Greg Lukianoff
American free-speech lawyer and author; president and later CEO of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind (2018) and The Canceling of the American Mind (2023).
Greg Lukianoff did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Our reading
Trump is not playing seven-dimensional chess; his puzzling moves do not hide a deeper plan.
Their wordsWhen Trump makes a puzzling or counterintuitive move, does anyone really still think he is playing seven-dimensional chess* — distracting us from the real plan by throwing us some red meat in the form of a crazy news story or executive action? I certainly don’t think so, but there does still seem to be a temptation to ascribe a much deeper game to Trump than the evidence requires.
↗Trump is not playing seven-dimensional chesseternallyradicalidea.com
- 2 months earlier
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Our reading
Viewpoint diversity is incredibly important; failing to preserve it is how the AAUP lost its way.
Their wordsWhile preparing my talk I realized there were parts of the argument I had never fully written down, and I really should, because viewpoint diversity is incredibly important. Failure to preserve it puts us where the AAUP is right now, and because of who we are and how we’re wired, we are unlikely to see it until it’s far too late.
↗What happened to the AAUP — and why viewpoint diversity matterseternallyradicalidea.com
- 7 weeks earlier
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Their wordsOne big problem with the discourse surrounding all of this is that age verification is something of a misnomer. This is because the systems necessary to make that kind of screening possible also inevitably make anonymity for adults impossible to preserve. That means building a “show me your papers, please” internet at the very moment when anonymity is most essential.
↗The online ‘safety’ trapeternallyradicalidea.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsI will say here that federal preemption of state AI laws is, by itself, a very good idea. States are already producing a thicket of inconsistent, vague, and sometimes flatly asinine AI rules that aren’t compatible with the breadth of expressive rights Americans enjoy.
↗The online ‘safety’ trapeternallyradicalidea.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 7 weeks earlier
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Their wordsJawboning is something we complained about a lot during the Biden era, and have had even more reason to complain about it under Trump. The current administration just seems to do even more than Biden did — or at least it does so much more publicly than Biden ever would have even considered.
↗Kimmel and Comey: If it looks like an attempt to chill speech by Trump, it probably iseternallyradicalidea.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
"The other side is bad too" is no answer to the Trump administration's use of power against speech.
Their wordsThis was true in Trump’s first term. It is true now. Saying so does not require anyone to pretend the left has been wonderful on free speech. I have written entire books arguing the opposite. But “the other side is bad too” is not a constitutional argument. It is a coping mechanism.
↗Kimmel and Comey: If it looks like an attempt to chill speech by Trump, it probably iseternallyradicalidea.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 8 weeks earlier
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Our reading
Government must be kept separate from AI and the other tools people use to ask and answer questions.
Their wordsFriday’s story is a reminder of something we’re going to have to say out loud, over and over, whether it’s fashionable or not: The separation of truth and power — the separation of government from the tools we use to ask and answer questions — just became more important than ever.
- 7 weeks earlier
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Their wordsBut there’s a dark twist. In much of Europe and the UK, we’ve now used that expanding circle logic to shrink the circle of free speech. We say, “To show compassion for vulnerable groups, we must criminalize speech that offends them. It’s not really censorship if we do it to protect people.”
↗The situation for free speech in Europe is even worse than I thoughteternallyradicalidea.com
- 2 months earlier
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Their wordsWhatever the intent, this creates the infrastructure of a surveillance state. The idea that we should monitor each other’s beliefs and report them to a central authority is incompatible with a free society — and certainly incompatible with a university’s mission to foster critical thought, exploration, and dissent.
- 6 weeks earlier
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Their wordsOfficials brandish regulatory leverage, allies echo the pressure, and a company caves. This is the anatomy of jawboning — the government’s use of intimidation tactics and threats of reprisals to unconstitutionally coerce private entities into doing their bidding.
↗Jimmy Kimmel's cancelation is an outrage in a torrent of outrageseternallyradicalidea.com
- 8 weeks earlier
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Their wordsI’ve mentioned this many times before on ERI and elsewhere: When it comes to AI regulations, we are talking about government intervention into how knowledge itself is created, in a technology that increasingly mediates — and is increasingly the source of — human understanding.
↗The war on ‘woke AI’ just became federal policyeternallyradicalidea.com