Report: 9 in 10 American colleges restrict free speech

 

By FIRE December 11, 2018

  • In 11 states, at least half of colleges rated earn FIRE’s worst rating for “clearly and substantially” restricting free speech rights.
  • Almost 800,000 students at top U.S. colleges must find a “free speech zone” to exercise their expressive rights.

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 11, 2018 — The vast majority of students at America’s top colleges and universities surrender their free speech rights the moment they step onto campus, according to a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Released today, Spotlight on Speech Codes 2019: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses analyzes the written policies at 466 of America’s top colleges and universities for their protection of free speech. The report finds that 89.7 percent of American colleges maintain policies that restrict — or too easily could restrict — student and faculty expression. All of the analyzed policies are accessible in FIRE’s Spotlight Database. FIRE rates schools as “red light,” “yellow light,” or “green light” based on how much, if any, speech protected by the First Amendment their policies restrict.

“Most colleges impose burdensome conditions on expression by maintaining policies that restrict students’ free speech rights,” said FIRE Senior Program Officer Laura Beltz, lead author of the study. “Colleges should be a place for open debate and intellectual inquiry, but today, almost all colleges silence expression through policies that are often illiberal and, at public institutions, unconstitutional.” 

More than a quarter of institutions in the report (28.5 percent) received FIRE’s poorest, red light rating for maintaining speech codes that both “clearly and substantially” restrict freedom of speech.

Alarmingly, red light schools still make up at least half of FIRE-rated institutions in the District of Columbia and 11 states: Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming.

Only 9 percent of institutions (42 schools) do not maintain any policies that compromise student expression, earning FIRE’s highest, green light rating. This total is up from only 2 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, the number of institutions earning a yellow light rating is swelling: from 21 percent in 2009 to 61 percent today. While less restrictive than red light policies, yellow light policies still prohibit or have an impermissible chilling effect on constitutionally protected speech.

“Many states have made incredible strides toward eliminating speech codes — whether that’s through collaboration with FIRE, legislative action, or nudging from peer institutions,” said Beltz. “In other states, too many students are left to fend for themselves to protect their rights against policies that — whether explicitly or covertly — erode student expression.”

Neither public nor private colleges have a monopoly on silencing students and faculty members. Just over 90 percent of public colleges maintain policies that don’t live up to their free speech obligations under the First Amendment.

Private institutions are generally not bound by the First Amendment but are responsible for living up to their institutional commitments to free speech. More than 88 percent of private institutions fall short of those promises. Only 6 percent live up to their pledged speech protections, earning a green light rating. Another 6 percent earn a “warning” rating for promoting other principles, such as religious values, over free speech.

Other findings:

  • Almost 800,000 college students attend an institution that maintains a “free speech zone” policy, through which student demonstrations and other expressive activities are quarantined to small or out-of-the-way areas of campus. Free speech zones have repeatedly been struck down by courts or voluntarily revised as part of lawsuit settlements.
  • For the first time, the percentage of private universities earning FIRE’s worst, red light rating dropped below 50 percent, coming in at 47 percent.
  • More than 50 administrations or faculty bodies have adopted statements in support of free speech modeled after the one adopted by the University of Chicago in January 2015. That’s up 15 from one year ago.

Spotlight on Speech Codes 2019: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses can be read in full on FIRE’s website, along with previous speech code reports since 2006.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience — the essential qualities of liberty.

 

So To Speak Free Speech Podcast is Worth a Listen

So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast takes an uncensored look at the world of free expression through personal stories and candid conversations.

New episodes post every other Thursday.

So to Speak The Free Speech Podcast

Sample Episode:

Mar 08, 2018

Former Evergreen State College Professor Bret Weinstein describes himself as a “professor in exile.” The evolutionary biologist left Evergreen last September in the fallout from the controversy surrounding the school’s planned Day of Absence programming.

Weinstein’s objection to the programming led fifty students to disrupt his class and demand his resignation. The backlash became so intense that Evergreen’s chief of police told him she could not protect him from protesters. As a result, he had to hold his biology course in a public park.

