A new survey of nearly 70,000 college students across the United States has found that a majority oppose allowing speakers with controversial viewpoints, whether liberal or conservative, to speak on their campuses.
The findings come from the sixth annual College Free Speech Rankings, released on Tuesday by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), a free speech watchdog, in partnership with College Pulse.
Drawing on responses from 68,510 students from 257 US colleges and universities, the report paints a picture of students’ views on campus speech and their perceptions and experiences of free speech on campus.
For the first time in the survey’s history, Fire found that a majority of students opposed their college hosting six hypothetical speakers with controversial views – three labeled as liberal and three as conservative.
“This year, students largely opposed allowing any controversial campus speaker, no matter that speaker’s politics,” said Greg Lukianoff, the chief executive and president of Fire in a statement published with the report. “Rather than hearing out and then responding to an ideological opponent, liberal and conservative college students are retreating from the encounter entirely.”
The study warns that the trend could have far-reaching consequences. “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.”
The report found a continued decline in support for free speech among students of all political affiliations, and reported that “conservative students are increasingly joining their liberal peers in supporting censorship” and “students of every political persuasion show a deep unwillingness to encounter controversial ideas”.
“The atmosphere isn’t just cautious – it’s hostile,” the report states. “Students continue to show low tolerance for controversial speakers, and troublingly, more believe it’s acceptable to shout down a speaker, block access to events or even resort to violence to silence campus speech than ever before.”
It found that these positions had “held steady or worsened in the past year”.
The survey also found that support for disruptive tactics to silence speakers had also increased and reached record levels. One in three students surveyed expressed some level of acceptance, even if only “rarely”, for resorting to violence to stop a campus speech, according to the findings, up from one in five in 2022.
In addition, only 28% of students said that it was never acceptable to “shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus”, while 5% said it was always acceptable, 31% said it was sometimes acceptable and 35% said it was rarely acceptable.
Forty-six per cent of respondents said that that it was “never acceptable” to block other students from attending a campus speech.
“More students than ever think violence and chaos are acceptable alternatives to peaceful protest,” said Sean Stevens, the chief research adviser at Fire. “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.”
The report also ranks colleges and universities based on their free-speech policies and environments.
Claremont McKenna College topped the list of schools, followed by Purdue University and the University of Chicago. At the bottom were Barnard College, Columbia University and Indiana University.
Fire cited “restrictive speech policies” and some incidents that occurred last year, such as “threats to press freedom, speaker cancellations and the quashing of student protests” as contributing factors behind the lowest rankings.
Overall, only 36% of students said it was “extremely” or “very” clear that their university protected free speech on campus, and just 11 institutions earned a grade of C or higher in Fire’s assessment of campus speech climate.
A Barnard spokesperson said in a statement: “The free exchange of ideas is a critical part of higher education and core to Barnard’s values, as is our commitment to keeping our campus respectful, inclusive, and focused on our academic mission.
The spokesperson added: “This survey queried 154 students out of a population of more than 3,000. Barnard remains committed to fostering a culture that values diverse perspectives while advancing inclusive excellence.”
The Guardian also contacted Columbia and Indiana University for comment.
Some institutions showed improvement, including Dartmouth College and Vanderbilt University. The report recognized the schools for revising its speech policies, and adoption of institutional neutrality.
The report comes at a time of heightened tensions on US college campuses as the Trump administration has made unprecedented efforts to reshape higher education, including cracking down on pro-Palestinian student protesters – some of whom have faced detention and deportation efforts – which has caused concern and outrage from civil liberties and free speech groups.
In a settlement reached with Columbia, the school agreed to a host of measures decried by academic freedom advocates as a condition to restoring federal funding the administration had slashed.
The Fire survey also asked students to identify the most difficult topics to discuss openly on campus. A majority of students nationwide – 53%, and 90% of students at Barnard College – said the Israel-Palestine conflict was the most difficult to “have an open and honest conservation about”. Abortion ranked second, followed by transgender rights and the 2024 presidential election.
The report also found students were “reluctant to speak their minds, especially on controversial political issues”, with many admitting that “they self-censor regularly, avoid certain topics entirely, and doubt their administrators would defend free expression if controversy struck”.
