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The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a "; the schools themselves usually refer to these as "anti-harassment" policies or similar. It has also taken controversial stances on campus sexual conduct policies, and in support of the funding and operation of "expressive" student organizations, in particular campus religious organizations, that may discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or religious belief in membership. See below for a discussion of particular cases. According to the group, a recent survey {Link without Title} , funded by the John Templeton Foundation , has shown that college students and administrators are "woefully ignorant" of First Amendment rights guaranteed by the United States Bill Of Rights . FIRE maintains a Blog , ''The Torch'' {Link without Title} , and a detailed listing of universities in the United States. Their site gathers together each university's various harassment and hate speech policies, as well as any "Advertised Commitments to Freedom of Speech". On the basis of these and media reports, FIRE then assigns each institution a color code: green ("no serious threats to free speech"), yellow ("some policies that could ban or excessively regulate protected speech") or red ("at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech"). FIRE rates most institutions "yellow"; of the eight universities of the traditional Ivy League , two are rated "green" ( Dartmouth and the University Of Pennsylvania ), three are rated "red" ( Cornell , Harvard and Princeton ) and the rest are rated "yellow". FIRE'S LEADERSHIP AND SOURCES OF FUNDING FIRE's current president is was named permanent president of FIRE on March 23, 2006. FIRE's first Executive Director and CEO was , the former editor of Libertarian Reason Magazine and Daphne Patai , an outspoken critic of "academic feminism". FIRE's cofounders are Alan Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate ; they both now serve on the Board of Directors. Alan Kors has been identified as a right-wing civil libertarian, and Silverglate as a left-wing civil libertarian, by the , has frequently sided with the gun rights lobby and has gone on record adding his name to court briefs filed by groups like the National Rifle Association and Academics For The Second Amendment . Kors teaches Intellectual History at the University Of Pennsylvania , where he holds the George Herbert Walker chair. The depiction of Silverglate as "left wing," however, has drawn controversy. On the one hand, Silverglate is praised by conservative organizations such as the as a "cad and criminal" on the other, Silverglate was the former president, and is a current board member, of the Massachusetts ACLU, has opposed much of the Bush administration's policies on torture and indefinite detention, and has publicly taken liberal positions on issues such as gay marriage, gays in the military, abortion, and the death penalty [http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/02/20/3c7409019d9ee?in_archive=1 . FIRE'S POLITICAL ORIENTATION FIRE itself has no stated political affiliation and does not endorse candidates for office; however, in contrast to many other groups that describe themselves as concerned with civil liberties, FIRE has received much greater praise and support from commentators on the right, including in a number of articles in Front Page Magazine and Townhall.com . An article by the Center For Media And Democracy linked FIRE with a number of conservative groups such as Young America's Foundation and the American Council Of Trustees And Alumni FIRE's leadership has reacted strongly against the suggestion that they are a "conservative" group, and list a number of cases in which they undertook a defense of professors or students with left-wing views [http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2005Q3/saf.html#comment-499 . CASES TAKEN BY FIRE In their first major case, FIRE intervened on behalf of a , and compared the group's actions to a hypothetical "Gay Students Association" preventing the nomination to their board of a conservative Christian. FIRE has also criticized Columbia University 's sexual misconduct policy according to FIRE, the policy "lack[ed even the most minimal safeguards and fundamental principles of fairness." That controversy led to the resignation of Charlene Allen, Columbia's program coordinator for the Office of Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Education, whose policies were at the center of the controversy. Allen's resignation was considered in part due to FIRE's activism [http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/05/02/3c740914b6908?in_archive=1 . Some activists who opposed FIRE reported receiving unpleasant emails and threatening telephone calls that they believed were instigated by the foundation FIRE claimed opponents tore down posters announcing a campus discussion on the controversy [http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/123.html . FIRE has been involved in another Columbia campus controversy, this time against both the ACLU and the University administration, in supporting the actions of the David Project , a group claiming a pattern of Anti-Semitic harassment by professors in the Middle Eastern studies department [http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1516 . FIRE has taken up a number of other cases. Among others, it supported '', involving suppression of a student newspaper at Governors State University in Illinois, and has been involved in a case at Arizona State University where it condemned the listing of a class as open only to Native American students {Link without Title} . EXTERNAL LINKS
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