The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I attended a program hosted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE. I spent a week with peers, contemplating one of the biggest questions our country is currently facing. What does it actually mean to live in a society committed to free speech?
The easy response is that people should be permitted to say what they think – this is a right protected by our founding documents and modern laws.
The second, much harder response is that a commitment to free speech is rooted not only in law, but in culture. When individuals express their views, the rest of us have to be willing not only to tolerate it, but to listen.
I’m afraid that our society is becoming increasingly unwilling to do so.
On September 9, 2026, FIRE released its annual College Free Speech Rankings, based this year on responses from nearly 63,000 students at more than 260 colleges and universities. FIRE, a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to protecting freedom of speech and thought, has conducted the survey for seven years.
The results are telling. Of the 261 schools ranked, 121 received an F grade for their speech climate. The average school earned the equivalent of a D minus. More than two-thirds of students said, at least in some circumstances, it is acceptable to shout down a campus speaker. And for the second consecutive year, a majority of students opposed allowing each of six hypothetical controversial speakers, three from the political left and three from the political right, to speak on their campuses.
The rankings aren’t just measuring university policy on expression. FIRE asks students how comfortable they are expressing unpopular opinions in classrooms and elsewhere on campus, how often they censor themselves when speaking with classmates and professors, whether they believe administrators will defend controversial speech, which subjects they believe cannot be discussed openly, and how willing they are to tolerate speakers whose views they find objectionable.
FIRE is attempting to quantify the extent to which each university actually upholds its stated values. It is trying to measure whether a culture of free expression actually exists.
We hear a great deal today about the concept of “safe spaces.” I don’t deny this phrase is often well intentioned — it is certainly true that every institution has an obligation to protect people from harassment and discrimination. But I can’t help but find the modern interpretation of “safe spaces” to be a mischaracterization of the solution to rampant polarization.
People might not feel emotionally safe in every possible space. They might be exposed to others who dispute or even vilify their beliefs, morals, or goals, and that will more than likely feel hurtful. But it would be far worse to avoid these conversations altogether.
Perhaps we need “brave spaces” instead — spaces where people are comfortable in uncomfortable conversations and ready to embrace the idea that the best way to evolve their own outlook is to have it challenged constantly.
A healthy community cannot promise that its members will never encounter an idea that disturbs them, angers them, or disputes something fundamental to their belief structure, nor can it promise the absence of immature personal attacks.
The guarantee of “safety,” meaning freedom from physical harm, is a responsibility.
I would argue that the removal of intellectual “safety” is a responsibility as well.
In “On Liberty,” published in 1859, John Stuart Mill wrote, “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”
We often enter an argument with the goal of proving our opponent wrong. Mill suggests that the person challenging us is actually providing a service. If we cannot explain our beliefs in the face of serious opposition, perhaps we don’t understand them as well as we think we do.
This should be particularly important at colleges and universities, institutions whose fundamental purpose is education. A college in which students never have their deepest beliefs challenged is failing them.
There are encouraging signs in FIRE’s newest rankings. The overall national score improved this year, and considerably fewer schools received failing grades than the year before. But even FIRE’s highest-rated schools received only a B minus. Only 24 of the 261 ranked institutions earned a C or better.
There is a problem that needs to be solved, and the current methods just aren’t working.
We need to stop defining “safety” so broadly that it comes to mean freedom from discomfort.
Democracy is uncomfortable. Intellectual growth is uncomfortable. Living among people who think for themselves —which will inevitably lead them to conclusions that contrast with your own — is uncomfortable.
That discomfort is not evidence that something has gone wrong. It’s a sign that something very important is happening.