk by trying to end a conversation with "look it up" or something similar What on Earth are you talking about? Your whole comment is in reference to rebuffing a request for more details with "look it up". _Nobody here is doing that_. The original comment mentioned FIRE without describing it; presumably you don't think every mention of an organization must come with an executive summary? The response then whined about how the previous comment left them with an ungoogleable dead-end. My comment simply said that, with context, it was far from ungoogleable (and thus the aggressive tone towards the parent comment wasn't warranted). The reason I personally didn't provide more information is that I myself am not that familiar with FIRE, certainly not to the extent that I'd be able to summarize why they're an adequate substitute for the ACLU. > you evangelized something that you believe in instead of leaving them potentially thinking "People who like FIRE must be jerks This and the rest of your comment is a perfect example of the decay of discourse behind things like the ACLU's troubles. Instead of trying to understand what they read, people like you are desperate to pattern-match to some imagined ill and then mistake your hysterical emotional response for moral reasoning.
      - xbar 5y ago
        I suspect you did not read the article.
    - Nimitz14 5y ago
      RTFA
- myWindoonn 5y ago
  FIRE is mentioned in the original article, including a contrast between ACLU and FIRE.
  - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
    The civil liberties background of Harvey Silverglate, one of the founders of FIRE, is quite interesting. Apparently he used to be with the ACLU until they switched direction. Source(s): http://www.harveysilverglate.com/about-harvey http://www.harveysilverglate.com/about-harvey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Silverglate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Silverglate
- AcerbicZero 5y ago
  From context, I’d guess they are an organization who the parent commentator believes represents civil liberties better than the ACLU. It seems they also edited their comment to include a link - seems pretty reasonable to me.
  - Nicksil 5y ago
    >It seems they also edited their comment to include a link - seems pretty reasonable to me. Well of course this was done after my comment.
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  Type FIRE into wikipedia and you get a list of 13 choices. One of those 13 matches the context of this conversation: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties organization in the US
evv555 5y ago
There's also fair which has significant overlap. https://www.fairforall.org/ https://www.fairforall.org/ "We defend civil liberties and rights guaranteed to each individual, including freedom of speech and expression, equal protection under the law, and the right to personal privacy."
UncleMeat 5y ago
FIRE is a joke if you care about bipartisanship. I know a lot of faculty who have been attacked or even fired for "left wing" research and FIRE hasn't spread a peep. Heck, I know people who've been put on blast by Hannity and received death threats from strangers and had their students call them slurs in legally protected channels just because the kids know they can. Silence from FIRE.
- asabjorn 5y ago
  Can you please provide examples where you think fire should have stepped in? Universities are hardly right-wing institutions that fire academics for left-wing research, quite to the contrary "academics" too often engage in indoctrination instead of teaching students to engage a subject to mastery. We are at such a bad point that even harvard is so stooped in dialectic that it argue 2+2 is not always 4, something an elementary kid knows is bullshit.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    It'd reveal my identity. More broadly, these faculty members include researchers who work in: * climate science (death threats, widespread media attacks, attempts from politicians to cancel grants) * digital privacy (death threats) * history of policing (death threats, attacks from Hannity, attacks from the Hoover institute trying to prevent her thesis from being accepted) * history of women in medieval europe (see below) * US civil war history (attacks from state politicians) The most extreme case is the person who does history of women in medieval europe. Organized groups of students take her class and are clearly trained in precisely the places where they can write hate speech specifically focused at her but also just general hate speech against women but have privacy laws make it impossible for them to actually be associated with their writing. This is a tactic designed to get her to slip up and breach some sort of privacy protection, upon which time they immediately bring legal action. I'll let you guess whether FIRE is protecting her in the legal action. Universities are hardly right-wing institutions, true. But that doesn't mean that FIRE is a bipartisan institution. If you want a nationally recognized example, go check out what is going on at UNC Chapel Hill now.

