Harvard, Columbia, and Penn Top List of Worst Schools for Free Speech, According to Survey
“For the second consecutive year, Harvard was the bottom ranked school with a score of 0.00.”
The survey was conducted by FIRE, so you know this is on the level.
The College Fix reports:
Harvard, Columbia, Penn top list of worst universities for free speech: student survey
The top five worst universities for free speech also all happen to be mostly Ivy League institutions, according to a major new student survey released today by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Harvard, Columbia, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania and Barnard College made up the bottom five schools, respectively.
Conversely, the top rated school was the University of Virginia. Last year’s highest, Michigan Technological University, came in second best for free speech. In third place was Florida State University, and fourth and fifth were Eastern Kentucky University and Georgia Tech.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression released its annual College Free Speech Rankings for 2024 on Thursday. The free speech climate of 257 of America’s universities was assessed by 58,807 students who responded to a College Pulse online survey from Jan. 25 through June 17.
Students rated their schools on a scale of 1 to 100 on six different criteria, with 100 being a perfect score. They were polled on their comfort expressing ideas, tolerance for controversial liberal and conservative speakers, administrative support for free speech, self-censorship and other topics.
The survey “took into account the varied dimensions of free expression on campus — from the ability to discuss challenging topics like the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, abortion, and race, to tolerance for controversial campus speakers and whether students hold back from openly sharing their views,” said Katie Kortepeter, a spokeswoman for FIRE, in an email to The College Fix.
For the second consecutive year, Harvard was the bottom ranked school with a score of 0.00.
Columbia also received a score of 0.00 this year. NYU received a 3.33, Penn had a score of 12.50, and Barnard College came in at 15.62. The speech climate of the bottom five schools was listed as either “abysmal” or “very poor,” according to the poll results.
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Comments
Sadly, this report by FIRE is not very useful.
Sample question for STUDENTS: “How clear is it to you that your college administration protects free speech on campus?”
1. Leftist students lie.
2. Even if some leftist students answer truthfully, leftists have a different definition of “free speech”.
Example comment regarding Hillsdale College – which, among other private religious schools FIRE singles out for failing to accept FIRE’s free speech paradigm.
“My college is very conservative and as a liberal person it is very difficult to feel comfortable expressing my opinions. In particular a professor expressed support of pro life and I was uncomfortable showing my disapproval.
– Class of 2024”
The FIRE report violates linguistic precision and invites confusion by using the term “liberal” as the opposite of “conservative” when they should be using the term “leftist”.
I wonder if FIRE is drifting left – as all institutions inevitably do.
Hillsdale has the highest “Extremely clear” response (59%) to the question “How clear is it to you that your college administration protects free speech on campus?”
The next highest response is for Liberty University (25%).
‘Its a feature, not a bug. ‘
No free speech = no actual learning; just regurgitation, which any baby bird can do; don’t need $500,000 in debt for sloganeering.
Essentially , a madrassa .
Terrif.