On this episode of So to Speak, we speak with Weinstein about his experience and the state of free speech and inquiry in higher education and beyond.

The mission of FIRE is to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE’s core mission is to protect the unprotected and to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them.

FIRE was founded in 1999 by University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Charles Kors and Boston civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate after the overwhelming response to their 1998 book The Shadow University: The Betrayal Of Liberty On America’s Campuses.

Check it out!

Florida becomes ninth state to ban restrictive campus free speech zones

Florida’s Old Capitol building in Tallahassee, courtesy FIRE.

By  March 12, 2018

  • Florida State, University of West Florida, Florida Atlantic, and other schools must change speech policies

TALLAHASSEE, Mar. 12, 2018 — Yesterday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law SB 4, a broad higher education bill, which was amended to include free speech protections at the state’s public colleges and universities.

The new law prohibits Florida public colleges and universities from quarantining student expression into small, misleadingly labeled “free speech zones.” The campus free speech provisions are based on the CAFE Act model legislation from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

“Students at public colleges and universities in Florida should not have their free speech quarantined by overly restrictive policies,” said FIRE Legislative and Policy Director Joe Cohn. “Now that Florida’s Campus Free Expression Act is law, these egregious policies of censorship must be rescinded immediately.”

The bipartisan CAFE provision of the bill was sponsored by Reps. Chuck Clemons, Sr., Bob Rommel, and John Cortes, and Sen. Dennis Baxley, among others. SB 4 passed the Florida House of Representatives by a vote of 84-28 and the Florida Senate by a vote of 33-5. The law also provides a right to bring a lawsuit in state court against a public institution of higher education if the institution violates the expressive rights guaranteed by the bill.

Examples of Florida policies that must be revised now that the CAFE Act has been enacted include Florida State University’s policy that limits the distribution of literature to a small stretch of campus, Florida Atlantic University’s policy that requires students to submit materials to the Office of Student Development and Activities for approval before they can be displayed or distributed, and the University of West Florida’s policy that restricts speech to one area of campus and problematically declares, “The University does not contain any traditional public forum areas.”

“Thanks to this legislation, students at Florida’s colleges and universities can much more freely exercise their constitutional right to free speech,” said FIRE Executive Director Robert Shibley. “We’re hopeful that Congress will follow this example and act to uphold the First Amendment rights of America’s students.”

Other states with similar legislation:

VirginiaMissouriArizonaKentuckyColoradoUtahNorth Carolina and Tennessee have also passed legislation banning public colleges and universities from relegating student expression to free speech zones. In addition, last month, United States Sen. Orrin Hatch introduced the federal Free Right to Expression in Education Act, which would prohibit public colleges and universities across the country from maintaining those restrictive zones.

Orrin Hatch Introduces Bill to Protect Free Speech on College Campuses

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty, freedom of speech, due process, academic freedom, legal equality, and freedom of conscience on America’s college campuses.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

A new book  authored by by First Amendment Expert Greg Lukianoff  and Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt  is set to be released July 17, 2018.

A timely investigation into the new “safety culture” on campus and the dangers it poses to free speech, mental health, education, and ultimately democracy

The generation now coming of age has been taught three Great Untruths: their feelings are always right; they should avoid pain and discomfort; and they should look for faults in others and not themselves. These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures who must be protected and supervised by adults. But despite the good intentions of the adults who impart them, the Great Untruths are harming kids by teaching them the opposite of ancient wisdom and the opposite of modern psychological findings on grit, growth, and antifragility.  The result is rising rates of depression and anxiety, along with endless stories of college campuses torn apart by moralistic divisions and mutual recriminations.

This is a book about how we got here. First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt take us on a tour of the social trends stretching back to the 1980s that have produced the confusion and conflict on campus today, including the loss of unsupervised play time and the birth of social media, all during a time of rising political polarization.

This is a book about how to fix the mess. The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life, with devastating consequences for them, for their parents, for the companies that will soon hire them, and for a democracy that is already pushed to the brink of violence over its growing political divisions. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity.

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines.

