Political tolerance has waned since 2022, says the organization’s research head.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: September 17, 2025
Host: Freedom of speech on campus is in the spotlight after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed a week ago while speaking to 3,000 people at a university in Utah. Free speech has been the banner brought to the campus of New College by new administrators since the governor took the reins of the college three years ago. And it is the banner of those opposing the takeover. WSLR News talked to a non-profit that keeps track of free speech issues on campuses across the United States.
Johannes Werner: FIRE is a national organization equally disliked by left and right. That acronym stands for Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and the non-profit was there after the State of Florida took the reins of the small New College campus. FIRE criticized the new administration when Trustee Christopher Rufo tweeted that a visiting professor was not renewed because of his left-wing teaching. FIRE is also litigating against the State of Florida over the Stop WOKE Act. But FIRE is equally—if not more—known for consistently criticizing liberal-leaning universities.
They also produce an annual ranking of U.S. universities based on the free speech climate for students. Their 2025 ranking just came out, and it included seven Florida campuses. Florida State University ended up in the top three, earning a “good” rating. But five Florida campuses earned D’s or worse. The private University of Miami got a failing grade.
Overall, Florida is mostly red in the latest FIRE ranking, and that’s not a good color. The state’s schools—a mix of public and private—received a C+ on disruptive behavior, a C- on openness, a D on comfort expressing ideas, a D- on self-censorship, and F’s on both administrative support and political tolerance.
Sean Stevens heads the research at FIRE and is one of the forces behind the ranking. He says the free speech climate has gotten worse.
Sean Stevens
Sean Stevens: Large uptick in controversies involving Israel-Palestine. Lots of speaker disruptions, lots of groups getting suspended, having their recognition revoked, student journalists being investigated, being suspended temporarily—things like that. One in three students that we surveyed—34%—said that other students using violence to stop a campus speech if it was [???] acceptable. That’s up from 20% in 2022. That’s a very significant rise.
Not a single controversial speaker that we asked about. We usually ask about six to eight. Half are controversial liberal speakers, half are controversial conservative ones. For the first time ever, not a single one had more than 50% of students saying that they should be allowed on campus.
You put those two things together, and I’d say there’s a lot of concerning results about political tolerance.
JW: What makes Florida campuses fail?
SS: Basically, outside of those first three schools I mentioned that are in the top 50, the rest of the schools in the state either have a yellow- or a red-light rating. They could start there. Reforming the policies would definitely bring their rankings up, and the state’s overall average grade.
JW: New College was not among those surveyed by FIRE this year. But Hillsdale College was. That’s the private religious campus in Michigan the Florida governor wants to model New College after. In the FIRE ranking, Hillsdale ended up in the “warning” group, somewhere in the middle of the pack.
Students walking at New College. Photo by Emily LeCoz via Suncoast Searchlight
So what improves the free speech climate on campus? Stevens suggests a fairly simple first step: Write down a policy and commit to it.
SS: A number of the schools across the country are failing to do even the bare minimum to ensure that they have policies on the books that won’t potentially infringe on the speech rights of students and faculty. If they did that, the average score would be higher. It still wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be a failing grade. And this is not a difficult thing for schools to do. We’re happy to work with them to reform their policies if they’d like to work with us. But a lot of schools do poorly because they’re not even doing the bare minimum to protect the First Amendment.
JW: After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, campus security everywhere will probably be beefed up. That could create an additional hurdle to free speech, Stevens says.
SS: Where I think this can become very problematic is increases in security fees could preclude events from occurring because groups may not be able to pay them. Universities may not want to pay them. Or we’ve seen in the past some universities charge excessive security fees to an organizing student group to have a controversial speaker on campus with the intention of, “Well, we know they’re not going to be able to pay this.”
Tom Homan on New College’s ‘Socratic Stage’.
JW: New College hosts a speaker series it calls Socratic Stage. Invited guests have been controversial figures such as border czar Tom Homan; Russell Brand, the British comedian accused of rape; and Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz. Asked about New College’s response in terms of security after the Kirk assassination, spokesman Jamie Miller said the administration’s priority is securing free speech.
“New College will never retreat from its mission of free speech and civil discourse. We will host more public discussions than ever, always with top-tier security to protect our students, speakers, and community, and that is exactly what Charlie Kirk would want us to do.”
Rendering of New College’s proposed Kirk statue. Image courtesy of New College
On Tuesday, New College announced it commissioned a statue of Charlie Kirk, to be placed at a yet-to-be-announced location on campus. In a press release, President Richard Corcoran said Kirk knew campuses were Ground Zero for free speech. New College “will not step back from this responsibility,” Corcoran said.
The press release highlighted the first event of the “Socratic Stage” series On September 23, Dr. Scott Atlas—the controversial radiologist and healthcare advisor of the first Trump administration—will return to the campus. Also part of the panel on “Truth, Bias and Power” are Chanel Rion—a former White House correspondent for a right-wing news network; and Fox News commentators Ben Domenech and Mollie Hemingway.
Reporting for WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.
