The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has released its annual report on institutional policies that can restrict student expression.
Using a traffic light analogy, with institutions assigned green, yellow and red lights, FIRE assessed how much free speech is allowed or restricted on college campuses. The results can be seen in the report “Spotlight on Speech Codes 2020: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses.”
FIRE, which describes itself as a “nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of students and faculty members,” has produced these reports since 2006.
The majority (64%) of the 471 colleges and universities evaluated in this report earned a yellow light rating, which means there are some policies that prohibit or have an impact on constitutionally protected speech. Only 11% got the green light, which means the school does not maintain any written policies that compromise student expression. The red light was assigned to 25% of the institutions that maintain speech codes that “clearly and substantially” restrict freedom of speech.
“Colleges should be serving as centers for debate and inquiry. When you have a college that’s putting rules out that you have to get permission two weeks in advance to protest on campus or you can’t say certain words, that is hampered,” said Laura Beltz, lead author of the study and FIRE senior program officer.
The assessments are based on an institution’s publicly available written policies and speech codes. In situations where an institution places its policies in a password protected part of its website, the institution gets a red light.
The report focuses more heavily on public institutions because public institutions are legally bound by the First Amendment, while the majority of private colleges and universities are not. There are no community colleges included.
