Episode 19 - The Indispensability of Free Speech with FIRE’s Nico Perrino

Nico Perrino, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, is a busy man. For many of us who came of political age in the 2010s, FIRE first entered the scene as a stalwart opponent of campus speech codes and defender of students subjected to discipline on account of protected speech. With Democrats in the White House, free speech was often viewed as a Republican issue, and FIRE an activist organization dedicated to this conservative cause.

But that was never really accurate—it was founded by a liberal and is staffed by people from edge to edge of the political spectrum—and with President Trump again in power, FIRE has been busier than at any point since Perrino joined them full-time in 2012, working in the courts of law and public opinion to prevent the deportation of legal residents on account of their protected speech, oppose the president’s executive orders targeting specific law firms and rhetorical assaults on the media, and fight the implementation of new campus speech codes.

Perrino, the creator and host of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, was kind enough to join me for an hour to talk about the early experiences that led him to FIRE, our shared appreciation as religious fellows for the great Christopher Hitchens, the most restrictive actions of the Obama and Biden administrations, the same of the Trump administrations, and why all of it matters.

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