The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s 20th Spotlight on Speech Codes report found a record number of schools earning FIRE’s highest rating, alongside a continued decline in policies that clearly and substantially restrict student expression. FIRE also observed colleges increasingly removing “bias reporting” policies that solicit anonymous reports about speech protected by the First Amendment.
This year also saw a record low of “red light” schools whose policies restrict free expression, indicating that mounting scrutiny from state and federal governments, alumni groups, organizations like FIRE, and collapsing public faith in higher education has prompted internal review at institutions that had long resisted policy reform. Several of the schools whose policies improved this year worked closely with FIRE to make changes.
“Even one restrictive policy is one too many, but there’s reason to be hopeful,” said FIRE Senior Program Counsel Ryan Ansloan, who authored the report. “We’re seeing major improvements in campus policymaking, and campuses that were once hotbeds of censorship are overhauling problematic policies. Pressure from many state legislatures, as well as the reelection of Donald Trump and subsequent federal investigations, lawsuits, and shifts in research funding, have prompted internal review at many schools. We hope this will translate to taking the side of free speech when controversies arise.”
FIRE rates schools as “green light,” “yellow light,” or “red light” institutions based on how much First Amendment-protected speech is restricted. Categories include protest, online speech, harassment, and civility.
This year, 76 schools received a green-light rating, 342 received a yellow light, and 65 received a red light. This marks a historic drop in red-light schools, which have policies that both clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech. For the second year in a row, the number of green-light schools, which have no policies that seriously imperil free expression, outnumbers the number of red light schools, which fell by seven.
For the first time, the number of restrictive “red light” policies at public schools dropped below 10%. FIRE calls this a welcome change from earlier iterations of the Spotlight survey, when nearly 4 out of 5 public schools had such policies on the books.
The drop in red-light schools isn’t the only encouraging development this year, FIRE said. Over the past several years, colleges grappled with hot-button issues like the #MeToo movement, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and subsequent campus encampment protests. As these movements unfolded, there was a subsequent proliferation of DEI office expansions and campus bias-response teams, which investigated incidents of discrimination and allegedly offensive speech. FIRE has criticized the formation of bias-response teams, as university administrators can too easily weaponize them to censor protected speech. The very existence of these teams, FIRE maintains, can create a “chilling effect” whereby students are afraid to speak freely for fear of recrimination. Schools are now increasingly ditching these systems alongside reforming policy, FIRE reported.
“This year’s findings are exciting, because they suggest that colleges are taking their responsibilities seriously,” Ansloan said. “University admins have a responsibility to protect the rights of their students, and the latest policy revisions should improve campus culture for years to come.”
This article appears here with the permission of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. See original article.
The Free Speech Center newsletter offers a digest of First Amendment and news-media news every other week. Subscribe for free here: https://bit.ly/3kG9uiJ