A SAFER buddy has been trying to set Wikipedia straight about the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a group that attacked SAFER’s work on the Columbia University sexual assault policy.
Wikipedia has an interesting policy about “sourcing” what appears there. This isn’t a problem with an easy solution, but Wikipedia insists on written sources, and personal experience doesn’t count for knowledge there. It makes sense in some ways–it might help with preventing crazy people from posting whatever they feel like– but when the media is controlled by a bunch of right wingnuts and there is nothing even close to an equivalent on the side of those of us working against oppression, it guarantees that Wikipedia will mirror the biases of the media as it exists, and ultimately harm members of oppressed groups.
There’s also a problematic belief in “objectivity” (the underlying old-school sexist crap about “rationality” and women makes me cringe, but that’s another post) that seems to guide a lot of Wikipedia’s discussion. When the ridiculous notion of the possibility of objectivity in journalism is done away with, progressives will be a whole lot better off.
Anyway, I’m providing a source for Wikipedia.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is a stealth conservative organization. They have received extensive funding from right wing foundations like the Scaife Foundation. The cases they take are almost always on behalf of a conservative cause. In five years of following their work, I have never seen FIRE take on a progressive cause. They will occassionally take on individual progressive or apolitical clients, but never a progressive cause. Even if the client themself is progressive, the legal precedent FIRE is trying to establish is part of a larger conservative agenda.
By way of example, immediately after September 11th, the biggest threat to free speech FIRE could find was supposed hostility to some student who hung an American flag on their dorm room door. We all remember how hostile everyone was to American flags right after September 11th. If you hung one, it was almost as dangerous as wearing a hijab.
FIRE’s leadership is made up of some seriously connected conservatives, most notably Kenneth Cribb, who leads the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an organization with the goal of building young right-wing leaders and creating a right-wing movement on college campuses nationwide.
FIRE often claims to be neutral, and even tries to pose as progressive at times. They use this strategy to confuse moderates and progressives who would usually disagree with them.
Plus, their former executive director, Thor Halvorssen, told former SAFER leader Sarah Richardson that FIRE’s goal with regard to campus sexual assault policies is to abolish them altogether.
So there’s your source.
