Spotlight on Speech Codes 2009: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses

FIRE’s third annual report on campus speech codes, Spotlight on Speech Codes 2009: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses found that American colleges and universities continue to systematically violate students’ and faculty members’ right to freedom of expression. Of the 364 institutions surveyed in the report, approximately 270 of them—74 percent—maintain policies that clearly restrict speech that would otherwise be protected by the First Amendment. The incidence of unconstitutional speech codes is significantly higher at public universities (77%) than at private universities (67%), which is striking in light of the fact that public universities, as government entities, are obligated to uphold the guarantees of the First Amendment.

Spotlight on Speech Codes 2007: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses

FIRE’s second annual speech code report, Spotlight on Speech Codes 2007: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses, surveyed over 345 schools and found that an overwhelming majority of them continue to explicitly prohibit various forms of expression that are protected by the First Amendment. This report continues FIRE’s efforts to document and make the public aware of the ongoing scandal of colleges and universities—public and private—that claim to value free speech while actually restricting this most basic right of their students and faculty members.

Spotlight on Speech Codes 2006: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses

FIRE’s first annual speech code report, Spotlight on Speech Codes 2006: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses, surveyed over 330 schools and found that an overwhelming majority of them explicitly prohibit speech that, outside the borders of campus, is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The report is the most comprehensive effort to date to quantify both the number of schools that significantly restrict students’ and faculty members’ speech and the severity of those restrictions.

Update, December 7, 2006
Download a list of schools by rating