Bungled protest responses leave students confused, worried about campus speech

Many students aren’t sure what rights they have or if their schools will defend them

This past spring, FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings survey was in the field when the encampment protests began. This gives FIRE the ability to analyze how student attitudes about free speech changed in response to the encampment protests. FIRE also conducted a separate survey on the encampment protests at 30 of the 251 ranked schools during the months of May and June. 

The data from these two surveys offer incredible insight into how students reacted to the encampment protests. Among other things, they reveal that administrators on many campuses across the country have lost the trust of their students when it comes to free speech on campus.

This Year’s College Free Speech Rankings

FIRE launched the College Free Speech Rankings in 2020, surveying almost 20,000 students at 55 colleges and universities. Every year since, we have increased the number of students and schools surveyed. This year, almost 59,000 students were surveyed at over 250 campuses — once again the largest survey of student opinion about free speech in higher education ever conducted. 

The survey responses are broken down into seven components which form the bulk of a school’s score. Schools can gain or lose points based on the outcomes of speech controversies including attempts to deplatform speakers, attempts to cancel professors, and calls to sanction students for their protected expression. The scores are then standardized, so schools are only being measured against what other schools have actually achieved — as opposed to some arbitrary standard any of us might devise. This could also mean that even the best performing schools may not be bastions of free speech, just that they are simply better than everyone else. Finally, schools were given bonuses or penalties based on their campus policies, with good policies adding a standard deviation, ambiguous policies losing half of one, and policies that clearly restrain speech losing one. 

All of which is to say: No, we don’t just make them up, and no, we can’t give your school a higher ranking just because we like you. I’d love for my undergraduate (Montclair State) and graduate (Rutgers) alma maters to do well. But they don’t.

Students Are Confused About Free Speech

FIRE’s encampments survey asked students: “How aware are you, if at all, of your college campus’ written policies on campus protests?” Roughly a fifth (19%) of students say they are “not aware at all.” 

Worse, among the roughly 80% of students who said they had some level of awareness of their campus’ speech policies, many of them are confused about what kinds of protest actions are protected speech and which ones are not.

• Roughly a fifth of students are “not sure” or incorrectly think that they are “not allowed” to hand out flyers (23%), hold a sign (20%), or create a petition (19%). 

• Roughly two fifths (39%) of students are “not sure” or incorrectly think that they are “not allowed” to march for long distances.

• Half of students are “not sure” or incorrectly think that they are “not allowed” to distribute or post materials anonymously.

• And, roughly three fifths of students are “not sure” or incorrectly think that they are “not allowed” to engage in a hunger strike.

On the other hand, half of students either think that establishing an encampment is “allowed” on campus or are “not sure.” Almost two fifths (38%) either say that occupying buildings is “allowed” on campus or are “not sure.” And, roughly a fifth (19%) either say that defacing school property is “allowed” on campus or are “not sure.” None of these protest actions constitute protected speech.

It is not surprising that students are confused. College administrators have a history of inconsistently and arbitrarily enforcing vaguely worded speech policies to suppress certain kinds of expression on campus but not others. And administrators at some of the worst schools for free speech are some of the worst offenders. Last year’s shameful shoutdown of U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan at Stanford, which included not just support but also prepared remarks from the school’s diversity administrator, is just one example.

Administrative Failure at the Bottom Five Schools

Greg already wrote a little bit about this year’s bottom five schools, noting that one of the reasons they primarily differ from their counterparts in the top five is that they are more likely to experience controversies where speech is suppressed.

For instance, since 2020 FIRE has documented 20 speech controversies at Harvard that resulted in a successful deplatforming, a scholar sanction, a student sanction, or an attempted disruption of a campus event. These 20 incidents include the disruption of a panel discussion on the repercussions of the 1973 Oil Embargo by a group of protesters, who objected to two of the speakers (Luttwak and O'Sullivan) because of their ties to the fossil fuel industry. The demonstrators made it difficult for the audience to see or hear the speakers. Administrators in attendance said they could not interfere with the protesters' rights to free expression. They also include the cancellation of a speaking event set to feature Democratic congressmen Jake Auchincloss and Ro Khanna, two days after Auchincloss criticized now former Harvard president Claudine Gay for being inconsistent in her protection of free speech. Harvard claims that the John Adams Society, the student group that organized the event, violated policy by having American Affairs, a non-campus entity, as a co-sponsor. 

In the same time frame, 14 such incidents have occurred at Columbia, 12 at NYU, 10 at Penn, and 7 at Barnard. These incidents collectively resulted in 13 successful deplatformings, nine attempted disruptions, 23 scholar sanctions, and 18 student sanctions. Notably, 13 of the 18 student sanctions at the bottom five schools have occurred after October 7. This includes five incidents at Harvard, three at Columbia, two at Barnard and UPenn, and one at NYU.

