My favorite civil-liberties group, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, reviews 2007:
FIRE won many victories for free speech, religious liberty, freedom of association, and freedom of conscience throughout 2007. These successes included:
- Dismantling thought reform programs at the University of Delaware and Michigan State University, which imposed mandatory ideological reeducation on students whose speech or behavior was deemed unacceptable by university standards;
- Ending Brown University’s semester-long suspension of an evangelical student group, which was imposed on dubious grounds and without any explanation from Brown;
- Defeating the University of Rhode Island’s attempt to force the College Republicans to apologize for a satirical white, heterosexual, American male “scholarship” or face derecognition by the university;
- Working with student activists to persuade Colorado State University to completely revise three formerly unconstitutional speech codes;
- Pressuring Gettysburg College to amend a draconian sexual misconduct policy that failed to distinguish between an innocent, spontaneous hug and forcible rape;
- Vindicating the right to free expression of the College Republicans at San Francisco State University, who faced discipline for stepping on makeshift Hamas and Hezbollah flags at an anti-terrorism rally.