Written by David L. Hudson Jr., published on January 1, 2017 , last updated on February 18, 2024

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Greg Lukianoff is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and one of the country’s most passionate defenders of free expression.

Greg Lukianoff is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and one of the country’s most passionate defenders of free expression.

 

He has written on free-speech issues in the nation’s top newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.  Born in New York City, Lukianoff grew up in Danbury, Connecticut.  Lukianoff earned his undergraduate degree from American University and his law degree from Stanford.  He worked for the ACLU of Northern California, the Organization for Aid to Refugees, and the EnvironMentors Project before joining FIRE in 2001.   

 

Lukianoff, who became FIRE’s President in 2006, has devoted much of his time to advocating for academic freedom and against censorship on college and university campuses.  He is the co-author of FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus, the author of Freedom from Speech (2014) and also author of the acclaimed Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate (2012).   He also co-authored the widely read cover story for The Atlantic entitled “The Coddling of the American Mind.” His upcoming book is titled  The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure.

 

In 2008, Lukianoff won the Playboy Foundation’s Freedom of Expression Award. 

 

David L. Hudson, Jr. is a law professor at Belmont who publishes widely on First Amendment topics.  He is the author of a 12-lecture audio course on the First Amendment entitled Freedom of Speech: Understanding the First Amendment (Now You Know Media, 2018).  He also is the author of many First Amendment books, including The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech (Thomson Reuters, 2012) and Freedom of Speech: Documents Decoded (ABC-CLIO, 2017). This article was originally published in 2017.​

 

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