College No Place for Free Speech Fans, Rankings Show By J. Peder Zane
When it comes to protecting free speech, America’s colleges and universities are earning a failing grade. That’s the upshot of a comprehensive new study that asked almost 20,000 students at 55 schools how tolerant and open to controversial ideas their campuses are.
The University of Chicago received the highest score – just 64.2 points out of a total of 100; DePauw University was at the bottom, with 44.2 points. The University of Arkansas, the University of Minnesota, UC-Berkeley and Princeton were bunched in the middle with about 53 points.
Even accounting for grade inflation, that still smells like an F.
The College Free Speech Rankings generated by the survey – which was commissioned by RealClearEducation (RCE) in partnership with The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) – are significant because they offer the first-ever national ranking of free speech based on student perceptions.
RCE and FIRE, which ranked the schools, based 80% percent of each school’s score on a series of questions that measured two key aspects of free speech: tolerance for allowing controversial speakers on campus and students’ responses when asked how free they feel to hold open conversations about controversial topics such as abortion, transgender rights, and racial justice. The remaining 20% of the score was based on the freedom students feel to express their opinions, their perception of the administration’s support for free speech and FIRE’s rating of each school’s official policies toward free speech.
An online dashboard provides in-depth results for each school, including comments from students about their campus climate. It also allows users to compare the results for different schools as well as to sort the results according to various criteria, including: rankings by liberals, rankings by conservatives, and rankings by women and by men and by racial minorities. It even allows users to rank schools by the proportion of students who approve, or disapprove, of President Trump.
Even accounting for grade inflation, that still smells like an F.
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