Ms. Buchanan described herself as blunt, and called her language and humor a “pedagogical strategy” to toughen up future teachers for work in communities where such language and hostile interactions are common. But L.S.U. fired her, saying she had violated its sexual harassment policy, though students had not accused her of that. The university, citing Department of Education advisements regarding Title IX, maintains it is following the law.  Ms. Buchanan’s suit cites violations of freedom of speech rights and due process. But her case, said Robert Corn-Revere, a high-profile lawyer who works with FIRE’s litigation program, is also about “the bigger picture — the widespread use of Title IX to violate First Amendment rights.”  Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in federally funded educational programs. In the last five years, as the government has worked to crack down on sexual assault on campus, it has broadened the definition of sexual harassment to “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including verbal conduct. It has also eliminated a protection that the verbal conduct had to be offensive to a reasonable person.  In April, the Justice Department cemented the definition in a letter to the University of New Mexico, which was under investigation for Title IX violations, said Will Creeley, FIRE vice president of legal and public advocacy. The letter, which faults the university for lacking proper channels to report sexual harassment and sexual assault, could have significant implications: It makes clear that any complaint of a sexual nature — say, someone finds offense in an overheard Amy Schumer joke — must be investigated even if no one claims it created a “hostile environment,” a threshold set by the Supreme Court. This “invites censorship,” Mr. Creeley said.  The University of New Mexico president, Robert G. Frank, agreed that universities had a responsibility to maintain an atmosphere free of verbal sexual harassment. But the federal government, he said in an email, “offers no specific guidance” on how to do that “in the real world without infringing on free speech,” especially at universities where “the exchange of controversial or sensitive ideas is woven into the fabric of academe.”  Universities investigated for violations of Title IX, or those that do not adequately investigate charges of sexual assault or harassment, face lengthy and expensive investigations — 246 cases are currently under investigation at 195 campuses. Those found guilty, public or private, could lose federal funding.  Understanding Title IX, Mr. Lukianoff said, “is not sexy and it’s complicated, but it is the secret engine as to why universities overreact” in creating and enforcing speech codes and in charges of harassment or sexual assault. “When people say, ‘Look how crazy our universities have gotten,’ they need to understand that they are being pushed with a very scary threat,” he said. “They’re not just scared of loss of funding. They’re scared of the investigations.” Colleges and universities, he said, are being “asked to do the impossible.”  There are other groups that fight for First Amendment rights on campus, but none as vocal — or pushy — as FIRE, which has gone public with 421 interventions on behalf of aggrieved students and faculty members over almost two decades (many more have been resolved privately).  The organization, which has headquarters in Philadelphia across the street from Independence Hall, has nearly doubled its staff, to 35, in the last two years. In 2015, FIRE received 807 inquiries from students and professors seeking assistance in fighting perceived civil rights violations, up from 719 in 2014. About 50 will fit FIRE’s “narrow focus” on civil liberties defense, said Peter Bonilla, director of its individual rights defense program. The most egregious get litigated through FIRE’s two-year-old litigation program, which targets violations at public colleges (only public institutions, which are arms of the government, are directly bound by the First Amendment).  A lawsuit is FIRE’s tactic of last resort, especially when it comes to speech codes. In about 90 percent of cases, it uses “persuasion,” as staff members call it, to get administrators to revise or revoke questionable parts of a code. Depending on the level of “obstinacy,” Mr. Bonilla said, “the levers of publicity” — news releases, op-eds, media appearances — kick in. Most administrators, wary of bad press or an expensive suit, eliminate the speech codes.  As Mr. Lukianoff likes to note, FIRE has not lost a speech-code legal challenge yet. (He recounts many of them in his 2014 book, “Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate.”)  The group also works proactively with campuses. Its Policy Reform Project has a database of conduct guidelines from 440 four-year institutions, and it publishes a ranking of schools based on them. FIRE has slowly encouraged many on the list to rewrite their rules. In 2007, 75 percent had at least one policy restricting speech. Last year, that was down to 49 percent.  “I admire FIRE enormously,” said Harvey Klehr, a professor of politics and history at Emory University who took an unpopular position last spring against student protesters who said they felt threatened by pro-Trump slogans chalked around campus. “Far too many universities persist in having speech codes,” he said. “It’s very important work calling them into account.”  