At Commencement this year, Dartmouth will award Greg Lukianoff an honorary Doctor of Laws. Lukianoff is president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group. That honor will be tremendously well-deserved.
Over the last several months, universities have experienced grave threats to their academic independence. Since January of last year, the Trump administration has sought to coerce universities into abandoning their First Amendment rights as a condition of receiving federal funding. FIRE has stood for free speech throughout this onslaught. When the federal government attempted to pressure Harvard University to surrender its academic autonomy, FIRE filed an amicus brief supporting Harvard’s First Amendment rights. And when the Department of State attempted to deport foreign students over their pro-Palestinian advocacy, FIRE filed a lawsuit challenging the relevant provisions of immigration law on First Amendment grounds.
Threats to free inquiry and expression also come from within the university system. Thankfully, FIRE is there to defend against those attacks too. Are students coordinating to erase messages chalked on campus sidewalks? FIRE is there. Are college officials demanding that a student socialist organization stop publishing on social media? FIRE is there. Or is a college refusing to fund a student publication because its magazine contains LGBTQ+ stories? FIRE is there too.
Two recent articles in these pages have raised issues — or at least questions — about Dartmouth’s decision to award Lukianoff an honorary degree. The first notes FIRE’s connection to “right-wing networks.” But FIRE is avowedly non-partisan. In 2024, 60% of the cases the organization intervened in involved attempts at censorship that came from entities to the speaker’s political right.
The second article is much more odious — and also profoundly misguided. Last week, a group of alumni wrote to criticize Dartmouth’s decision to award Lukianoff an honorary degree. The authors condemn Lukianoff for “trans-bashing” and in so doing display a fundamental misunderstanding of free speech advocacy. They suggest that Lukianoff’s appearance on the Megyn Kelly show is “emblematic of Lukianoff’s animus against transgender people.” But defending the right of speakers to say — or not to say — what they believe is not an endorsement of the speaker’s view. According to the authors’ reasoning, the American Civil Liberties Union must be comprised of neo-Nazis and anti-LGBTQ religious fundamentalists.
After smearing Lukianoff, the authors next take aim at FIRE institutionally. They point readers to FIRE’s guide to pronouns and complain that it “never once mentions the right of trans people to assert their own gender identity.” Huh? Of course a guide focused on — like the very first paragraph indicates — “pronoun mandates” and “compelled speech” is focused on the compelled speech implications of pronoun mandates.
Undeterred, the authors march readers to their next bit of evidence: an amicus brief filed by FIRE in which they argue that a school’s policy compelling students to use another student’s chosen pronouns violates the First Amendment. The authors conclude from this that FIRE doesn’t care about the murder or suicide of trans people. For shame. In their effort to disparage FIRE, the authors conveniently omit the fact that the en banc Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit agreed with FIRE’s arguments. The court emphasized that any harassment trans students face cannot be countered by “forcing one side to change the way it conveys its message or by compelling it to express a different view.” The authors then reason — and I use that word generously — that the “logical conclusion of this line of thinking” is that transgender people “are threats to democracy.” FIRE’s advocacy belies that claim.
When a Texas school board sought to ban all books that reference “gender fluidity” in public school libraries, FIRE fought back, arguing that the restrictions violated the First Amendment. When a public library’s board sought to remove “material that promotes, encourages, advocates for or normalizes transgenderism or ‘gender confusion’ in minors,” FIRE explained to the board that the policy violated the First Amendment. The board ultimately repealed the policy. And when news spread that Angelo State University was implementing a policy forbidding faculty from discussing “transgender topics,” prohibiting trans-related topics on syllabi, outlawing LGBTQ flags and barring faculty from referring to students by their preferred names, FIRE again wrote to the university demanding it withdraw the policy.
FIRE defends the full range of speakers because it understands free speech’s importance. Free speech necessarily contains two components. It requires that individuals be free to express their beliefs and that they not be compelled to express agreement with beliefs they do not hold.
In one of the most famous cases in American history, West Virginia v. Barnette, the Supreme Court explained: “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.” Free speech principles require that we be permitted to express ourselves. But those same principles protect us from being compelled to profess specific beliefs.
The College’s decision to recognize Lukianoff’s work ought to be celebrated. Campus free speech is imperiled today by the government, by universities and by students unwilling to tolerate dissenting views. Lukianoff and FIRE stand against threats from all three. Dartmouth is right to honor the person who leads that fight.
Arpit Rao is a member of the Class of 2025. Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
