So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast

Harvard, institutional neutrality, how we determine the rankings, partisan censorship, how schools can improve their ranking, and more!
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:18 Learn about our inaugural Soapbox conference
04:02 Preorder Nico's book Free Speech Generation
5:00 Check out FIRE's 2027 College Free Speech rankings
06:05 Who are the top- and bottom-ranked schools?
09:27 What's new with the Harvard evaluation?
13:08 How does FIRE choose which schools to rank?
13:46 What can universities do to improve their ranking?
15:54 What is institutional neutrality?
18:05 What exactly are students being asked about campus speech?
21:25 How does FIRE make sure defending free speech doesn't inadvertently protect censorship in the classroom?
25:19 Is campus censorship coming more from the "right" or the "left"?
26:53 Did the University of Washington settlement involving Professor Stuart Reges affect its ranking?
30:45 What does it mean to pre-register our methodology?
31:35 Why did Claremont McKenna drop in the rankings?
33:07 What advice does FIRE have for students at low-ranked schools facing censorship?
36:47 Do politically homogeneous campuses make students more comfortable speaking freely?
40:26 Do low-ranked colleges tell FIRE how they are improving?
42:56 What can administrators do now to improve next year's ranking?
43:50 Does FIRE account for turnover in university leadership?
45:47 What do the rankings reveal about different student demographic groups?
49:41 Does FIRE account for differences between types of institutions?
52:00 What's up with MIT?
56:02 Should attacks on tenured professors carry more weight than actions against other faculty?
57:02 Who does FIRE contact when evaluating a university?
58:09 Are there regional patterns in the rankings?
58:57 Were there bigger ranking swings than usual this year?
01:00:44 Outro
 
Joining us:
Nico Perrino, executive vice president

Angela Erickson, vice president of research

Sean Stevens, chief researcher

Ronnie London, general counsel and director of litigation

Connor Murnane, campus advocacy chief of staff

 
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The First Amendment is only 45 words long. But more than 200 years and thousands of court decisions later, we're still arguing over a basic question: what do those words mean — and what did they mean to the early Americans who adopted them?
To look through history and debate what originalism can — and can't — tell us about the First Amendment's free speech clause, we are joined by: 
Jud Campbell, Stanford Law School professor and the author of Natural Rights and the First Amendment and Determining Rights

Stephen Solomon, Marjorie Deane Professor of Journalism at New York University, the founding editor of First Amendment Watch, and the author of Revolutionary Dissent: How the Founding Generation Created the Freedom of Speech 

 
Timestamps: 
00:00 Intro  
02:20 Original meaning and modern First Amendment doctrine
09:12 Would the founders recognize our Constitution today?
16:00 The Alien and Sedition Acts
20:21 How the founding generation practiced free speech
24:35 Can we define "originalism"?
32:05 Representative government and the promise of liberty
45:00 The First Amendment's absolute language
51:36 New York Times v. Sullivan
58:01 Amending the First Amendment
01:04:30 Outro
Read the transcript here.
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If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

**Editor's note: This episode was recorded before Meta settled a social media addiction trial with a coalition of state attorneys general on Aug. 26, 2026. The case alleged the company knew some of its features on Facebook and Instagram could be harmful to kids and the company publicly misrepresented those risks.
Social media and artificial intelligence are increasingly powerful tools for sharing and accessing information. They're also at the center of a push for the government to address their potential harms — particularly to kids.
So where's the constitutional line between regulating technology and regulating speech? And could this latest wave of legislation and litigation change what we can see, say, and create online?
Joining us to break down the latest developments in social media and AI and what it all means for free speech are:
Joel Thayer, senior fellow for AI and emerging technology policy at the America First Policy Institute and president of the Digital Progress Institute

Kate Ruane, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Free Expression Project

 
Timestamps: 
00:00 Intro  
02:02 The case for regulating social media
09:23 The case for social media as protected speech
18:12 Are social media design features protected speech?
23:46 Section 230 and platform liability
37:21 Privacy, COPPA, and online child safety
58:40 Are AI chatbots speech?
01:09:06 Will Congress regulate social media and AI?
01:12:27 Outro
Read the transcript here.
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If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

Long before the First Amendment, John Peter Zenger stood trial for publishing criticisms of New York's then colonial governor. Although the law seemed to guarantee a guilty verdict, a jury refused to convict him. Zenger's trial was an early indication that the American colonists harbored a view of liberty more expansive than that offered to them by the British Crown.  
Few people are better suited to explain the case than Michael Tigar. Over a legendary legal career spanning more than six decades, Tigar has argued before the Supreme Court (multiple times), represented civil rights activists and other controversial clients, taught generations of lawyers, and written what has become the definitive stage play about the Zenger trial.
 Michael joins us to revisit the Zenger trial and reflect on his own remarkable career from the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the Chicago Eight trial to jury nullification and lawyers' First Amendment rights.
 To read more about Michael's life, check out his memoir.
 
Timestamps: 
00:00 Intro  
03:11 The Berkeley Free Speech Movement
09:17 Michael's path to becoming a lawyer
13:44 Defending the Chicago Eight
20:25 The trial of John Peter Zenger
27:03 Jury nullification and the Zenger verdict
37:26 The Zenger play and its legacy
39:52 NYT v. Sullivan and SLAPP lawsuits
44:30 Outro
Read the transcript here.
Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more. 
If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

In May 2026, the Office of Management and Budget proposed sweeping changes to how the federal government administers billions of dollars in federal research grants.
That funding fuels scientific discovery, medical breakthroughs, and technological innovation. The proposal was open for public comment for 45 days and drew more than half a million responses.
Supporters of the proposal argue that it will prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending. Critics contend that the proposal will politicize research funding by giving executive branch political appointees greater influence over which research projects receive federal support.
Joining us to break down the OMB proposal and what it could mean for the future of research are: 
Evan Morris, professor of radiology and biomedical imaging and of biomedical engineering at Yale

Catharine Young, senior fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Ryne Weiss, director of research here at FIRE

 
Timestamps: 
00:00 Intro  
02:57 What's in the OMB proposal?
08:57 Research grant "kill switches" and their consequences
17:17 Limits on foreign research partnerships and professional activities
21:29 The importance of federal funding to medical research
23:23 Are pharmaceutical companies the "boogeymen"?
25:13 The gold standard of scientific research
26:22 The "replication crisis"  
31:16 Open science and peer review
40:37 Bias in research funding decisions
44:06 Should science be shielded from politics? 
49:04 Has research always been political?
53:14 How politicization could change scientific research
58:59 Outro
Read the transcript here.
Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more. 
If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.