Florida schools rose their free-speech rank while scoring lower than the year before in a survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Florida’s average score in the College Free Speech Rankings was 63.1 out of 100, dropping 1.1 from the year before. However, Florida’s average rank out of 257 was 74, rising 25 spots since the year before.
Not all institutions in Florida were rated; FIRE queried students at six public institutions and one private, the University of Miami. Florida State University scored highest in the state at 17th nationally of 257 schools. UM was the least favorable at 229th.
Following a academic-like grading scale, FIRE’s scoring gave only 11 schools a C or better and 166 of the 257 schools surveyed got an F.
Florida’s average grade was a D, while the national average was F.
Schools were graded on students’ comfort expressing ideas, disruptive conduct, openness, self-censorship, administrative support, and political tolerance.
Students were surveyed during the spring semester. Since then, an FSU employee wearing an Israel Defense Forces was charged with battery after allegedly hitting a student criticizing Israel and saying “free Palestine.” That encounter created headlines and prompted FSU to issue a formal response.
Reacting
The survey found that 34% of Florida students said using violence to stop people from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases. That number is the same as the national average.
Twice as many, 68%, said shouting down a speaker to silence them while on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases. That number is 3% lower than the national average.
FIRE is involved in a lawsuit against Florida, litigating against the Stop WOKE Act. That law restricts classroom instruction related to “race, color, national origin, or sex.”
In that lawsuit, an attorney for the state asserted authority to control professors’ content, “because in the classroom, the professor’s speech is the government’s speech, and the government can restrict professors on a content-wide basis … .”
That case remains pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
That does not heavily dampen Florida schools’ scores, since scoring is based on students’ expression, not on faculty’s, FIRE said.
Nationwide, FIRE said, “conservative students are increasingly joining their liberal peers in supporting censorship.”
The rankings “show a continued decline in support for free speech among all students, but particularly conservatives. Students of every political persuasion show a deep unwillingness to encounter controversial ideas,” FIRE said in a news release announcing the results.
Students in the state were surveyed on how often they hide political beliefs in attempts to get a better grade: 34% said never, 30% said rarely, 21% said once or twice a month, 9% said a couple of times a week, and 6% said nearly every day.
42% of students in Florida said they feel their school has made it somewhat clear that free speech is protected on campus and 38% say it is very or extremely clear.
FSU was identified as a “consistently ‘good’ school for free speech.”
Harvard University, 245th, and Columbia University, 256th, rank near the bottom, while Claremont McKenna College, Purdue University, and the University of Chicago claimed the top three spots.
“This year, students largely opposed allowing any controversial campus speaker, no matter that speaker’s politics,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said in a news release.
“Rather than hearing out and then responding to an ideological opponent, both liberal and conservative college students are retreating from the encounter entirely. This will only harm students’ ability to think critically and create rifts between them. We must champion free speech on campus as a remedy to our culture’s deep polarization.”
The survey found that for every “conservative student,” there are 1.57 “liberal students.”
Last year, a state survey comparing Florida students to nationwide numbers found that the Sunshine State was home to more Republican students than the national average.
–Jay Waagmeester, Florida Phoenix
Leave a Reply