There’s Cause for Optimism on Campus Free Speech

It’s very hard for me not to be pessimistic about the state of free speech in higher education. As president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), I have first-hand knowledge of just how dire things have been and continue to be on campus.

According to FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database, where we log all incidents we can find of on-campus attempts to disinvite speakers from campus, shout down speakers, disrupt performances, take down art exhibits, and prevent the screening of films, 2023 was the worst year on record for deplatforming attempts.

Or, it was until a few weeks ago.

In late November, 2024 officially took the top spot, with 157 deplatforming attempts versus last year’s 156. As of December 20 that number had shot up to 164—and recent shoutdowns of campus speakers, like the disruption of a panel discussion at Pace University, have a lot to do with it. What’s worse, 1 out of 5 cases in FIRE’s database, which goes back all the way to 1998, are from the last two years. Much of that can be attributed to the reaction to the war in Gaza that began in late 2023, with rising incidents of all kinds of censorial and anti-free speech behavior on campus including riots, shoutdowns, and more.

That’s not all.

This year, FIRE surveyed 6,269 faculty members at 55 major colleges and universities (the largest faculty free speech survey ever conducted), and found that 1 out of 3 admitted to hiding their political views to avoid censorial reprisals. 

Still, despite all of this turmoil and bad news there is still room for hope and gratitude, and it’s the perfect time of year to focus on reasons to be thankful and hopeful. I don’t just mean that recent problems on campus have highlighted just how bad things have gotten. While the response to October 7 in higher education, for example, did indeed afford us this realization, there are positive signs to be found.

One very promising development this year is the growing rejection of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements in our colleges and universities. As FIRE has argued many times before, these statements—which are often mandatory aspects of faculty hiring and even student admissions processes—are unavoidably political litmus tests.

In other words, they are a systematic method for keeping “wrongthinkers” out of academia—what my The Canceling of the American Mind co-author Rikki Schlott and I call “The Conformity Gauntlet.” FIRE even sued the California Community Colleges system on behalf of six professors to stop regulations that would force them to adopt and espouse highly contested DEI concepts. 

DEI statements pose a threat not just to free speech and academic freedom on campus, but also to the very principles of free inquiry, truth seeking, and open debate that undergird our institutions of higher learning. Thankfully, many schools have begun to get the message—including MIT, Harvard, UMass-Boston, Ohio State, Syracuse University, and others.

Another bit of good news is that many schools, including some of the ones I just mentioned, have begun to adopt policies of institutional neutrality. This is also critically important for our colleges and universities because, as the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report famously stated, “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” Adopting a policy of institutional neutrality ensures that our institutions of higher learning once again become—and this time remain—centers for free expression and open discourse, where ideas and attitudes can be challenged and examined, and where no ideological orthodoxy is inferred or enforced from on high. We expect this momentum to carry into 2025 and beyond.

But perhaps the most promising development this year has been the shattering of academia’s illusion of invulnerability. For too long, higher education has fancied itself untouchable and irreplaceable, but it’s beginning to recognize that neither of these assumptions are true. For one thing, experiments like the University of Austin show that where there’s a will for a totally different structure and approach to higher education, there is also a way. I suspect many more scrappy startups like UATX will pop up in the coming years, and if our legacy institutions don’t start shaping up, they may end up losing their dominance faster than they think. 

And thanks to the work of organizations like FIRE and many others, as well as a general cultural shift toward exposing and criticizing these problems in academia, the veil of silence and conformity that allowed the problems in these institutions to fester has been significantly torn. More and more we are hearing from news outlets like the New York Times and others about the rampant dysfunction in higher education, and we are seeing a groundswell of public demand for reform. 

There are also great ideas out there for improving our knowledge-creation institutions. FIRE’s annual College Free Speech Rankings, which rate schools based on their free speech policies, were designed to incentivize good behavior on free speech and academic freedom. But they were also meant to inspire ideas for innovation and improvement. Jay Bhattacharya, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the National Institutes of Health, has some great ideas that could be applied in this area. He recommends adopting policies that would better allow  younger scholars to compete for NIH grants (as they once did) because they tend to be more open to new ways of thinking and doing research, which is a great way to shake things up and move things forward. Bhattacharya also recommends funding replication studies and making it a rewarding area for young scientists. These two reforms alone could be transformative and vastly improve—and improve trust in—our knowledge-generating institutions.

As they say, the first step is acknowledging that there’s a problem, and it’s really starting to look like we’ve hit our mark with both feet.

Looking forward to 2025, there are a number of things that can happen in Washington to ensure that these advancements aren’t just flashes in the pan. First, Congress can pass the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act, which would require institutions to disclose their policies on free speech and free association, encourage schools to adopt the Chicago Statement’s emphasis on the importance of freedom of speech at institutions of higher learning, and require public schools to better protect the First Amendment rights of students and faculty.

Second, President-elect Trump can reinstate the 2020 Title IX regulations, which are far better for protecting due process and free speech on campus than the Biden administration’s revision earlier this year, which eliminated the right to a live hearing to adjudicate sexual abuse allegations, the right to cross-examine one’s accuser and witnesses in real time, and the right to be represented by lawyers in campus sexual misconduct proceedings. Similar to guidance implemented by the Obama administration in 2011 that led to hundreds of lawsuits against universities by those who were falsely accused, the revisions even allow for the return of the “single investigator” model, in which one administrator can serve as prosecutor, judge, and jury. The first Trump administration protected the most basic elements of due process, only to have Biden largely revert to the Obama-era policy. To create a more lasting policy that can’t be undone each time the party in power changes, Congress can also adopt a federal version of FIRE’s state-level model campus due process bill, which would go a long way towards securing students’ rights. Legislatures in Utah, North Dakota, North Carolina, and Louisiana have already adopted these due process protections for students at state public universities.

Third, Congress can pass legislation that codifies the Davis standard for hostile environment harassment, laid down by the Supreme Court in a 1999 ruling. The standard, often deliberately watered down by federal regulators so that it allows punishment of protected speech, emphasizes that addressing on-campus harassment requires that the behavior in question be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” that the targeted student is prevented from learning or participating in campus life. This would ensure that colleges can no longer claim legal cover for violating students’ free speech rights in the name of addressing discriminatory harassment on campus. 

And while it’s at it, Congress can also do a better job protecting Jewish students from antisemitic harassment on campus without threatening free speech rights. FIRE has laid out three ways they can do this: codifying Davis, prohibiting on-campus harassment on the basis of religion (with appropriate exceptions to protect religious liberty), and confirming that federal law already protects against harassment based on ethnic stereotyping. 

That’s just a few of the ways we can make our campuses safer for free speech in 2025 and beyond. It’s a tall order, and maybe more than a little bit of wishful thinking. But it’s that time of year, isn’t it?

In many ways, 2024 was a dark year for free speech. It’s not always easy to keep pushing forward, but one thing that keeps me going is the little bits of progress our work allows us to secure—and the knowledge that all the blood, sweat, tears, and effort really does have an impact. Defending free speech can be a rough gig, but I wouldn’t trade the rewards for anything.