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{shortcode-be29865d8a9c7908fa05930b7f2d42574eaa573c}n the eyes of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Harvard went from the worst campus in the country for free speech to 13th-worst in the last year.
The University’s failing grade in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings has been used to justify funding cuts, federal investigations, and boycotts. But behind the score, social science experts say FIRE’s methodology obscures an arbitrary evaluation system weighted to push better-known universities to the bottom.
The organization scores how well free expression is defended and promoted on college campuses based on surveys, news coverage, and administrative policy analysis. Then, they release a ranking every year of more than 250 American universities. Claremont McKenna College ranked first, with a B- grade, and Barnard College of Columbia University replaced Harvard in last place.
Both in 2023 and 2024, FIRE gave Harvard the lowest rank, alongside a score of 0.00, adding that the University had an “abysmal” speech climate. In the new rankings, released earlier this month, Harvard moved up in score from 0.00 to 49.74 out of 100, earning the University a new rank of 245 out of 257, though still with a F grade. (FIRE cited Harvard’s institutional neutrality statement and resistance to the Trump administration as actions that improved its score.)
“My cynical hypothesis is they do the rankings because it’s clickbait,” said Edward J. “Ned” Hall, a philosophy professor and co-president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. “There is a human tendency to think, ‘Oh, you assigned a number to all these different institutions. That must be scientific. We should pay attention.’”
Yet in an email sent to University officials, six out of the seven CAFH co-presidents, including Hall, wrote that — despite taking issue with aspects of FIRE’s sampling and survey techniques — the results of the ranking system are “a cause for concern.”
“The numbers suggest that Harvard students do not belong to a community that encourages listening, learning, and engaging with opinions that differ from their preconceptions,” they wrote.
FIRE’s Director of Research Ryne Weiss wrote in an emailed statement that the ranking provides “an important service” not found elsewhere.
University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on Harvard’s ranking, but wrote in an emailed statement that Harvard officials “have repeatedly restated the University’s commitment to free speech and free expression, including protest and dissent.”
Winning Points
FIRE’s free speech score is a composite of 12 different measured categories, including “Comfort Expressing Ideas,” “Political Tolerance,” and “Administrative Support.” While the rankings are rooted in survey results, points are added and subtracted at FIRE’s discretion.
The organization partners with survey company College Pulse, a survey company which has an existing base of more than 800,0000 undergraduate students across the country. Those student groups, which vary in size for each college, are asked questions every year before the results are weighted based on demographic information for each school reported to the Department of Education. (For Harvard, 411 undergraduate students were surveyed. Claremont McKenna, the highest ranked college, had 125 survey participants.)
In the resulting data, FIRE found that 79 percent of Harvard students find shouting down a campus speaker acceptable, compared to the 71 percent of students nationally. Thirty-two percent of Harvard students found it acceptable to use violence in order to block a speech, compared to 34 percent of students nationally, according to FIRE.
But the surveys also found that Harvard students have a higher degree of political tolerance for both left and right-leaning speakers compared to the national sample of students.
In addition to survey data, FIRE gives universities bonus points or docks points after deciding whether campus policies or controversial incidents made speech more or less free on campuses. Universities that vowed not to release official statements on controversial issues earned three extra points, while firing a tenured faculty member cost five points.
According to Sean Stevens, FIRE’s chief research advisor, the organization’s researchers gather news reports of campus speech incidents and then work with legal staff to determine if the incident would be considered a violation of free speech under the First Amendment.
This year, Harvard lost points for 11 incidents, including blocking the unrecognized African and African American Resistance Organization from reserving a room on campus and dismissing the faculty leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
But Harvard’s refusal to yield to the Trump administration’s demands to derecognize pro-Palestine student groups in its legal confrontation with the federal government earned the University bonus points.
Hall said FIRE’s approach carries some “obvious, glaring, embarrassing flaws.”
“Suppose Institution A invites 100 controversial speakers to campus in a given year, and three of the events are disrupted. Institution B invites five controversial speakers to campus in a year, and one of the events is disrupted. Institution A gets a lower score than Institution B, according to FIRE’s methodology,” Hall said.
Weiss wrote in an emailed statement that disruptions to speaker events matter because “they send a message that your speech rights are contingent upon the approval of your classmates.”
