If history teaches anything, phrases like “hate speech” and “marginalized communities” will be chalked up to a Koch Brothers conservative conspiracy in 20 years. Hemlines will have risen and fallen many times, and bell bottoms may have even come back in style. And progressive minds will be resolute in their defense of free speech, as if preventing the neo-Nazis from marching on Skokie was even an acceptable possibility.

The New York Times, in a surprisingly pleasant turn of events, tells of the efforts of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, started by Harvey Silverglate in 1999 in response to restrictive speech codes gaining popularity on campus.

FIRE was started in 1999 by Harvey A. Silverglate, a criminal and civil rights lawyer in Boston, and Alan Charles Kors, now a retired University of Pennsylvania history professor. They met as Princeton undergraduates, and in 1998 wrote “The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses.” The book is an exhaustive recounting of administrators’ abuses of freedom of speech and due process, and a warning that the academy was being undermined by speech codes — restrictions that colleges and universities began to put in place in the 1980s, in part to protect the growing minority student population from racial intolerance.

In the 60s, campuses erupted in protest against restrictions on freedom. By the 90s, when people grew weary of too much liberty, the pendulum swung the other way. The same arguments were used, wielded as artfully as one could expect of students for whom reason was little more than an excuse to get whatever served their purpose at the moment, but now to silence.

There are few causes more liberal than free speech, and yet, the Times portrays today’s FIRE, now led by Greg Lukianoff, as some conservative cause.

In many ways, their work has become even more complicated. Most significantly, students are, wittingly or not, becoming vocal opponents of free speech by demanding protections and safe spaces from offensive words and behaviors.

“Something changed,” Mr. Lukianoff said. “I don’t entirely know why.” But he can date the shift: October 2013, at Brown University, when the New York City police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, was invited to speak but was shouted down by students over his support of stop-and-frisk practices.

You can see the problem if you squint a bit. No longer was the issue characterized by the Evelyn Beatrice Hall quote, usually misattributed to Voltaire, that, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” After all, the “Constitution isn’t a suicide pact” and “you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater.” Did I mention that rights don’t come without responsibilities, and that freedom isn’t free? Hopefully, you don’t need me to explain this paragraph further.

There is likely no one who would find what Ray Kelly had to say about stop & frisk more repugnant than me, and yet, let him speak. And then, rip him a new one for being totally full of shit. That’s how free speech works.

Because no story appears in the Times without balance, however, the complaints against FIRE were aired.

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.”

A curious complaint, and one that’s raised with great frequency. They want to engage in flagrant censorship, but are fearful of being taken to task for flagrant censorship. Well, damn tootin’, skippy. But it would all be different if the censors could tone police their critics so they didn’t look so, you know, censor-y. The Academy can be so very sensitive about appearances, and if only those who point out their baby is ugly would use the words that didn’t make them feel badly about themselves.

Of course, this is pure post-hoc rationalization. Nobody forces colleges to violate free speech, and nobody at FIRE refuses to take their phone calls or offer advice on how to not violate free speech. That they may be afraid that their tears and jargon won’t win them a balloon for good intentions isn’t an excuse.

But that’s not the big beef with FIRE.

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.

Note the un-ironic use of the phrase, “real problems.” Is it really necessary to point out that popular speech requires no defense, and that the point of free speech is to protect the speech that makes the kids cry? Are the students at Yale that vapid? Well, yes. Yes they are:

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.”

And when the worm turns, and Katie’s opinion is the one to be silenced, FIRE will be there to defend her right to speak too.  But it’s not, as Katie’s limited grasp would have it, that FIRE exists to defend “students who feel their voice is lost.”  Nobody guaranteed the Katies of the world that their “voice” would be universally adored and free from challenge.  What she calls “lost” means not appreciated, applauded, beloved, as she believes she’s entitled.

Katie can say any damn thing she wants, no matter how valuable or foolish, because there is a group called FIRE defending her right to do so, whether she seeks them out or not. That it rains on Katie’s parade isn’t a criticism of FIRE or free speech, but that the world doesn’t think as well of Katie as she thinks of herself. That’s not a flaw, but a feature.  And FIRE will protect that feature, regardless of whether Katie see the defense of speech as immoral, when it’s speech that’s not hers, or the protection of a fundamental right.