But FIRE’s strategies have not endeared it to many campus officials.  Martha Compton, director of community standards and student responsibility at Ohio University, said administrators are often “put off by FIRE’s heavy-handedness.” Ms. Compton was named in a suit charging that administrators ordered a student group to remove T-shirts bearing the double entendre “We Get You Off for Free” (the group defends students in campus disciplinary actions). She says they never told students not to wear the shirts. The university settled for $32,000.  When FIRE got involved, she said, things escalated. She found out about the suit in a Twitter post from FIRE. “From FIRE’s standpoint, they do what they need to get institutions to respond,” she said, “but there’s often a cost”: Administrators who might reach out for guidance on free speech matters do not, afraid “they may open themselves up for a suit or public humiliation.”  Critics also charge that FIRE draws attention from real problems, including sexual assault or racism, by filtering them through the First Amendment lens and inserting itself into campus politics to serve its own agenda.  They point to Mr. Lukianoff’s involvement in the Yale shout-down. He was on campus that day last November because he was invited by Nicholas Christakis and his wife, Erika, to speak at Silliman College, a campus residence where the Christakises were “co-masters.” Ms. Christakis had sent an email to Silliman students in response to a directive from Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Committee advising students to avoid culturally insensitive Halloween costumes. Ms. Christakis reminded students that they were autonomous and mature, and to reflect on the consequences of an institutional “exercise of implied control over college students.”  The email did not play well, especially with minority students who read it as further evidence that faculty and staff were insensitive to the challenges they face on campus. For about an hour, students surrounded and disparaged Mr. Christakis. One shouted that he was “disgusting.”  As seen in Mr. Lukianoff’s video, the students had no interest in hearing Mr. Christakis’s entreaty for an open forum and, almost threateningly, shut down his right to speak. But there are plenty at Yale who believe the video narrowly and unfairly depicted the event to fit a narrative of so-called crybullies whining to be protected at the expense of others’ rights.  The video was “tremendously effective, but cruelly so,” said Jim Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale and a vocal critic of FIRE. Matthew Frye Jacobson, a professor of American studies, history and African-American studies at Yale, said that FIRE’s spin, and the subsequent storm of media coverage, was “a complete misconstruction of what happened.”  “The cultural affairs committee made its statement about Halloween costumes,” he said. “The Christakises critiqued that; the students critiqued them. Then everyone in the world criticized the students. From beginning to end, it was never a matter of free speech.”  That argument, Mr. Lukianoff said, “lacks intellectual honesty.”  Still, the incident reverberated in ways FIRE probably did not intend. At a campus conference the next day, Mr. Lukianoff was tripped up by his own free speech in remarks about Erika Christakis’s email. Describing the firestorm, he said, “You would think that given the reaction to what she had written that she had actually wiped out an Indian village.” Protests followed.  Katie McCleary, a Little Shell Chippewa student raised on the Crow Reservation in Montana, is a Yale junior who was active in the protests. “I would not seek out FIRE even though they say they are founded for reasons of defending students who feel their voice is lost,” she said. “It seems like a specific kind of lost voice that they are interested in. It’s usually a voice that’s racist and says things that are immoral. I’d rather speak for myself.”  Like many American colleges and universities, Yale is working to create a diverse student body but struggling to provide sufficient support for the minority students it recruits. Those students are now speaking up loudly and in sometimes unpleasant ways because, as Ms. McCleary indicates, they believe their “speech” is too rarefied and angry to be heard and defended, even by a First Amendment group like FIRE.  Mr. Silverglate, who made his reputation defending radicals and protesters since the Vietnam War, objects: “Communists, labor organizers, war protesters — they are the people responsible for the majority of great First Amendment law. We don’t care what you say. If you are penalized for it, we’re there.”  An earlier version of this article referred to Alan Kors as a retired professor. He is not retired but on leave.  An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misspelled the surname of the communications director. He is Nico Perrino, not Perrin.  Cecilia Capuzzi Simon teaches writing at American University.  A version of this article appears in print on August 7, 2016, on page ED20 of Education Life with the headline: Helping America Speak Its Mind. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The First Amendment watchdog Foundation for Individual Rights in Education wants students to understand not just their own rights, but yours.