Civil liberties group lists 10 worst colleges for free speech

Georgetown University, Stanford University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill have topped a list of the worst colleges for free speech compiled annually by a civil liberties nonprofit that focuses on censorship at campuses.

In addition, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) awarded its fourth Lifetime Censorship Award to Yale University, mockingly honoring the Ivy League school’s “commitment to censorship.”

“This year, Yale University earned the award for disclaiming its own academic freedom commitment in court, trying to coerce a student into signing a pre-written apology for a party invitation that included the words ’trap house,’ and for keeping quiet as a psych lecturer’s job was threatened by accusations that she ’dehumanized’ rural Ohioans by expressing surprise at their enthusiasm for artisanal coffee,” FIRE said in a press release.

In its 11th annual “10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech” list, the Philadelphia-based watchdog cited Georgetown for suspending a law professor who criticized President Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, Stanford for punishing a student who sent a satirical email and UNC for searching the inboxes of faculty who criticized the board of trustees.

“Each of these colleges had the opportunity to restore the student and faculty voices they censored — but leaders deliberately chose not to do so,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “We don’t back down. If college leadership is willing to muzzle, censor, and punish their own students and faculty members, the public should know.”

Among FIRE’s top 10 offenders: Boston’s Emerson College for suspending a student group that passed out stickers critical of China’s government, Oregon’s Linfield University for firing a Jewish professor who called out the college president’s remark about “Jewish noses” and Texas’ Tarleton State University for using a former professor’s threat of a lawsuit as justification to censor the student newspaper.

Emerson, Georgetown, Linfield, Stanford, Yale and Tarleton State did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

But the universities have publicly defended themselves with regard to the cited incidents, saying free speech does not protect discriminatory or hurtful remarks.

FIRE was founded in 1999 by University of Pennsylvania history professor Alan Charles Kors and attorney Henry Silverglate of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. It boasts that its board members come from every political perspective.

The director of free expression and education for PEN America, a similar education watchdog that is monitoring and criticizing efforts to ban critical race theory in schools, issued praise for FIRE’s list on Wednesday.

“This list includes some of the past year’s most well-known and egregious instances of campus restrictions on free expression … on which PEN America has also commented,” Jonathan Friedman said in an email. “Free expression and academic freedom are the bedrock values of higher education, and their preservation should be of highest priority at all colleges and universities.”