These Are the Worst Colleges for Free Speech, According to The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)

Salem radio host Dennis Prager has said sending your kids to college these days is like "playing Russian roulette with their values." You take a huge chance on the version of your child that returns, so to speak. And that’s largely due to the indoctrination and assault on free speech pervasive on college campuses.

Thanks to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, we now know 2021's 10 worst schools when it comes to free speech.

"Each year, hundreds of students and faculty members come to FIRE for help when their individual rights are threatened," states FIRE's introduction to the list. "Many of these cases are quietly resolved. Many more are resolved not so quietly. But the cases you’ll read about below are the ones that went kicking and screaming right onto this list.

"And it’s not easy to get on these lists," the statement continued. "The colleges you’ll read about below had to work really hard. They went out of their way to threaten student journalists, dismiss professors for protected speech, render a student homeless during a pandemic for his speech, and refuse club recognition for groups just because of their viewpoint."

The following are FIRE's 10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech, including a brief description of why the school ended up on its list.

University of Tennessee (UT Health Science Center, Memphis, Tenn.)
Administrators move to expel pharmacy student for sex-positive social media posts, pitching a remix to Cardi B.
St. John’s University (Queens, N.Y.)
A professor is banned from the classroom for asking history students a question about… history.
Collin College (McKinney, Texas)
Collin College spends its money and time preening its public image and targeting faculty union organizers rather than protecting faculty rights.
Haskell Indian Nations University (Lawrence, Kan.)
HINU kicks a student out of university housing for his speech and threatens a student journalist with discipline for simply doing his job.
New York University (New York, N.Y.)
As a global pandemic spread rapidly, New York University warns its medical faculty to keep quiet — or else!
Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
Duquesne promises academic freedom and free speech but fired a professor when it faced public pressure.
Frostburg State University (Frostburg, Md.)
Looking to silence criticism related to its handling of COVID-19, Frostburg muzzles resident assistants and a student journalist.
Northwestern University in Qatar (Doha, Qatar)
REPEAT OFFENDER: 2016, 2018
Northwestern cancels an event featuring a gay musician because it violates Qatar’s ‘cultural and social customs.’
University of Illinois at Chicago
A law professor is investigated because his exam question contained censored references to slurs in the fact pattern.
Fordham University (New York, N.Y.)
REPEAT OFFENDER: 2017, 2018
Fordham censors Students for Justice in Palestine with one hand and a pro-Second Amendment student with the other.
(More detailed explanations of each case can be seen here.)

Finally, FIRE’s Lifetime Censorship Award, which "recognizes almost herculean efforts in shredding student rights," was given to Syracuse University.

While FIRE had numerous examples dating back to 2005 over the school’s free speech violations, "Syracuse concluded the decade by rejecting a Young Americans for Freedom chapter over its conservative viewpoints, banning all fraternity social activity despite no evidence of misconduct by any of the students, and, most recently, placing a professor on leave for writing 'Wuhan Flu or Chinese Communist Party Virus' on his course syllabus."

These colleges and universities may be 2021’s worst offenders, but FIRE reminds First Amendment advocates that "colleges all over the country are routinely bad actors."

LIFETIME CENSORSHIP AWARD FROM F.I.R.E

The latest chapter of Syracuse’s dark history of censorship involves punishing a professor for writing ‘Wuhan Flu’ on his syllabus.

Just over 150 years after Syracuse University opened its doors by proclaiming that “brains and heart shall have a fair chance” at earning a college degree, this school has shown neither brains nor heart as it continues to punish students and faculty for their protected expression.

Since 2005, when then-Chancellor Nancy Cantor shut down HillTV, a student-run TV station, over its satirical “Over the Hill” show, Syracuse’s unrelenting disdain for expressive rights has earned four separate black marks on this list. Despite welcoming matriculating students with buildings emblazoned with the First Amendment, a motto translated to “Knowledge crowns those who seek her,” and numerous institutional promises to protect student rights, Syracuse’s actions continually betray its words, playing for fools students seeking to speak out about anything remotely controversial.

For example, in 2010, its College of Law investigated law student Len Audaer for his alleged involvement with the anonymous, satirical blog SUCOLitis, about life in law school. That same year, the university’s Department of Public Safety threatened discipline against students for wearing “offensive” Halloween costumes.

A brand new decade brought the same old script from Syracuse. In 2012, its School of Education expelled graduate student Matthew Werenczak after he complained on Facebook about a racially charged comment made in his presence by a community leader, an egregious free speech violation that the university deemed a “standard” practice at the time.

Even inaugurating a new chancellor in 2014 did not stem the tide of student rights abuses — Kent Syverud oversaw the dismantling of an entire engineering fraternity and the expulsion of several members in 2018 over their private satirical “roast.” Syracuse claims that the voluntary skit constituted “conduct that threatens the mental health” of others once it was leaked to the public — an assertion so preposterous that it led to lawsuits in state and federal court, where university attorneys attested, under oath, that the school’s speech promises are, in fact, worthless. Syracuse concluded the decade by rejecting a Young Americans for Freedom chapter over its conservative viewpoints, banning all fraternity social activity despite no evidence of misconduct by any of the students, and, most recently, placing a professor on leave for writing “Wuhan Flu or Chinese Communist Party Virus” on his course syllabus.

A fresh, new year affords Syracuse yet another chance to become a better school for free speech — and FIRE stands ever ready to help the university make that happen. However, the day that Syracuse decides to wake up and live out its laudable commitment to students’ rights has yet to dawn. For its unashamed assault on expressive freedoms that has continued despite a pandemic, a new chancellor, lawsuits, and countless FIRE letters, blogs, and press releases, we award Syracuse with the Lifetime Censorship Award, joining fellow oppressors Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and DePaul University.

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