About the Authors

Due Process: FIRE-backed lawsuit challenging Dept of Education’s unlawful Title IX mandate voluntarily withdrawn

By  February 21, 2018

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2018 — Today, attorneys representing the U.S. Department of Education joined with attorneys for plaintiffs John Doe and Oklahoma Wesleyan University to ask a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the now-withdrawn mandate that colleges and universities use the low “preponderance of the evidence” standard of proof in all sexual misconduct cases. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education sponsored the June 2016 lawsuit as part of its mission to restore due process to our nation’s campuses.

John Doe and Oklahoma Wesleyan charged that the preponderance mandate did not undergo public notice and comment as required by the federal Administrative Procedure Act and was therefore unlawful.

The joint dismissal stipulation states that the Department of Education “will not rely on the withdrawn documents in its enforcement of Title IX.” It also includes the September withdrawal letter from Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Candice Jackson, which explained that the mandate in the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education “led to the deprivation of rights for many students — both accused students denied fair process and victims denied an adequate resolution of their complaints.”

Due process is in crisis on our nation’s college campuses, and with unwise and intrusive policies like those in the 2011 ‘Dear Colleague’ letter, the federal government had pushed colleges and universities to make the problem even worse,” said FIRE Executive Director Robert Shibley. “With the preponderance mandate — and now this lawsuit — out of the way, we look forward to working with all parties to ensure that the important fight to combat sexual misconduct on campus is not tainted by due process abuses.”

Justin Dillon and Christopher Muha of KaiserDillon PLLC represented the two plaintiffs: John Doe (a pseudonym), a former student at the University of Virginia School of Law punished under the low preponderance standard, and Oklahoma Wesleyan University, which did not wish to be forced to use the preponderance standard in its own campus proceedings.

“When we filed this case in 2016, we were prepared for a long fight to force the federal government to follow the law,” said Dillon. “I’m very gratified to see that the current administration, after reviewing our lawsuit, decided to do just that and withdraw the previous administration’s unlawful mandate.”

“Fairness and justice with regard to both society and our students have always been foundational principles of Oklahoma Wesleyan University,” said Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University. “I know that many institutions opposed this unlawful exercise of federal power, but feared risking the ire of a powerful government agency. I am very glad that Oklahoma Wesleyan was able to take a stand on behalf of our fellow institutions of higher education as well as our nation’s students.”

The case is Doe v. Jackson et al. (originally Doe v. Lhamon et al.), 1:16-cv-01158-RC, and was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on June 16, 2016.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty, freedom of speech, due process, academic freedom, legal equality, and freedom of conscience on America’s college campuses.

FIRE names America’s 10 worst colleges for free speech: 2018

PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 12, 2018 — Each year, colleges across the country find dubious ways to silence student and faculty expression. In the last year, administrators became embroiled in litigation for telling a student he couldn’t hand out Spanish-language copies of the U.S. Constitution outside a free speech zone, continued a years-long effort to ban a group from campus due to its political viewpoint, and even investigated a professor for a satirical tweet — eventually driving him to resign.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has identified America’s 10 worst colleges for free speech, published today with detailed descriptions on FIRE’s website.
This year’s list includes the following institutions, in no particular order:
  • Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, N.Y.)
  • Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pa.)
  • Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.)
  • Los Angeles Community College District (Los Angeles, Calif.)
  • Fordham University (New York, N.Y.)
  • Evergreen State College (Olympia, Wash.)
  • Albion College (Albion, Mich.)
  • Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.)
  • University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, Calif.)
  • Texas State University (San Marcos, Texas)
The institutions on FIRE’s annual list of worst colleges include one university that threatened the funding and editorial process of its independent student newspaper, another that erected fences around campus to keep peaceful student demonstrators out of sight of donors, and yet another that put a student through a months-long investigation and a four-hour hearing for a joke. (That student is still waiting to learn his fate!)
“College administrators, and sometimes even students, are going to greater and greater lengths to justify muzzling expression on campus,” said FIRE Executive Director Robert Shibley. “This type of censorship makes for a sterile environment where lively debate and discussion can’t thrive. The public deserves to know which colleges will defend free expression — and which ones will go to seemingly any length to silence it.”
For the first time, FIRE also awarded a Lifetime Censorship Award to one university that threatens the free speech rights of its students and faculty so often that it deserves individual infamy: DePaul University.
DePaul earned the 2018 Lifetime Censorship Award in recognition of its decade-long rap sheet of suppressing speech at every turn. From denying recognition to a student organization criticizing marijuana laws, to forcing the DePaul Socialists, Young Americans for Freedom, and College Republicans to pay for security in order to host speakers at their meetings and events, to forbidding a group from using the slogan “Gay Lives Matter,” DePaul has staked out a leadership position in stifling campus expression.
FIRE’s 2018 list includes both public and private institutions. Public colleges and universities are bound by the First Amendment. Private colleges on this list are not required by the Constitution to respect student and faculty speech rights, but explicitly promise to do so.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty, freedom of speech, due process, academic freedom, legal equality, and freedom of conscience on America’s college campuses.

