More than 600 college students and student groups were punished or investigated for speech that would be constitutionally protected at a public university over the past five years, according to a new report by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
From 2020 to 2024, FIRE documented over 1,000 instances of students or student groups being targeted by a campus administrator or a student government for their speech — a stark contrast to the 669 calls to punish professors and 556 calls to cancel events or remove artwork that FIRE found over the same period.
Nearly two thirds (63 percent) of the incidents targeting student speech resulted in at least one administrative punishment.
“From 2020 through 2022, students and student groups were mostly targeted by their peers, for expression about race, and from their left,” reads the report titled “Students Under Fire” that was released on May 15. “From 2023 to present, students and student groups were mostly targeted by administrators, for expression about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and from their right. During these two years, government officials and politicians led more attempts to punish student speech than in any other period.”
The FIRE report found that, in 2020 alone, university administrators resorted to punishing 69 percent of all students and student groups involved in speech controversies that concerned the topic of race. That same year, administrators responded by releasing a public statement of condemnation in 38 percent of all speech controversies. When faced with public demands to punish students, the FIRE report states, administrators caved nearly two-thirds of the time in 2020.
Of the documented instances from 2020 to 2022 in the “Students Under Fire” database, six in ten students or student groups received at least one punishment from the college administration. The punishments ranged in type and severity; FIRE found investigations of 393 students and student groups, censorship of 164, and separation from the institution or its funding (via expulsion, rescinded admissions offer, or denial of student group recognition) of 47. FIRE further found 18 instances of un-enrolling under ambiguous circumstances, 33 cases of mandated training or behavior modification, 31 cases of suspension, and the termination of five on-campus jobs.
The FIRE report found that the rate of speech controversies with an administrative punishment against a student or student group fell from 70 percent in 2020 to 64 percent in 2024. Of the student speech controversies in 2020, 60 percent were generally about race and just 7 percent were about Israel-Palestine. In 2024, Israel-Palestine was the topic of 65 percent of controversies and race of just 16 percent.
For the year of 2024, FIRE recorded 182 speech controversies and found that 64 percent resulted in punishment. However, the report explains that such numbers may be an underestimate, in part because some disciplinary procedures (like those for encampment participation) are ongoing.
A “speech controversy” is defined in the report’s methodology as “a publicly known effort to have a student or student group investigated, censored, or otherwise disciplined by the administration or student government for expression that is — or at a public college or university would be — protected by the First Amendment.” A “speech controversy” does not include instances of harassment or intimidation where there is no threat of disciplinary punishment, nor does it include instances where a student or student group faces counter-speech that is lacking demands for institutional action.