Nearly 650 college students and student groups have been punished or investigated by administrators for their constitutionally protected expression between 2020 and 2024, according to a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
The “Students Under Fire” report, published Thursday, compiled 1,014 efforts to punish students for speech and expression over the last five years, with 63 percent of those cases resulting “in some form of administrative punishment,” the group stated in a news release.
FIRE developed a database that tracks the incidents, and said it will add more examples as they come.
The research chronicles administrators’ efforts to investigate, censor, or punish students and student groups at U.S. colleges and universities for expressive activity that should be protected by the First Amendment.
“This is unacceptable coming from people whose job it is to serve college students and ensure that their rights are protected,” stated FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens. “Their job should be to protect students’ free speech rights, not torpedo them.”
Among the key findings in the research, according to FIRE:
• “The problem spans ideologies. When it comes to speech about race, most students are targeted from their left, while students speaking out about the war in Gaza are more likely to be targeted from their right.”
• “Among the worst punishments were 72 students or groups who were suspended, 55 who were expelled, lost student group funding, or were otherwise separated from their university, and 19 more who were unenrolled under ambiguous circumstances. In one case, a student had to sleep in his car after his university kicked him out of campus housing. In another, a student was suspended for sending a survey about mental health to his peers.”
• “The most frequently targeted or punished student groups spanned the political divide: Students for Justice in Palestine (75 incidents), Turning Point USA (65 incidents), and the College Republicans (58 incidents).”
The two main topics that prompted probes are race and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to FIRE.
MORE: Year in Review: 120 campus cancel culture incidents in 2024
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A woman’s mouth is taped shut / Superstar, Shutterstock
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