For instance, after a Ph.D student complained to the administration about an event featuring pro-Palestinian speakers Charlotte Kates, Khaled Barakat, and Nerdeen Kiswan, 

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student organizers, claim they were forced to change rooms and then cancel the event. Some of the group’s members ultimately held the event virtually in a dorm room. Columbia administrators later called the event "unsanctioned" and, after an investigation, suspended six students and evicted them from campus housing. They would, however, eventually reverse the sanctions for two of those students.

Schools in the bottom five also have significantly lower scores on the “Administrative Support” component of FIRE’s ranking — which uses two questions to measure how much confidence the students have in their school’s administration to support free speech on campus. Four of the bottom five schools have “Administrative Support” scores that rank in the bottom 10 overall out of the 251 schools we assessed. The University of Pennsylvania is the lone exception here, ranked at 219. 

The outcomes of these incidents do not appear lost on the students. In response to the prompt, “Please share a moment where you personally felt you could not express your opinion on your campus because of how you thought other students, a professor, or the administration would respond,” one Barnard student told FIRE: 

Administration taking down students posters and creating a threatening, unwelcoming, unsupportive, and authoritarian environment resulting in a student and faculty body feeling unheard. 

In response to the same prompt, a Columbia student said: 

During the protests on campus I was scared to protest because I did not know how the administration would react. With the mass arrests that happened on campus it created an environment where I felt like if I was protesting or speaking out against the administration I would get suspended or they would note my name down and this could affect my academic prospects. I have never felt like I could not express my opinion in the company of my fellow students and faculty, however I did not feel comfortable expressing them around administrative personnel.

Also in response to the same prompt, an NYU student said: 

Primarily it's administration retaliation. NYU admin has gone out of its way to call police onto campus and threaten pro-palestinan voices with punitive punishments in order to suppress that speech on campus. It’s hard to know if something as little as reposting a story or saying something in class will put you on some kind of list.

The Epicenter of the Encampment Protests

FIRE’s analysis makes clear that administrators’ responses to the encampment protests on NYU, Barnard, and Columbia’s campuses negatively impacted students’ confidence that their college administration protects speech rights.

For instance, before the encampment protests began at Columbia, half of the students said it was “not at all” or “not very” clear that their administration protects free speech on campus, while 37% said it was “not at all” or “not very” likely that the administration would defend a speaker’s rights during a controversy over offensive speech. After then President Minouche Shafik called the NYPD to campus, 60% of Columbia students said it was “not at all” or “not very” clear that their administration protects free speech, and 46% said it was “not at all” or “not very” likely that they would do so during a controversy. 

These questions were repeated in the encampments survey, which sampled 118 Columbia students. Roughly two thirds (69%) of Columbia students said that it is “not at all” or “not very” clear that their administration protects free speech on campus. Additionally, roughly three fifths (57%) of Columbia students now say that it is “not at all” or “not very” likely their administration would defend a speaker’s rights during a controversy.

At Barnard, students had little confidence in their administration to protect free speech even before the encampment protests started: 36% said it is “not at all” clear that the administration protects free speech on campus and 32% said it is “not very” clear. During the encampments, these percentages rose to 47% and 33%, respectively. Similarly, before the encampments, 13% of Barnard students said the administration is “not at all” likely to defend a speaker’s rights, and 41% said it is “not very” likely the administration would do so. During the encampments, these percentages increased to 26% and 47%, respectively.

At NYU, prior to the start of the encampment protests, almost a third (31%) said it is “not at all” or “not very” clear that their administration would do the same. After the encampment protests began, 58% said it is “not at all” or “not very” clear. Similarly, before the encampments, 41% of NYU students said it was “not at all” or “not very” likely that their administration would defend a speaker’s rights during a controversy over offensive speech. After the encampments began, however, half of NYU students said this would be “not at all” or “not very” likely.

It may seem unfair for schools to be punished in the rankings for students thinking their school has unfairly cracked down on speech that is not actually protected. However, this is also a clear failure of the schools to educate students about what free speech rights do and don’t protect. Furthermore, the fact that some schools handled the events of the past year well while others did not — sending, to say the least, mixed messages about what freedom of speech means — proves that navigating the terrain may be tricky but is certainly not impossible. The administrators at the schools that did not fare well are reaping what they have sowed. 

Stifling expression is not the answer, and arbitrarily applying speech code policies to punish students for some kinds of speech but not others undermines an administration’s credibility. Most of the bottom-ranked schools in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings bungled their responses to a number of campus controversies, including many over the past year. This has severely damaged students’ trust in their administration’s willingness to protect freedom of speech. 

Note from Greg: In extremely partisan times, it can be quite difficult to find a constituency that defends freedom of speech, even for those they fundamentally disagree with. FIRE has always been the organization willing to defend any and all comers. Quite simply, if it's protected, we defend it. But we could very much use your support. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber (all proceeds go directly to FIRE) or making a gift to support the work of

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Shot for the Road

In a recent piece for the NY Post, Greg wrote about how, according to the data from FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings, “the more expensive the college or university and the more ‘elite’ its reputation, the more chilled its environment for open discourse and constructive disagreement.”