FIRE files lawsuit on behalf of Illinois student detained by police for ‘Shut Down Capitalism’ flyers

Photo: Student Ivette Salazar was detained by campus police for passing out flyers critical of capitalism.

By  January 11, 2018

  • A campus police officer told student Ivette Salazar she has freedom of speech only if Joliet Junior College approves it.

CHICAGO, Jan. 11, 2018 — Joliet Junior College student Ivette Salazar only wanted to do what Americans do every day: exercise her First Amendment right to respond to an opposing viewpoint. For that, campus police detained her, confiscated her political flyers, and told her she has freedom of speech only if JJC gives its approval.

That’s not how the First Amendment works, and that’s why Salazar filed a lawsuit today against JJC. The lawsuit is the latest for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s Million Voices Campaign, which aims to free the voices of one million students by striking down unconstitutional speech codes nationwide.

On Nov. 28, after seeing members of a conservative student group distributing anti-socialism materials on campus, Salazar decided to provide an alternate viewpoint by distributing flyers from the Party for Socialism and Liberation that read “Shut Down Capitalism.” After being reported by campus staff, she was detained by JJC police for approximately 40 minutes, interrogated at the campus police station, and told she could not distribute her flyers because of the “political climate of the country.”

When Salazar asked the officers detaining her about her free speech rights, she said one JJC police officer told her, “If you want to go ahead and post your flyers and burn your crosses, you have to get it approved” by the school. Her flyers were confiscated to ensure that she did not distribute them on campus.
“Debating the merits of economic and governmental systems is core political speech,” said FIRE Director of Litigation Marieke Tuthill Beck-Coon. “Campus police got it backward: The current ‘political climate’ is a reason for more speech, not censorship. If tense political times justified restricting political speech, the First Amendment would be pointless.”
FIRE wrote to JJC President Judy Mitchell on Dec. 4 to demand that the college comply with its legal obligations as a public institution bound by the First Amendment. FIRE did not receive a response to its letter.
“I should be able to express my political beliefs on campus without being detained,” said Salazar. “JCC didn’t just threaten my freedom of speech, but the freedom of speech of every student on that campus. If we can’t have political discussions on a college campus, then where can we have them?”
As part of her lawsuit, Salazar challenges the constitutionality of JJC’s “Free Speech Area” policy. The policy restricts expressive activity to one small, indoor area of campus, requires students to request use of the area five business days in advance, requires students to disclose the purpose of their speech, allows for only two people to use the area at a time, and requires students to remain behind a table. If a student wants to distribute literature while in the area, he or she also has to get the materials approved by administrators ahead of time.
Salazar’s lawsuit also alleges that JJC violated her Fourth Amendment rights by unlawfully detaining her.
Today’s lawsuit was filed in partnership with FIRE Legal Network member and former president of the First Amendment Lawyers Association Wayne Giampietro of Poltrock & Giampietro in Chicago. Giampietro serves as co-counsel with FIRE in the case.
“A public college should be teaching its students the existence and value of the freedoms protected by our federal and state constitutions, not violating those freedoms,” said Giampietro. “The First Amendment protects our most cherished right to speak freely on political matters. It is deplorable that public school employees, paid with our tax money, would detain, interrogate, and seize political materials from a student who is attempting to exercise that right.”
If you are a student who has been censored on campus, FIRE and its Legal Network partners stand ready to protect your First Amendment rights in court. Students interested in submitting their case to FIRE’s Million Voices Campaign may do so through FIRE’s online case submission form. Attorneys interested in joining FIRE’s Legal Network should apply on FIRE’s website.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty, freedom of speech, due process, academic freedom, legal equality, and freedom of conscience on America’s college campuses.

