Sarah McLaughlin, a senior staffer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), will deliver the keynote address at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17 in the Hartley Room as the 15th annual Free Speech Week is held at Florida Tech.
Hosted by the student-run media organizations in the Panther Media Group, which include The Crimson, Panther Radio, FITV and the literary arts magazine Kaleidoscope, Free Speech Week seeks to remind the campus community that editorial decisions in these outlets are made free from university involvement.
“The Crimson truly is a free press,” said Ted Petersen, associate professor of journalism and adviser to Panther Media Group.
McLaughlin graduated magna cum laude from Drexel University in 2024 with a B.S. in political science and a minor in history. A senior scholar, global expression, at FIRE, her 2025 book, Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech, explores the ways she believes foreign authoritarian governments, such as China’s, subtly influence American universities through “borderless censorship.” McLaughlin writes regularly about global free speech issues, and her work has been featured in Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times.
Free Speech Week kicks off Monday, Feb. 16, with a “free speech wall” demonstration outside of the SUB. Students will get a free cookie for exercising their free speech rights by writing on the wall.
Tuesday is McLaughlin’s address, and Wednesday will feature a panel of Florida Today editors and reporters discussing challenges and opportunities in local news. The discussion starts at 5:30 p.m. in the Link Room in Evans Library. Both events are free and open to the public.
On Thursday, The Crimson will host “Live Free or Eat Free: You can’t do both.” Participating students enter the “country” created by Panther Media Group members and get a free meal. The only catch is that they must give up their First Amendment rights to get the grub.
“Free speech rights cannot be taken for granted,” Petersen said. “McLaughlin’s work, and this entire week of events, is a reminder of that.”
For more information, contact Petersen at 321-674-7201 or tpetersen@fit.edu.
