Fire's Guide to Religious Liberty on Campus

by David French

College and university campuses remain one of the only forums in which the rights of students of faith are regularly curtailed. The ease with which students are denied the right to associate freely among themselves, even in matters of conscience and religion, is profoundly disturbing, as is most students’ inability to expose such denials as fundamentally unjust. FIRE’s Guide to Religious Liberty on Campus provides a history of the crusade for religious liberty and explains how the legal and moral arguments for religious liberty apply differentially on public and private campuses. This Guide also answers pertinent questions such What is the modern history and current status of the United States Supreme Court’s view of the "free exercise of religion" and of "freedom of association?" How do these concepts apply to student liberty on my college or university campus? What arguments on behalf of religious liberty and the rights of conscience pertain to a private or sectarian institution? What legal and moral arguments may be made against the imposition of double standards by academic administrators in a variety of areas of campus life, including religious freedom?

99 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2002

About the author

A staff writer at National Review, an attorney (concentrating his practice in constitutional law and the law of armed conflict), and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is the author or co-author of several books including, most recently, the No. 1 New York Times bestselling Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can’t Ignore. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and a former lecturer at Cornell Law School. He has served as a senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom. David is a major in the United States Army Reserve (IRR). In 2007, he deployed to Iraq, serving in Diyala Province as Squadron Judge Advocate for the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, where he was awarded the Bronze Star. He lives and works in Columbia, Tennessee, with his wife, Nancy (who is also a New York Times bestselling author), and three children.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work warrants consideration for a few reasons and should be, at the very least, reviewed by those in higher education as it effectively catalogs numerous religious and freedom to associate cases that might be of note to those who work in the field. While there may be some hesitation on behalf of the reader to believe students are so curtailed as the description states, the legal standings and rulings are at the very least informative and necessary in understanding one's duty to students in an academic setting.