Despite the sad loss of the ACLU as an institution that cares about civil liberties, we can remain hopeful due to other organizations like FIRE. https://www.thefire.org https://www.thefire.org

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Nicksil 5y ago

>Despite the sad loss of the ACLU as an institution that cares about civil liberties, we can remain hopeful due to other organizations like FIRE. You're just going to leave it there? What/who is FIRE? This isn't one of those unique words easily discovered during a web search.

wutbrodo 5y ago
"fire org" and "fire civil liberties" both return the correct result in the first ranking. It really isn't that difficult
- notwedtm 5y ago
  Perhaps, but then YOU are not doing it the service it deserves by simply slapping it in there and not providing any context. This is the problem with the whole "DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH" retort that lots of political arguments deteriorate into. If YOU have already done said research, and you have an informed opinion from said research, then you should share it directly in the conversation at hand. Not only do you avoid looking like a jerk by trying to end a conversation with "look it up" or something similar; you are also able to potentially be the reason someone changes their mind on the subject because you evangelized something that you believe in instead of leaving them potentially thinking "People who like FIRE must be jerks."
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    > Not only do you avoid looking like a jerk by trying to end a conversation with "look it up" or something similar What on Earth are you talking about? Your whole comment is in reference to rebuffing a request for more details with "look it up". _Nobody here is doing that_. The original comment mentioned FIRE without describing it; presumably you don't think every mention of an organization must come with an executive summary? The response then whined about how the previous comment left them with an ungoogleable dead-end. My comment simply said that, with context, it was far from ungoogleable (and thus the aggressive tone towards the parent comment wasn't warranted). The reason I personally didn't provide more information is that I myself am not that familiar with FIRE, certainly not to the extent that I'd be able to summarize why they're an adequate substitute for the ACLU. > you evangelized something that you believe in instead of leaving them potentially thinking "People who like FIRE must be jerks This and the rest of your comment is a perfect example of the decay of discourse behind things like the ACLU's troubles. Instead of trying to understand what they read, people like you are desperate to pattern-match to some imagined ill and then mistake your hysterical emotional response for moral reasoning.
    - xbar 5y ago
      I suspect you did not read the article.
  - Nimitz14 5y ago
    RTFA
myWindoonn 5y ago
FIRE is mentioned in the original article, including a contrast between ACLU and FIRE.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  The civil liberties background of Harvey Silverglate, one of the founders of FIRE, is quite interesting. Apparently he used to be with the ACLU until they switched direction. Source(s): http://www.harveysilverglate.com/about-harvey http://www.harveysilverglate.com/about-harvey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Silverglate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Silverglate
AcerbicZero 5y ago
From context, I’d guess they are an organization who the parent commentator believes represents civil liberties better than the ACLU. It seems they also edited their comment to include a link - seems pretty reasonable to me.
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >It seems they also edited their comment to include a link - seems pretty reasonable to me. Well of course this was done after my comment.
wearywanderer 5y ago
Type FIRE into wikipedia and you get a list of 13 choices. One of those 13 matches the context of this conversation: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties organization in the US

evv555 5y ago

There's also fair which has significant overlap. https://www.fairforall.org/ https://www.fairforall.org/ "We defend civil liberties and rights guaranteed to each individual, including freedom of speech and expression, equal protection under the law, and the right to personal privacy."

UncleMeat 5y ago

FIRE is a joke if you care about bipartisanship. I know a lot of faculty who have been attacked or even fired for "left wing" research and FIRE hasn't spread a peep. Heck, I know people who've been put on blast by Hannity and received death threats from strangers and had their students call them slurs in legally protected channels just because the kids know they can. Silence from FIRE.

asabjorn 5y ago
Can you please provide examples where you think fire should have stepped in? Universities are hardly right-wing institutions that fire academics for left-wing research, quite to the contrary "academics" too often engage in indoctrination instead of teaching students to engage a subject to mastery. We are at such a bad point that even harvard is so stooped in dialectic that it argue 2+2 is not always 4, something an elementary kid knows is bullshit.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  It'd reveal my identity. More broadly, these faculty members include researchers who work in: * climate science (death threats, widespread media attacks, attempts from politicians to cancel grants) * digital privacy (death threats) * history of policing (death threats, attacks from Hannity, attacks from the Hoover institute trying to prevent her thesis from being accepted) * history of women in medieval europe (see below) * US civil war history (attacks from state politicians) The most extreme case is the person who does history of women in medieval europe. Organized groups of students take her class and are clearly trained in precisely the places where they can write hate speech specifically focused at her but also just general hate speech against women but have privacy laws make it impossible for them to actually be associated with their writing. This is a tactic designed to get her to slip up and breach some sort of privacy protection, upon which time they immediately bring legal action. I'll let you guess whether FIRE is protecting her in the legal action. Universities are hardly right-wing institutions, true. But that doesn't mean that FIRE is a bipartisan institution. If you want a nationally recognized example, go check out what is going on at UNC Chapel Hill now.