I guess it's bad that my first response is "who has heard of Valdosa State University or Colorado College"?

That's damn smart marketing. Like Mad Men quality brilliance.

- Micha

I didn't do a ton of reading their site, but it looks like they pick single events for each of the schools. I would expect that to be the worst of the worst one would want to see a pattern.

(Disclosure: I am a Brandeis alum)

Yeah, unless Brandeis has changed a lot since I graduated, it has no business being labeled one of the "worst of the worst." One high profile incident does not demonstrate a severe and ongoing disregard!

Likewise, Tufts had no pattern of disregarding faculty or students' rights when I was at Brandeis. The case against them is not very clear cut, IMHO. FIRE preserved the controversial pages in The Primary Source, and I am hard pressed to see an argument for parody or satire on either. FIRE doesn't summarize the case, so I'm not sure what happened to the students. Maybe it was disproportionate (although I'm not sure what I think would be disproportionate--it depends on whether the paper receives university funding and what stipulations are attached to that). But unless there's a heck of a lot of context that FIRE's not preserving, it's not like the students wrote a parody or satire that was taken literally.

But, but... surely you aren't arguing that the right of these institutions to free association should be abridged!

I'm with Patri here. All they've done is call attention to bad acts and recommend that people not attend the schools in question. How does that affect freedom of association?

thefire.org uses language like: "See who else is violating individual rights on campus" and "FIRE Exposes Unrepentant Abusers of Liberty in ‘U.S. News’ College Rankings Issue". They don't use language like "Find out which colleges will expel you (within their rights) for doing certain things."

Now, I happen to agree with them, I was just pointing out that it's not very orthodox from a libertarian stance to say that FIRE is concerned with "liberty on campus", since the libertarian.

I also recognize that you never said anything along the lines of "we should pass a law against expelling people for protesting parking garages", but I was surprised you would associate yourself with an organization that thinks (quite reasonably, imho) that a university shouldn't be able to terminate their voluntary contract with you for exercising your 1st amendment rights.

FIRE's Brandeis Case Archive: http://www.thefire.org/index.php/schools/2482

FIRE's Tuft Case Archive: http://www.thefire.org/index.php/schools/762