Black Lives Matter Advocate Terminated: FIRE sues college for ignoring records requests

Saying it was “inundated” with complaints, New Jersey’s Essex County College terminated an adjunct professor after she defended a Black Lives Matter event.

Fox News/Modified from original.
  • Saying it was “inundated” with complaints, New Jersey’s Essex County College terminated an adjunct professor after she defended a Black Lives Matter event in a segment on Fox News.
  • After 174 days and five extensions of its deadline, Essex failed to produce a single record in response to FIRE’s public records request for information about the professor’s firing.
NEWARK, N.J., Jan. 4, 2018 — The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education filed a lawsuit yesterday in the Superior Court of New Jersey against Essex County College for ignoring multiple open records requests in violation of state law. FIRE requested information after an adjunct professor was fired following an appearance on a Fox News segment in which she defended Black Lives Matter.
“This lawsuit is not just about a public institution ignoring its obligation under state law to release certain information to the public,” said FIRE Staff Attorney Brynne Madway. “This suit is also about Essex County College’s responsibility to be transparent about its termination of an adjunct professor who simply voiced her opinions publicly.”
On July 13, FIRE requested information under the New Jersey Open Public Records Act about the questionable termination of Lisa Durden, an adjunct professor at Essex, two days after her June 6 appearance on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” On the program, Durden debated Carlson on whether it was appropriate for a Black Lives Matter group to hold an event and request that white people not attend.
On June 23, Essex President Anthony Munroe issued a statement about the matter, saying the college was “immediately inundated with feedback … expressing frustration, concern and even fear” about Durden’s views — even though Essex was not mentioned during the appearance. Munroe acknowledged that Durden “was in no way claiming to represent the views and beliefs of the College,” but nevertheless asserted a “right to select employees who represent the institution appropriately,” and terminated her employment.
For more than a month, Essex ignored FIRE’s initial request — as well as a subsequent request — for information about the feedback the college allegedly received. After receiving a letter from FIRE Director of Litigation Marieke Tuthill Beck-Coon, Essex finally responded, asking for the first of five eventual requests for extensions of time to respond to FIRE’s records requests. In November, Essex said it “anticipated” being able to provide a response by Nov. 20.
FIRE hasn’t heard from Essex since.
“Here’s a New Year’s resolution for Essex: Follow state law,” said Madway. “The public deserves to know how Essex administrators handled reaction to a professor’s participation in a political debate.”
Ari Cohn, director of FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program, analyzed the First Amendment issues involved in Durden’s firing and said that even if Essex was “inundated” with complaints, its administrators violated her constitutional rights by firing her.
“The law under the First Amendment is clear: A public college cannot terminate a professor simply because she engaged, in a personal capacity, in a debate about matters of public concern and some were offended by her perspective,” he said.
Bruce S. Rosen of McCusker, Anselmi, Rosen & Carvelli, P.C. in Florham Park, N.J. is serving as co-counsel in the suit.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty, freedom of speech, due process, academic freedom, legal equality, and freedom of conscience on America’s college campuses.

