Sean Stevens
Chief Research Advisor at Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)
Sean Stevens, Chief Research Advisor at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Rutgers University in New Brunswick in 2013. At FIRE, he leads the College Free Speech Rankings, the National Speech Index, and oversees the Campus Deplatforming Database, providing empirical insight into the state of expression in America.
Before joining FIRE in 2020, Sean served as Research Director of the Social Perception Lab at Rutgers and later as a Postdoctoral Fellow, with additional affiliation at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. In 2016, he joined Heterodox Academy as its first Director of Research, where he developed the Campus Expression Survey.
Over the past decade, Sean has collaborated with scholars nationwide on the psychometric validation of multiple scales, including measures of Left Wing Authoritarianism, Moral Foundations Questionnaire 2, and a revised Willingness to Censor Scale, presented at the National Communication Association’s 2024 conference. He is also a member of the Best Practices in Science Movement, promoting rigor and integrity in social science research.
When Speech Is Managed and Silence Is Trained
Free Speech Crisis explores how speech is no longer silenced by force but managed through fear, pressure, and social punishment. Peter Vazquez traces censorship from Venezuela’s collapse to America’s campuses, joined by Sean Stevens of FIRE, who reveals how self censorship, shout downs, and deplatf…