Is this the picture you’re looking for, @lvvcsf? http://woub.org/2017/03/29/remaining-charges-against-baker-center-protesters-dismissed/ Here’s an article by FIRE praising the decision by the municipal court judge in the OU case who ruled in favor of the student protestors. https://www.thefire.org/students-absolved-of-both-criminal-charges-and-school-sanctions-after-ohio-university-protest/
People on both sides of the partisan divide want college administrators to permit speech they like and restrict speech they dislike. Often the loudest voices for the school administration to regulate speech come from the students themselves. So someone might be happy to see FIRE defend the OU protestors but the same people might be mad if FIRE defends someone who is the subject of a disciplinary hearing in the context of a “bias reporting” incident, or be mad if FIRE defends a school newspaper from calls to de-fund it for its content (e.g., Wesleyan Argus). But the author of the socialist worker op-ed has obviously recognized that sometimes socialists and FIRE can have a common goal, which is to stop administrators from restricting speech rights.