Free Speech For Campus is a grass-roots movement that brings together concerned citizens of Wisconsin to promote and protect free speech and due process rights on our college campuses.
Is Freedom of Speech under attack on our Wisconsin Campuses?
In 2019, the organization FIRE declared,
The University of Wisconsin System to be in the
top 10 Worst Colleges
in the nation for violating Free Speech rights.
Our vision is to provide a state-wide network of advocates who can offer first amendment campus education, financial assistance, media attention, and help coordinating legal representation for students and faculty denied due process, their rights to speech, association, or assembly.
Former student Polly Anna Olsen , started her fight for campus free speech when she filed and won a federal lawsuit against Northeast Wisconsin Technical College for violating her first amendment right by stopping her from handing out “Jesus Loves You” valentines to fellow students and faculty on campus.
Picture: Olsen at the White House, March 2019 for the Executive order signing to protect Freedom of Speech on Campuses.
In this age of speech codes and academic censorship, FSFC affirms the UW’s long-standing commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression:
“Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”
"All students have a right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has held that students and teachers do not "shed their constitutional rights . . . at the schoolhouse gate."
— Tinker v. Des Moines Indept. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969)