Why FIRE is now judging bias-reporting systems more harshly — and why I changed my mind

Neighbors turning in neighbors for wrong-think cultivates the habits of an unfree society. We shouldn’t train students to do it—and we certainly shouldn’t build hotlines for it.

FIRE has made an important change to how we evaluate colleges in our Spotlight Database, the largest and most comprehensive database of written campus speech policies in the country. From now on, no school that explicitly solicits reports about protected speech can earn a green-light rating — our highest rating awarded to institutions whose policies do not seriously imperil free expression.

This change will impact affected schools’ Spotlight rating as well as their standing in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings, which draws directly from Spotlight data. Starting now, if a school runs a bias reporting system that invites students or employees to report one another for lawful expression, that system alone disqualifies them from earning a “green light” rating.

We don’t make changes to Spotlight lightly. But this shift was overdue — and for me, it’s personal.

How this started

I first learned about what would later become known as bias response teams (BRTs) in the early 2000s, when I attended a student-conduct conference where administrators described a new approach to “bias” on campus. Their focus wasn’t harassment, stalking, or violence. It was what students were writing on dorm-room whiteboards — off-color jokes, jabs between friends, things that were, at worst, crude. Some schools were even calling the police over these incidents. What struck me most wasn’t the censorial tone but rather the counterproductive result: the data showed that whiteboard policing actually increased the behavior they were trying to curb.

But the “whiteboard police” weren’t deterred.

I didn’t like what I saw. But at FIRE, we’ve always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt. When bias response systems began spreading across campuses under various names — Bias Incident Response Teams, Bias Support Services, Inclusive Community Response Groups — we tried to treat them on a case-by-case basis. If a school set up a mechanism that only offered support to students in distress, without investigating or punishing speakers, maybe that could exist without chilling speech. But even back then, I was uneasy with it.

Over time, it became harder to ignore what was happening. We saw students use these systems — along with tools like Change.org petitions — to report their own professors for nothing more than expressing controversial ideas. FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire Database documents case after case where these systems became pipelines for silencing dissent and enforcing conformity.

The problem runs deeper than policy

In The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and I outlined six major factors contributing to the rise of campus intolerance and anxiety. One of them was what we called the “Bureaucracy of Safetyism,” the growing institutional apparatus built around emotional safety. BRTs were the flagship of that bureaucracy.

They started proliferating after courts struck down the first generation of speech codes in the 1990s. If colleges couldn’t ban speech outright, many found it appealing to create a mechanism to “respond” to speech instead. The goal was to make it feel like certain views were out of bounds without actually banning them. Some BRTs claimed to be educational or restorative; some disclaimed punitive power altogether. Others were clear about their intent to investigate, discipline, or even refer students to law enforcement. The spectrum ran from unconstitutional-on-its-face to just-barely-legal. But all of them had one thing in common: they encouraged people to treat speech as something to report.

And those reports added up. Our 2017 Report on Bias Reporting Systems found that nearly half (42%) of them funneled reports to campus police or security. And despite the claim that these systems were about education, a full 12% included media relations staff — suggesting that, in some cases, the point was to manage optics.

Even where the systems weren’t overtly punitive, they chilled speech anyway. They created a growing sense among students that disagreement itself was dangerous, and that the correct response to hearing an opinion you didn’t like was to tell someone in authority. Some students learned this lesson fast. And that’s what ultimately convinced me our approach had to change.

When I knew we had to act

The tipping point for me wasn’t just the cases we were seeing on campus. It was the realization that this model — originally built for universities — was being exported into everyday life.

Today, we see state and local governments setting up hotlines and portals where people can report one another for “bias incidents.” And what counts as a bias incident? Often it’s entirely lawful speech. In Oregon, you can be reported for telling an offensive joke or “imitating someone’s cultural norm.” In Connecticut, residents are encouraged to report speech they didn’t even witness themselves. In Philadelphia, officials may contact people named in reports and “recommend” sensitivity training. Some jurisdictions even offer financial or counseling support to the complainant.

You don’t need to imagine the incentives. They’re already here.

Whatever the intent, this creates the infrastructure of a surveillance state. The idea that we should monitor each other’s beliefs and report them to a central authority is incompatible with a free society — and certainly incompatible with a university’s mission to foster critical thought, exploration, and dissent.

And the problem isn’t abstract. Recent survey data from the American College Student Freedom, Progress, and Flourishing Survey, conducted by the Challey Institute at North Dakota State University, found that large numbers of students say professors should be reported for expressing perfectly lawful, mainstream — even scientific — viewpoints. One-third (33%) said professors should be reported for saying there’s no evidence of anti-black bias in police shootings. A quarter (25%) would report someone who criticizes vaccine mandates. And about one in five (21%) would report a professor for saying that biological sex is a scientific fact and that there are two sexes. These aren’t fringe opinions. They’re positions held by millions of Americans, backed by scientific data. Yet a huge portion of the next generation thinks hearing them is a reason to go to the authorities.

This, more than anything else, is what convinced me we needed to change how we rate BRTs. We are teaching students to monitor and report each other’s beliefs. That’s not preparing them to participate in a democracy. That’s preparing them to live in an Orwellian hellscape.

What we’re doing now

FIRE’s Spotlight Database exists to help students, parents, and the public understand how schools treat free expression — not just in spirit, but in policy. The green light rating is reserved for schools whose written policies pose no serious threat to student speech. From now on, if a school explicitly solicits reports about protected expression, that’s enough to disqualify it from earning a green light.

That doesn’t mean schools can’t address serious misconduct. They should, and must. If a report concerns a true threat, unlawful harassment, or other forms of unprotected speech, schools may respond. But that line must be clear, explicit, and narrow.

What would a green light-compatible system look like? It would:

• Solicit only unprotected conduct, like threats or harassment as defined by law.

• State clearly on all reporting forms what kinds of speech are not subject to review.

• Avoid routing protected speech complaints to law enforcement or PR teams.

• Publish clear data-retention policies and purge records of protected speech.

• Treat anonymous tips with caution, since due process rights require disclosure and corroboration before taking action.

Most importantly, a university must not create a system that leads students to believe protected speech is wrong, punishable, or something to fear.

We’ve tried to be generous in the past, recognizing the complexity of designing systems that support students without chilling expression. But there comes a point where even the appearance of neutrality enables a harmful culture to grow. That point, we believe, has long since passed.

A culture worth defending

At FIRE, we often say that the answer to speech you don’t like is more speech. But if we teach students that the right response is to report their peers and professors to a bureaucratic team — or the police — we’ve already lost the thread.

A university should not operate as a speech-monitoring bureaucracy. It should be a living, breathing space for debate, for discourse, and for the sometimes uncomfortable work of real learning. Our democratic experiment depends on people who know how to live with difference, not snitch on it.

That’s why we’ve changed the policy. That’s why we’re updating our Spotlight ratings. And that’s why we’ll continue working to dismantle these systems wherever they pose a threat to free expression.

If your school or your city is running one of these systems, or if you’ve been chilled by one, we want to hear from you.

We’re drawing the line, and keeping with our unofficial FIRE motto: If it’s protected, we’ll defend it. No throat-clearing, no apologies.

SHOT FOR THE ROAD

Current events continue to conspire to make the themes of my TED Talk pertinent. Yesterday I spoke at Utah Valley University—the site of Charlie Kirk’s assassination—and the title of my talk is “Free Speech: The Antidote to Violence.” I’ll likely write more on that experience in the coming weeks. But, in the meantime, I think it bears repeating: free speech makes us safer, free speech cures violence, free speech protects the powerless, and even “bad people” can have good ideas.