The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), in collaboration with College Pulse, recently released its 2024 College Free Speech Report, which includes a ranking of prominent American universities by their cultures of freedom of expression. The ranking placed Stevens, in its first year of inclusion, squarely in the center of 248 schools that received scores, with the university receiving a speech climate label of “average.”
Scores were assigned based on a 13-component methodology, six of which derived from a College Free Speech Survey of 55,102 college students on attitudes towards free speech, and seven of which derived from a panel-based assessment of administrative, faculty, and student reactions to prominent speech incidents. Scores were standardized to fall between 0.00 and 100.00, and higher scores indicate a more friendly campus attitude towards freedom of expression.
Stevens placed 116th on the list with a standardized score of 47.35, just beating out Rutgers, which was slotted in at 120th with a score of 47.11.
Taking the top spot was Michigan Technological University with a score of 78.01; The only other schools to receive “good” speech climate labels were Auburn University, University of New Hampshire, and Oregon State University, all of which received adjusted scores of over 70. Florida State University rounded out the top five with a score of 69.64. The University of Chicago, the only school to be ranked first more than once in the past, dropped to 13th place this year.
At rock bottom was Harvard University, with an adjusted score of 0.00 and a true score in the negatives. Also in the bottom five were University of Pennsylvania with 11.13, University of South Carolina with 12.24, Georgetown University with 17.45, and Fordham University with 21.72. Only Harvard was labeled as having an “abysmal” speech climate. Six other colleges were unranked and given a “warning” label for explicitly prioritizing other values over free speech in their mission statements.
This year’s report is the fourth and most wide-ranging such release by FIRE, which has been conducting the rankings and analysis each year since 2020. FIRE, which was previously called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, calls itself a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization “dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought.” College Pulse, which administered the Free Speech Survey, is a college-oriented survey research and analytics company.
The survey of tens of thousands of then-current American undergraduates took place between January and June of this year, with the margin of error for all demographics and sub-demographics ranging between 1 and 5 percent. The sample was drawn from College Pulse’s American College Student Panel, consisting of over 750,000 verified undergraduates of diverse backgrounds and experiences; the panel consists of students from both public and private universities, including online universities, historically Black colleges, women’s colleges, and religiously affiliated colleges. The full questionnaire and response breakdown can be read in the final report, although the specific results for each university, including Stevens, are unclear.
Another major consideration in the ranking was an analysis of “deplatforming” attempts, or coordinated efforts to disinvite or block a campus speaker by administration, faculty, or students. Both the frequency and success rate of sanction attempts were factored in the scoring.
The greatest difference between high-ranking and bottom-ranking schools, according to FIRE, were their respective scores in the “Tolerance Difference” and “Disruptive Conduct” categories. The former was mostly gauged by survey responses and the latter by deplatforming statistics. According to the report, the bottom five schools had 32 deplatforming incidents between them resulting in 26 sanctions, while the top five saw only 9 incidents and 2 sanctions.
Describing why Harvard performed so terribly, the report specifically lists a number of incidents that occurred in the past year. Included were the disinvitation of a feminist philosopher from speaking on campus, the student blockading of events featuring the current Graduate School of Education Dean and a former University President, and the firing or severance of three affiliated scholars.
On how schools can reverse negative trends in student attitudes towards freedom of expression, FIRE says that schools should place more emphasis on resisting calls for censorship and more actively defend speakers or faculty when they are under fire. The steps Stevens takes to respond to its inaugural ranking, if any, will be reflected in the 2025 report due for release next year. For more info on the report, its methodology, and auxiliary analysis, see FIRE’s website at thefire.org/research-learn/2024-college-free-speech-rankings.
