The University of Chicago tops FIRE’s new free-speech rankings

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has issued its yearly free-speech rankings of American colleges and universities, and I’m happy to say that, after a few years of hovering below the top rank, the University of Chicago is back at #1 among the 261 schools surveyed. We get an overall “green light” for free expression. The bad news is that the “grade” assigned to my school is a paltry “B-“. (No school got an “A”.) When I asked Grok why we got such a low grade, the bot said this:

FIRE’s composite score combines student survey responses (~63,000 students), written policies, and how schools handle controversies. Student perceptions of the climate carry heavy weight, which makes an A extremely difficult.

 

The drag [our B- grade] comes from student attitudes and culture, which FIRE measures in components such as self-censorship, comfort expressing ideas, disruptive conduct, and political tolerance. Even at the top school these remain well short of an ideal:

• 35% of Chicago students said they self-censored at least once or twice a month.
• 72% said shouting down a speaker is acceptable at least in rare cases.
• 29% said using violence to stop a speaker is acceptable at least in rare cases.
• “Disruptive Conduct” is a relative weak spot (mid-pack nationally).
• Absolute letter grades on several student-perception components are modest (D+ on comfort expressing ideas and self-censorship) even when the school ranks well relative to peers.

Nationwide, students report difficulty discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, and abortion. FIRE treats the overall student climate as the main limiter: excellent policies and a clean controversy record cannot produce an A when a large share of students still self-censor or condone disruption. Chicago’s administration and formal commitments outperform almost every peer, but the survey data on student culture keeps the composite score in B- territory.

Those statistics on Chicago bespeak a country-wide problem. Shouting down a speaker or using violence to stop a speaker are never acceptable practices, and are inimical to free speech. Yet 72% of our students thought that shouting-down is okay, and 29% said that violence to stop speech can sometimes be okay. Both of those figures should be o%

You can read the whole article with links to specific schools, their ratings, and FIRE’s written summaries, by clicking on the link below:

The searchable database is here. You’ll want to look up your school. As for my college and graduate schools, William & Mary gets a respectable rank of #28 and Harvard ranks #74, up a hundreds points for its score last year when it was rock bottom, the worst school in the lot.

The best and worst schools:

The highest-ranked colleges for free speech:

1. University of Chicago
2. Claremont McKenna College
3. Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
4. Michigan Technological University
5. Vanderbilt University
6. Dartmouth College
7. Purdue University-Main Campus
8. Appalachian State University
9. University of Virginia-Main Campus
10. George Mason University

The lowest-ranked colleges for free speech:

252. Howard University
253. University of Miami
254. Loyola University Chicago
255. Boston College
256. Indiana University-Bloomington
257. Rutgers University-New Brunswick
258. Northeastern University
259. Texas State University
260. University of Washington-Seattle Campus
261. New York University

From their announcement:

• The University of Chicago takes the top spot, while Texas State University, the University of Washington, and New York University sit at the bottom
• Most difficult topics for students to discuss on campus include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, and abortion
• Some schools fall in rankings following Charlie Kirk-related controversies
• 121 of the 261 schools ranked got an “F” for their speech climate

Here is some more information from FIRE:

One hundred and twenty-one of the 261 schools ranked got an F for their speech climate, while only 24 schools received a speech climate grade of C or higher. The lowest-rated schools have restrictive speech policies and some of last year’s most shocking anti-free speech moments. Several incidents cited in the report include:

• The terminations of Thomas Alter, a tenured professor of history, and Idris Robinson, a professor of philosophy by Texas State University, for off-campus protected expression.
• Multiple disruptions, attempted disruptions, and event cancellations — six in total since 2024 — at the University of Washington.
• The cancellation of a planned lecture by Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and genocide scholar, after the Northeastern University Police Department demanded a list of names of all the registered attendees.

. . . Encouragingly, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s seventh annual College Free Speech Rankings found the percentage of students who said it was acceptable to shout down a speaker, block entry to a campus speech, or use violence to stop a campus speech declined slightly from last year’s record highs.

Here’s the graph, over the last seven years, of the percentage of students who think it’s okay to impede or stop speakers they don’t like.  It’s pretty depressing, as all three forms of impediment are unwarranted if you favor freedom of speech. And they’ve all gone over this period, with the okaying of violence rising nearly ten points: from 18% to 30% nationwide.

Self-censorship is also way too high, but of course students are timorous, so I’m less likely to criticize a monthly rate of 35% self-censoring than I am to criticize any approval of blocking, shouting down, or using violence against speakers.  But remember, the same factors that make students think it’s okay to impede speakers are the factors that make students reluctant to express opinions on difficult topics.

It is the chilling of student and University speech that prompted the University of Chicago to become the nation’s first school to make a policy of institutional neutrality—as embodied in our Kalven Report of 1967. The number has grown a lot recently, and now 50 schools follow a version of the Kalven principle. Since there are 5600 higher-education schools in the U.S., however, that is only 1% of all schools. And among the Kalvenists you won’t find Williams College, whose President refuses to adopt a policy of institutional neutrality, something I’m always harassing Luana about.