FIRE’s 2017 year in review for student and faculty rights on campus

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 28, 2017 — From students shouting down an invited speaker and injuring a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont to the violent Berkeley protests in California, the campus free speech debate swept the nation in 2017. Throw in the withdrawal of the federal government’s controversial “Dear Colleague” letter that for over six years threatened the due process rights of students and faculty accused of sexual misconduct, and it’s easy to see why the offices at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education were anything but quiet this year.
As 2017 comes to a close, FIRE looks back on a year of challenges and triumphs — a year during which more students and faculty members than ever before approached FIRE to help protect their rights.
“Students and faculty shouldn’t have to appeal to an outside organization like FIRE in order to exercise their speech rights or get a fair shake in campus judicial proceedings, but the sad reality is that they do,” said FIRE Executive Director Robert Shibley. “We worked with policymakers to help inform common-sense legislation and administrators to implement speech-friendly campus policies. And we’ll continue this work until student and faculty rights are secured.”
FIRE’s highlights from 2017 include:
  • FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program received more than 900 requests for help from students and faculty members across the country in 2017 — more requests than any other year in FIRE’s history. FIRE’s defense of student and faculty rights took us to Howard UniversityFordham UniversityWichita State UniversityUniversity of New HampshireRensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and many more schools this year.
  • In February, FIRE released the first-ever nationwide report on campus Bias Response Teams. These teams encourage students to formally report on one another and on faculty members whenever they subjectively perceive that someone’s speech is “biased.” The report found that 232 public and private American colleges and universities publicly maintained bias response programs, affecting an estimated 2.8 million students.
  • In another win for FIRE’s Stand Up For Speech Litigation Project, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld FIRE’s victory at Iowa State University. And in March, the project filed a new lawsuit against the Los Angeles Community College District that aims to free over 150,000 students from unconstitutional free speech zones. The litigation project’s 13 total lawsuits have so far restored free speech rights to more than 270,000 students.
  • In May, Tennessee passed bipartisan legislation that FIRE called “the most comprehensive state legislation protecting free speech on college campuses that we’ve seen be passed anywhere in the country.” The legislation requires institutions to adopt policies consistent with the University of Chicago’s Free Speech Policy Statement, prohibits the use of misleadingly labeled “free speech zones,” bars institutions from rescinding invitations to speakers invited by students or faculty, and more. Campus free speech legislation also passed this year in ColoradoUtah, and North Carolina.
  • In September, FIRE released a first-of-its-kind report on due process at America’s top universities, which found that 85 percent of schools rated received a D or F grade for not ensuring due process rights. Shockingly, 74 percent of top universities do not even expressly guarantee accused students the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
  • Just two days after the due process report was released, the Department of Education announced it would rescind the controversial 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter that threatened the due process rights of students and faculty accused of sexual misconduct on campus. For six and a half years, FIRE led the fight against the misguided letter.
  • Attorney General Jeff Sessions mentioned FIRE’s work in a speech on the importance of free speech at Georgetown University. Sessions highlighted FIRE’s Spotlight database and our lawsuit against the Los Angeles Community College District. The Department of Justice later filed a statement of interest in the lawsuit.
  • In October, FIRE released a groundbreaking survey on free speech that found a majority of students on college campuses self-censor in class, support disinviting some guest speakers with whom they disagree, and don’t know that so-called “hate speech” is usually protected by the First Amendment. The study also found that Republican and Democratic students have different opinions on campus protests, disinvitations, and hate speech protections.
  • FIRE’s So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, launched in Spring 2016, released its 50th episode. The bi-weekly show takes an uncensored look at the world of free expression through personal stories and candid conversations. This year the podcast featured Daryl Davis, a black musician who convinces people to leave the Ku Klux Klan through open dialogue; the all-Asian rock band The Slants, who took their free speech fight all the way to the Supreme Court and won; and Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU, on the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
  • Earlier this month, Emory University became the 11th institution to earn FIRE’s highest, “green light” rating in 2017, bringing the total number of green light institutions to 37.
  • And just last week, FIRE released its annual Spotlight on Speech Codes report, which found that the number of colleges with FIRE’s poorest, “red light” rating for maintaining speech codes that both clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech is down to 32.3 percent — seven percentage points lower than last year and almost 42 percentage points lower than in FIRE’s 2009 report.
“For the tenth year in a row, the most harmful speech codes are coming off the books throughout the country,” said Shibley. “But the growth of bias response teams, the continued disinvitation of invited speakers and — most alarmingly — the violence on too many campuses show us that we have a lot of work to do in 2018 and beyond.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty, freedom of speech, due process, academic freedom, legal equality, and freedom of conscience on America’s college campuses.

Report: Campus speech codes decline for 10th straight year