He added that campus incidents are opportunities for the school to either get a penalty or a bonus if they are used as “teachable moments.”
Last year, when an animal rights protester dumped glitter on Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76, Harvard lost two points for a speaker disruption, though it then gained two points back when Garber resumed his speech — modeling a “constructive response,” according to FIRE. The protester was later charged with three felonies.
Pippa Norris, a comparative politics lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School who studies academic freedom, wrote that FIRE’s reliance on news reports as a means of collecting data on campus incidents also skews results based on levels of coverage of different schools.
“There are biases by the journalistic coverage of such incidents in the news media, both legacy and social, which over-represents coverage of negative news in the most high profile institutions of higher education, like Harvard,” Norris wrote.
Norris also argued FIRE lacks a rationale for how it assigns weights to each component of the score. Colleges can score a maximum of 20 points for “disruptive conduct” and “administrative support” each, but only 10 for “openness,” and 3 for “institutional neutrality.”
“Relatively straightforward codings of ‘objective’ university policies are mixed up with ‘subjective’ perceptual measures, risking counting apples and oranges,” Norris wrote. (Weiss wrote that the rankings create a “holistic evaluation” of speech climates.)
Yet experts also said the FIRE rankings may provide the best polling available on campus speech across time and between universities.
“I don’t imagine any other kind of conscientious poll doing a lot better,” said Donald A. Downs, an emeritus professor of political science at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jeff A. Snyder, a professor at Carleton College and an education historian, added that he found the questions about how often students self-censor particularly compelling.
“A rough cut sense of how pervasive self-censorship is on college campuses is extremely important because it speaks not just to the ability of students to discuss hot button topics and political points of view, but the theory behind a liberal arts education at a place like Harvard,” Snyder said.
Harvard scored 0.17 points above the national average of 12.12 in the self-censorship category.
The State of Academic Freedom
Under intense public scrutiny for its response to antisemitism and protests — in addition to longstanding criticism over its left-leaning faculty — Harvard has launched a flurry of initiatives and centers aimed at improving the climate for speech.
Officials launched both the Intellectual Vitality Initiative at Harvard College and the Harvard Dialogues series to encourage debate and open inquiry. Freshmen are also required to take lessons on civil disagreement in Expository writing classes and complete an online module titled “Perspectives.”
Much to many students’ dismay, in April, Harvard moved to rename its former Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging to the “Community and Campus Life” office — also with a new mission to “give members of our community greater opportunities to engage across difference.” Several Harvard offices aimed to support students of color, women, and LGBTQ people have also been closed or rebranded.
All the changes were made prior to FIRE’s 2026 rankings announcement. Stevens, the chief research advisor of FIRE, said that the findings of free speech at Harvard merit a sense of “cautious optimism.”
“I do think Harvard’s handled at least this year and the threats coming from the federal government better than a lot of other similar schools,” Stevens told The Crimson.
But the co-presidents of CAFH wrote on Sept. 12 that Harvard maintained a “disturbing state of academic freedom.”
“With due reservations about the numbers (which could be underestimates as readily as they could be overestimates), we believe that they are a cause for soul-searching at Harvard, and an impetus to reform our policies and our culture,” the faculty members wrote of the FIRE survey results. “Taken together, the numbers suggest that Harvard students do not belong to a community that encourages listening, learning, and engaging with opinions that differ from their preconceptions.”
Harvard is also one of 167 schools who received an F grade from FIRE. Amna Khalid, a professor at Carleton College and an academic freedom researcher, said the University’s specific ranking matters less than the broader failings chronicled by the survey.
“Yes, Harvard in these rankings comes particularly low, but most swimmers in this pool are swimming poorly,” she said.
Jonathan L. Zimmerman, a professor and historian of education at the University of Pennsylvania, added that the FIRE rankings — regardless of their flaws — draw public attention to questions of free speech in a way that universities listen to.
“If somebody wants to question the measure, question the measure. I’m all for that,” Zimmerman said. “But don’t lose the forest for the trees.”
—Staff writer Annabel M. Yu can be reached at annabel.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @annabelmyu.
—Staff writer Sheerea X. Yu can be reached at sheerea.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @_shuhree_.
