According to rankings released this month by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, many of the nation’s top colleges and universities have policies that could be used to limit free speech . In other words, some schools have shut down discussions on controversial topics.

Administrators have a responsibility to our students and future generations to create climates in which fruitful conversations around controversial topics can happen on campus. But to gain the civility and empathy needed for our democracy to continue will require something from all of us, in college or not.

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Colleges should be places where students can talk freely and share their ideas. This process should expand our understanding of others and give us new perspectives on life. In some higher education institutions, this exchange is clearly limited to some ideas.

According to Greg Lukianoff, FIRE president and CEO, the offending colleges and universities need to gain the public’s trust back.

“After all, an environment in which you can actually get in trouble for the ‘wrong’ academic opinion is not one that can be depended upon to produce reliable knowledge,” Lukianoff said in a statement.

FIRE’s rankings were based on student responses and analyzing how schools responded to calls to “deplatform,” which FIRE describes as “attempts to sanction students, student groups, scholars and speakers for speech protected under First Amendment standards.”

Harvard ranks dead last against 248 other institutions FIRE reviewed because of its willingness to sanction students and professors for their views over the years, with seven of nine attempts to “deplatform” resulting in a sanction by Harvard’s leaders.

Harvard is not alone. FIRE found that 72 other institutions had “below average,” “poor,” or “very poor” speech climates.

The foundation found that almost half of students on campus “have difficulty discussing abortion on campus,” along with gun control, racial inequality, and transgender matters. If students can’t talk about these subjects with their peers in academic settings during their formative years, what does that say about our future?

Then again, which of us off campus are currently having healthy and respectful conversations with people who disagree with us? How many of us, really, have talked recently about gun control, abortion, or transgender matters with someone who holds views opposite our own?

Instead, we scroll through carefully tailored feeds or turn on our preferred media channels and hear from people who talk and think just like we do about the subjects that are important to us. Demonization and derision are fueled by shares and comments. The talking points take hold of our thinking and flatten our perspectives of other people.

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Students don’t demand to deplatform a speaker in a vacuum. It takes a mob mentality to vilify someone to the point at which he or she is not allowed to add to the conversation. When colleges and universities chill free speech because of these mobs, administrators give credence to the implicit statement that some topics are untouchable and, by extension, so are those who espouse them.

So while the leaders at our nation’s institutions of higher learning should make every effort to create environments in which students and speakers can easily say what they want, it’s much more important that all of us, on campus or not, take the time to talk about what is difficult.

Brendan Clarey is an education editor who lives outside Detroit. His opinions have also appeared in the Detroit News, USA Today, and the New York Post.