More than one third of college students condone the use of violence to shut down speakers on campus — and top schools do little to protect free speech, according to a new survey.
Around 70% of higher education students agreed that shouting people downon campus is acceptable in some situations and 34% believe using violence to stop speakers is fine, according to the 2026 College Free Speech Rankings from FIRE Foundation.
The survey polled more than 68,000 students across 257 colleges and also found that 28% of respondents said they often self-censor in classroom discussions to avoid backlash. At Claremont McKenna College in California, 61% of students said shouting down a speaker was OK in some cases, and 28% said it was acceptable to use violence in some cases. “I don’t think the majority of people are going to do this themselves, but it’s more indicative of a culture where they’re saying it’s acceptable for someone to do it. It’s almost a permission culture for allowing it to happen,” Sean Stevens, chief research advisor for the ranking, told The Post.
Stevens said increased political tensions at the state and national level may have trickled into college campuses, making students ready to throw down over controversial expressions — verbally or physically. Nearly a quarter of students said they often self-censor around other students, and 28% said they self-censor in the classroom — fearing blowback for their less popular opinions. Barnard College landed in dead last in the ranking, with Columbia University and Indiana University just above it, suffering in categories like “Comfort Expressing Ideas” and “Administrative Support.” The bottom-ranked schools suffered from high profile free speech scandals, often related to the Israel-Hamas war and transgender issues. “For example, administrators investigatedand briefly suspended student journalists who covered pro-Palestinian protests. These penalties dragged down the score,” wrote the FIRE Foundation in its description of Barnard College. Columbia University — which earned a score of 42.9 out of 100 — lost two points for a demoting a public health professor after the Wall Street Journal accused him of “pro-Palestinian indoctrination” in 2024. The school also lost points for a 2025 investigation into a PhD student whose social media supported politicians who opposed gender-transition procedures for minors.
In previous years, left-leaning students were somewhat more likely to condone violence, but the most recent report showed a nearly even split between liberals and conservative respondents. “In last year’s data it mostly seemed to even out, and there wasn’t much of a difference between the two sides,” Stevens told The Post. Claremont McKenna College — a private liberal arts school in Claremont, California — took the top spot for high scores in “Self-Censorship,” “Administrative Support,” “Comfort Expressing Ideas,” and “Openness.” But even there, where liberal students outnumber conservatives four-to-one, more than a quarter condone violence in some cases, and around a third said they self-censored once or twice a month.
“I think the problem on campus is worse than would get captured on any free speech metric,” said University of Illinois sociologist Ilana Redstone.
“That bigger problem is the moral condemnation of disagreement that has become embedded in institutions,” she told The Post. Modern campus cultures often see controversial viewpoints as harmful — full stop — and ascribe malicious intent to anyone who holds them, Redstone argued.
Certain ideas are dismissed as simply wrong at best and actively hostile at worst, turning what should be honest conversations into open hostilities that are unlikely to change anyone’s mind. “If we acknowledge that we have goals that pull in other directions, instead of sweeping these things under the rug, that would be a step toward an open and upfront conversation,” Redstone said.
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