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The Canceling of the American Mind

Cancel culture is a new phenomenon, and "The Canceling of the American Mind" is the first book to codify it and survey its effects, including hard data and research on what cancel culture is and how it works, along with hundreds of new examples showing the left and right both working to silence their enemies.

In "Canceling of the American Mind," journalist Rikki Schlott and FIREPresident and CEO Greg Lukianoff will change how you view cancel culture. Rather than a moral panic, they consider it a dysfunctional part of how Americans battle for power, status, and dominance. Cancel culture is just one symptom of a much larger problem: the use of cheap rhetorical tactics to “win” arguments without actually winning arguments. After all, why bother refuting your opponents when you can just take away their platform or career?

The good news is that we can beat back this threat to democracy through better citizenship. The Canceling of the American Mind offers concrete steps toward reclaiming a free speech culture, with materials specifically tailored for parents, teachers, business leaders, and everyone who uses social media. We can all show intellectual humility and promote the essential American principles of individuality, resilience, and open-mindedness.

The Coddling of the American Mind

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. FIREand professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising — on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen?

In "Coddling of the American Mind," FIREPresident and CEO Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: 

• What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
• Always trust your feelings.
• Life is a battle between good people and evil people. 

These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths — and the resulting culture of safetyism — interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life.

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

For over a generation, shocking cases of censorship at America’s colleges and universities have taught students the wrong lessons about living in a free society. Drawing on a decade of experience battling for freedom of speech on campus, FIREPresident and CEO Greg Lukianoff reveals how higher education fails to teach students to become critical thinkers: by stifling open debate, our campuses are supercharging ideological divisions, promoting groupthink, and encouraging an unscholarly certainty about complex issues.

In "Unlearning Liberty," Lukianoff walks readers through the life of a modern-day college student, from orientation to the end of freshman year. Through this lens, he describes startling violations of free speech rights. But Lukianoff goes further, demonstrating how this culture of censorship is bleeding into the larger society. As he explores public controversies involving Juan Williams, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Larry Summers — even Dave Barry and Jon Stewart — Lukianoff paints a stark picture of our ability as a nation to discuss important issues rationally. "Unlearning Liberty" illuminates how intolerance for dissent and debate on today’s campus threatens the freedom of every citizen and makes us all just a little bit dumber.

First Things First: A Modern Coursebook on Free Speech Fundamentals

"First Things First" is a college coursebook like no other. Written by three First Amendment experts and professors, this free speech textbook provides students with the fundamentals of modern American free speech law in a clear, concise, and accessible manner. "First Things First" also introduces readers to First Amendment issues related to topics such as student speech, freedom of the press, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, advertising, music censorship, and artificial intelligence. 

Beyond providing students with a breakdown of modern free speech law, "First Things First" prepares students for free speech dilemmas they may face in future careers in areas such as journalism, public service, education, music, and advertising. "First Things First" is a free speech textbook that provides students with the knowledge to be active, inquisitive, and resilient citizens.

The ebook text includes scores of audio and video links, photographs, and helpful study-aid summaries and questions. The book's vibrant and engaging tone ensures readers will leave this free speech textbook with a dynamic understanding of their rights and the value of free speech.

Twisting Title IX

If you hear talk of “Title IX” on a college campus, it’s almost certainly a reference to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs. One of our nation’s most famous — and sometimes most controversial — civil rights laws, Title IX was for many years best known for its impact on college women’s athletics. But the law has other important effects on campuses as well. For example, when it was passed, it explicitly banned most forms of sex discrimination in college admissions.

In "Twisting Title IX," Robert Shibley explains how Title IX, a 1972 law intended to ban sex discrimination in education, became a monster that both the federal government and many college administrators treat as though it supersedes the U.S. Constitution and hundreds of years of common law. Shibley tells the stories of the victims of this law — men and women both — and of the unaccountable government bureaucrats at the Departments of Education and Justice who repeatedly prioritize an extreme brand of politics over free speech, fundamental fairness, and basic human decency.

Freedom from Speech

In "Freedom From Speech," FIREPresident and CEO Greg Lukianoff offers a troubling and provocative theory on why we can expect challenges to freedom of speech to grow in the coming decades, both in the United States and abroad. 

Lukianoff analyzes numerous examples of the growing desire for "intellectual comfort," such as the rise of speech restrictions around the globe and the increasing media obsession of punishing "offensive" utterances, jokes, or opinions inside the United States. To provide a preview of where we may be headed, Lukianoff points to American college campuses where speakers are routinely disinvited for their opinions, where students increasingly demand "trigger warnings" for even classics like "The Great Gatsby," and where students are told they cannot hand out even copies of the Constitution outside of "free speech zones." Lukianoff explains how increasingly global populations are arguing not for freedom of speech, but, rather, freedom from speech.

The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses

Read the book that started it all. Written by FIREcofounders Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglate, "The Shadow University" is a stinging indictment of the covert system of justice on college campuses, exposing the widespread reliance on kangaroo courts and arbitrary punishment to coerce students and faculty into conformity. Kors and Silverglate, staunch civil libertarians and active defenders of free inquiry on campus, lay bare the totalitarian mindset that undergirds speech codes, conduct codes, and "campus life" bureaucracies, through which a cadre of deans and counselors indoctrinate students and faculty in an ideology that favors group rights over individual rights, sacrificing free speech and academic freedom to spare the sensitivities of currently favored groups.

Today, sadly, this ideal of the university is being quietly betrayed from within. Universities still set themselves apart from American society, but now they do so by enforcing their own politically correct worldview through censorship, double standards, and a judicial system without due process. Faculty and students who threaten the prevailing norms may be forced to undergo "thought reform." In a surreptitious about-face, universities have become the enemy of a free society, and the time has come to hold these institutions to account.

The Shadow University unmasks a chilling reality for parents who entrust their sons and daughters to the authority of such institutions, for thinking people who recognize that vigorous debate is the only sure path to truth, and for all Americans who realize that when even one citizen is deprived of liberty, we are all diminished.