 Because of the social media circus surrounding the Johnny Depp Amber Heard defamation trial, it was easy to overlook one of the principal, yet least likely actors in the courtroom drama, the American Civil Liberties Union, which Ghost Road emplaced the 2018 Washington Post op-ed by Heard about surviving domestic abuse that was the basis of the trial. It's only the latest example of how the group has strayed from its original mission over the past two decades. A wash with money after Donald Trump was elected, the ACLU questioned the due process rights of college students accused of sexual assault and harassment under Title IX rules. It ran partisan ads against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and four Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. A move that current executive director Anthony Romero told The New York Times was a mistake. The ACLU also called for the federal government to forgive $50,000 per borrower in student loans. By transforming into an organization that champion progressive causes, the ACLU undermined the neutrality required to fulfill its original mission of defending the right to free speech, no matter how vile. Enter another free speech organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE. The law is about as good as it's ever been. When it comes to the culture, our argument is that it's gotten a lot worse and that we don't have to accept it. Greg Lukyanov is FIRE's president. It was founded in 1999 to combat speech codes on college campuses. And just as the ACLU recedes from its mission, FIRE is expanding its own, to go well beyond the university. And it's changing its name to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The group has raised $29 million towards a three-year litigation opinion research and public education campaign aimed at boosting and solidifying support for free speech values. Pretty much from day one, people have been asking us to take our advocacy off campus and extend nationally. But 2020 was such a scarily bad year for freedom of speech. On campus and off, we decided to accelerate that process. FIRE is also expanding its efforts beyond legal advocacy and into promoting what Lukyanov calls the culture of free speech. As Politico reports, it will spend $10 million in national cable and billboard advertising, featuring activists on both ends of the political spectrum extolling the virtues of free speech. What is a free speech culture? Things like everyone's entitled to their opinion, which is something you heard all the time when we were kids. It's a free country, you know, to each their own. You know, statements of deep pluralism, you know, that like the idea, walk a mile in a man's shoes. All of these things are they're great principles for taking advantage of pluralism, but they've largely sort of fallen out of usage due to, I think, a growing skepticism about freedom of speech, particularly on campus, that's been about 40 years in the making. Lukyanov has nothing negative to say about the ACLU, and he stresses that FIRE has worked with the organization since day one and continues to do so. But unlike the ACLU, FIRE not only isn't at risk of turning into a progressive advocacy organization, its staff is truly bipartisan. I think that the fact that we this is the first non-profit I ever worked for, where you had people who actually voted for for different major party candidates, a fact of which I'm extremely proud. People like to argue on the Twitter's, you know, is to say, you know, to fixate on kind of like, ah, but you receive money from conservative and libertarian foundations. And my answer is yes, and you should be very proud of them because we routinely defend people who hate their guts, and we never get any foundation saying that they're taking back our funding. Lukyanov thinks that despite the rise of cancel culture, most Americans still understand the value of free speech, but they need to be encouraged to stand up for it. It's really a pretty small minority and largely at the top. It's particularly pronounced on Twitter that is sort of anti free speech philosophically and thinks that people should shut up and conform. I think that once you start giving people permission to believe in these sort of small d-democratic norms again, a lot of people are going to reveal their actual preferences. There's reason to be optimistic about it.