Damning report card: California schools get an ‘F’

By Esther Wickham
The Center Square

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Free Speech Rankings crowned California’s Claremont McKenna College with a grade of B- as the best college in the U.S. for free speech, while a string of other California schools received F grades amid anti-free speech environments across campuses.

FIRE released its sixth annual College Free Speech Rankings, which pulled responses on free-speech topics from 68,510 students attending 257 American colleges. The survey highlighted a decline in support for free speech among all students.

Students on both sides of the political aisle are showing a deep “unwillingness” to face controversial ideas, the press releases stated.

“This year, students largely opposed allowing any controversial campus speaker, no matter that speaker’s politics,” said FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff. “Rather than hearing out and then responding to an ideological opponent, both liberal and conservative college students are retreating from the encounter entirely … We must champion free speech on campus as a remedy to our culture’s deep polarization.”

According to the FIRE survey, Claremont McKenna College is ranked in the top 10 best schools for free speech on “Comfort Expressing Ideas,” “Openness” and “Self-Censorship,” among other categories.

Shortly after the horrific assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk at a Utah college campus event, Claremont Independent, the college newspaper, wrote a story on how CMC students reacted to the killing of Kirk.

“Even those who despise Kirk and everything he stood for should mourn the damage his assassination will do to America’s fragile architecture of free speech and civil discourse. There can be no picking and choosing in the world of free expression. It’s free speech for all, or free speech for none,” the editorial board wrote.

Out of the 257 schools surveyed, 166 of them received an F for their free speech climate. Only 10 schools received a free speech grade of C. Claremont McKenna was the only college to get a better grade than a C.

Stanford University and Chapman University ranked 75 and 97 and received a D- grade and an F, respectively. Other colleges such as University of California, Los Angeles; UC San Francisco; UC Davis; Pomona College; UC Santa Barbara; and California State University, Fresno all received an F grade for their free speech environments.

UC Berkeley, which was known for its free speech movement in 1964-65, also got an F on free speech.

Schools are not meeting the bare minimum for neutral stances on political controversies, Sean Stevens, chief research adviser for FIRE, told The Center Square.

The survey also noted that, nationally, 71% of students believe it is acceptable to shout down a speaker, and 53% believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is too sensitive to discuss.

“Those students who are the furthest to the left have been the most accepting of violence for as long as we’ve asked the question,” Stevens told The Center Square. “But a rising tide of acceptance of violence has raised all boats. Now, regardless of party or ideology, students across the board are more open to violence as a way to shut down a speaker.”