Greg Lukianoff

Lukianoff was born in New York City and grew up in Danbury, Connecticut; he graduated from American University and earned his law degree at Stanford, and worked for the ACLU of Northern California, the Organization for Aid to Refugees and the EnvironMentors Project before joining FIRE.⁠[1]

In 2001 he left legal practice in northern California to become the first director of legal and public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).⁠[2]

On November 19, 2005, FIRE’s board of directors decided to name him interim president, effective January 1, 2006.⁠[3]

In March 2006, after a national search, FIRE’s board named him president; he had earlier co-written FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus with Harvey A. Silverglate and David French.⁠[2]

In 2008 he received the Playboy Foundation’s Freedom of Expression Award.⁠[1]

On October 23, 2012, Encounter Books published his Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, which follows a student from orientation to the end of freshman year to document campus speech restrictions and argues that this culture of censorship is spreading into the wider society.⁠[4]

On September 9, 2014, he published Freedom from Speech, a 64-page Encounter Broadside arguing that threats to free speech will intensify as people increasingly expect “intellectual comfort.”⁠[5]

In 2015 he also became FIRE’s CEO, while FIRE attorney Robert Shibley became executive director of the organization, which had offices in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.⁠[6]

That year he and Jonathan Haidt published “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health” in The Atlantic, and he was an executive producer of Can We Take a Joke?, a documentary about comedy, censorship and outrage culture.⁠[7]

Made by former ReasonTV staffer Ted Balaker, the film interviews comedians including Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette, Lisa Lampanelli and Adam Carolla; in it Lukianoff says everyone is “one clumsy joke away from public ruin.”⁠[8]

On September 4, 2018, Penguin Press published The Coddling of the American Mind, written with Haidt, in the United States. The book argues that three “Great Untruths,” such as “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker,” and the resulting culture of safetyism interfere with young people’s social, emotional and intellectual development.⁠[9]

He was an executive producer of the 2020 documentary Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story, about the life and career of former ACLU executive director Ira Glasser.⁠[7]

On June 6, 2022, FIRE announced that it was expanding its mission to defend free expression throughout the United States and changed its full name from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.⁠[6]

In September 2023 he was the guest on episode #397 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing cancel culture and freedom of speech, left- and right-wing cancel culture, college rankings by freedom of speech, deplatforming, hate speech and social media.⁠[10]

On October 17, 2023, The Canceling of the American Mind, co-written with Rikki Schlott, was published; it draws on original research and data and hundreds of new examples to show how the left and the right both work to silence their enemies in different ways.⁠[11]

In a review, Hamilton College president David Wippman and Glenn Altschuler of Cornell UniversityCornell UniversityCornell University is a private research university in Ithaca, New York, and a member of the Ivy League. It is New York State's federal land-grant university, a distinction unique within the Ivy League. Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White founded the university in 1865, and it opened in 1868. In addition to its Ithaca campus, Cornell operates Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech in New York City and a medical college in Qatar. It enrolled 26,793 students in fall 2024. Its president is Michael I. Kotlikoff.Open the full entry argued that the book’s attribution of cancel culture to campus ideology underestimated society-wide polarization and information silos, and said the authors relied on some outdated statistics and seldom engaged seriously with arguments from the left.⁠[12]

On February 6, 2024, he testified before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, calling regulatory overreach the main threat posed around AI and urging lawmakers to apply existing First Amendment principles to AI policy.⁠[13]

In April 2025 he gave the talk Let’s get real about free speech at TED2025, warning against the rise of “mob censorship.”⁠[14]

In 2025 Heresy Press published The War on Words, which he co-wrote with former ACLU national president Nadine Strossen; the book rebuts ten claims made for restricting speech, such as “words are violence” and “hate speech isn’t free speech.”⁠[15]

On May 21, 2026, Lukianoff, who was to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private institution of higher education in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded by Eleazar Wheelock, it received a royal charter on December 13, 1769. The 1819 Supreme Court ruling in Dartmouth College v. Woodward preserved its private status. Alongside undergraduate liberal arts education, Dartmouth includes the Geisel, Thayer, Tuck and Guarini schools. It enrolled 7,273 students in fall 2025 and held a $9 billion endowment at June 30, 2025. Sian Leah Beilock, in office since June 2023, remained president as of October 2026.Open the full entry, said at an event there that the convergence of “2020-style cancel culture” and the Trump administration’s targeting of higher education was creating a “terrible mess” for free expression at U.S. universities.⁠[16]

X: Public account: https://x.com/glukianoff (opens in a new window)⁠[10]

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression: Official website: https://www.fire.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[10]