Free Speech Survey Signals Distrust and Disconnection

Fifty-five percent of college students say they find it difficult to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on campus—more than double the 26 percent who said as much last year, before the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s annual free speech survey. That figure represents the highest degree of discomfort FIRE has ever recorded on any issue.

At the same time, 24 percent of respondents said it was “not very” or “not at all” clear that their administration protects free speech on campus—down from 36 percent in last year’s survey.

The data, released last week, comes from two surveys that FIRE conducted earlier this year—one before and one after the spring encampments and protests that rocked college campuses—to gauge students’ attitudes toward campus free speech. Combined, the results reveal mounting polarization and confusion over what counts as protected speech on campus.

“The events of the past year, mainly since Oct. 7, have had a negative impact on students’ perceptions [of free speech],” said Sean Stevens, FIRE’s chief research adviser. “It seems like there’s a good portion of students that have lost a good to great deal of confidence and trust in their administration to defend their expressive rights.”

While reports of self-censorship were down nationally this year, students on campuses where encampments cropped up and protesters were arrested proved increasingly inclined to keep their opinions to themselves. At Columbia University, the epicenter of the spring protests, 36 percent of students said they felt like they couldn’t express their opinion because of how a student or the administration might respond—up from 27 percent before the encampments.

“This is a dynamic that is really important to dig into, because it has real implications for how campus leaders should be thinking about policy changes and how to balance a lot of the competing interests while still protecting free expression on campus,” said Elizabeth Niehaus, a former fellow of the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. “We can’t definitively say that the protest alone has changed free speech survey results … But it would be shocking if that didn’t have an effect on how people are thinking about free speech on campus.”

For the overall free speech survey, FIRE and College Pulse, an online research and analytics company that also works with Inside Higher Ed on surveys, spent six months collecting data from nearly 60,000 students at more than 250 four-year colleges and universities, which FIRE used to rank colleges on free speech. After pro-Palestinian protests surged in the spring, FIRE conducted a second survey of just over 3,800 undergraduates at 30 institutions.

Disconnect and Discomfort

The results reflect a growing disconnect between how students and administrators view the right to public expression.

Just over 30 percent of students in the larger survey said that it would be acceptable to use violence to stop a demonstration of campus speech—up from 27 percent last year and 20 percent in 2022. In the smaller survey, 59 percent of students said occupying a campus building was at least “rarely” acceptable, and 35 percent said the same about defacing campus property. Meanwhile, colleges are banning chalking on university property, restricting where and how students can protest, and working to inform students about free speech policies.

Similarly, nearly three-quarters of students said in the smaller survey that it was acceptable to set up encampments on campus—even as a number of institutions have banned outdoor camping and the erection of tents in response to last spring’s protests.

This disparity of views has helped fuel a growing sense of fear and confusion among students over what is permissible on their campus.

Nearly half of students surveyed after the surge of encampments said they were either “not very” or “not at all” aware of campus speech and protest policies.

Stevens blamed college administrators for students’ ignorance. “In a lot of situations, they don’t have very clear policies and/or are not being consistent in how they enforce them,” he said. “That confuses the students.”

Still, he acknowledged that administrators are dealing with some unusually complicated situations.

“There’s a nice blend of protected speech and unprotected speech going on, and so it’s certainly challenging,” he said. But not impossible.

Calling in law enforcement doesn’t appear to help: the survey found that using police to crack down on protests contributed to students’ growing sense of fear. More than a third of students said the police response to encampments on campuses across the country made them feel “somewhat” or “very” unsafe. Nearly half—48 percent—of Muslim students and 26 percent of Jewish students reported feeling that way.

Changing Campus Culture

Experts on free speech and constructive dialogue agree the negative culture on campus is creating a lack of trust between students and administrators.

“The feeling I get from all of these data responses is that there’s confusion and fear,” said Mehnaz Afridi, director of Manhattan University’s Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center. “And that is a reflection of our culture as well, not just on campus.”

The question now is how best to respond. Afridi, who teaches about both Islam and the Holocaust and works to help students talk through difficult topics, said that students want and need freedom, but they also require clear guardrails as they learn the skills of healthy civic engagement.

“​​We like them to express how they feel and to be involved in politics and social issues—we’re an academic institution,” she said. “But at the same time, when it’s disrupting other people’s studies … then it becomes a problem.”

The FIRE report noted that many administrators “face an uphill battle to earn their students’ trust back” and that “staying on the sidelines and not actively promoting free speech on campus is no longer an option.”

While college officials worked over the summer to update their policies, experts aren’t sure yet what to make of those changes and whether they’ll have the desired effect: limiting the disruptive protests that defined the end of the spring semester.

Niehaus, from the free speech center, said she’ll have to see how the new policies play out before she makes any judgments.

Kristen Shahverdian, program director for campus free speech at PEN America, said she’s generally worried that policy rewrites over the summer were “knee-jerk” reactions to the chaos of the spring semester and will “tighten policies in a way that might curtail free expression.”

But Niehaus and Shahverdian both agree that the survey data illuminates a need for more free speech education and constructive dialogue training for both students and staff.

“There’s a lot that administrators can do to think more critically about what their values and mission are as an institution and what role free speech and expression play in that,” Niehaus said. “But it’s helpful to have the data to highlight that we need to provide more support for students in engaging with conflict.”

“They’re going to find it difficult,” she added. “That’s not a problem. What can be a problem is if we don’t provide adequate support.”