WATCH: FIRE Awards Free Speech Grants
Campus Reform Reporter Alexa Schwerha spoke with Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Senior Research Council Adam Goldstein about a free speech grant program funded by the organization.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression announced in May its 2022 Free Inquiry Grant Program to promote the “understanding of free speech and academic freedom.”
Campus Reform Reporter Alexa Schwerha spoke with FIRE Senior Research Council Adam Goldstein about the program, and how it will benefit free speech culture on college campuses.
”We want to make sure that everything that we’re doing on campus, we being, collectively, society, we should be sure that everything we do on campus is consistent with our values and the values of free expression,” and basic American values,” he said. “So, to the extent, we haven’t tested that. We need to test it now.”
The inaugural program will award funding of upward of $50,000 per grant to accepted proposals in a variety of fields. Such departments include economics, education, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology.
According to Goldstein, there is a multitude of project ideas the grant could assist with. Some ideas included the study of social media moderation and human bias, “speech policing” funding, among other ideas that haven’t been considered.
”We want to module the academic humility we preach to others, and recognize that, as a research department, we don’t know all the right questions,” Goldstein said. “So, presumably, people will have ideas better than these or different than these and bring them to us, and we’ll be able to fund them.”
The program will accept applications through October 1, 2022. Goldstein stated applicants must be connected to a research institute such as a think tank, university, or nonprofit. Applications are available via the FIRE website.
Watch the full interview above.
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