The percentage of schools earning an overall “red light” rating in FIRE’s Spotlight database has gone down for the twelfth year in a row, this year to 24.2%. which is exactly 50 percentage points lower than the percentage of red light institutions in FIRE’s 2009 report.
Requires public colleges and universities nationwide to protect their students' free speech and freedom of association rights on campus. The bill also requires private institutions that receive federal funding to disclose their free speech and freedom of association policies annually.
FIRE rated the top 53 universities in the country, and our findings were troubling. Most institutions lacked most of the procedural safeguards we looked for in written policies.
As we approach another election season, FIRE remains concerned by the continuing trend towards preemptive censorship of political speech on our nation’s college and university campuses.
FIRE surveyed 461 colleges and universities for this report and found that 32.3% of those schools maintain severely restrictive, “red light” speech codes that clearly and substantially prohibit constitutionally protected speech.
