While a handful of colleges can take pride in leading the latest campus free speech rankings, one watchdog group gave the overall higher education system an “F” in the increasingly contentious subject.
The more than 68,000 students surveyed revealed “a deep unwillingness to encounter controversial ideas” across the political spectrum, according to the latest analysis by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, also known as FIRE.
“This year, students largely opposed allowing any controversial campus speaker, no matter that speaker’s politics,” FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff said. “Rather than hearing out and then responding to an ideological opponent, both liberal and conservative college students are retreating from the encounter entirely.”
“This will only harm students’ ability to think critically and create rifts between them,” Lukianoff added. “We must champion free speech on campus as a remedy to our culture’s deep polarization.”
These trends emerged as disputes over the war in Gaza roiled many campuses and the Trump administration targeted antisemitism to pressure some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, FIRE noted in its report.
Campus free speech controversies are rare at schools that led the ranking because, in part, administrators are more supportive of expression. Dartmouth College and Vanderbilt University improved their scores the most by reforming free speech policies to more strongly encourage open discourse, FIRE pointed out.
Schools that scored the lowest saw threats to press freedom, speaker cancellations and the quashing of student protests, the organization explained.
Other key findings from the report include:
- 166 of the 257 schools surveyed got an F for their speech climate, while only 11 schools received a speech climate grade of C or higher.
- Only 36% of students said that it was “extremely” or “very” clear that their administration protects free speech on campus.
- A record 1 in 3 students now holds some level of acceptance – even if only “rarely” — for resorting to violence to stop a campus speech.
- 53% of students say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a difficult topic to discuss openly on campus. On 21 of the campuses surveyed, at least 75% of students said this—including 90% of students at Barnard.
- For the first time ever, a majority of students oppose their school allowing any of the six controversial speakers they were asked about onto campus—three controversial conservative speakers and three controversial liberal ones.
“More students than ever think violence and chaos are acceptable alternatives to peaceful protest,” said FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens. “This finding cuts across partisan lines. It is not a liberal or conservative problem—it’s an American problem. Students see speech that they oppose as threatening, and their overblown response contributes to a volatile political climate.”
Campus free speech rankings
The top 10
- Claremont McKenna College
- Purdue University
- University of Chicago
- Michigan Technological University
- University of Colorado, Boulder
- University of North Carolina, Greensboro
- Vanderbilt University
- Appalachian State University
- Eastern Kentucky University
- North Carolina State University
The bottom 10
- Loyola University, Chicago
- Middlebury College
- New York University
- Boston College
- University of California, Davis
- Northeastern University
- University of Washington
- Indiana University
- Columbia University
- Barnard College
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