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Emma Whitford
Inside Higher Ed
Thirty percent of college students say that using violence to stop campus speech is acceptable at least in rare cases, according to a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
It’s a slight decrease from a year ago, when a record-high 34 percent of students said the same, but it remains 12 points higher than in 2020, when 18 percent of students said violence was an acceptable response, at least in rare cases, to campus speech.
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Penn was again ranked as one of the worst universities in the United States for free speech, according to an annual report evaluating college campuses.
The ranking, released by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, placed Penn at No. 227 out of 261 schools with an F grade and a score of 54.4 out of 100. Penn moved up four places and increased its score by 2.9 points from last year’s ranking. A University spokesperson declined to comment.
This past April, the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education delivered a final report to university president Maurie McInnis on the problem of declining trust in higher education. The work of the 10-person faculty committee, established by President McInnis in spring 2025 and co-chaired by me and Professor Beverly Gage, focused in part on how Yale could right its own ship, ultimately recommending 20 steps that the university should take to help restore trust.
Fortunately, President McInnis took the report and its recommendations seriously, starting by taking responsibility (the report’s first recommendation) on behalf of the university for its role in the trust crisis.
More than half of respondents to The Crimson’s annual faculty survey opposed Harvard’s efforts to solicit donations for a viewpoint diversity initiative — rejecting a push to raise hundreds of millions of dollars through $10 million endowed professorships meant to broaden ideological representation.
Nearly 47 percent of faculty respondents also disagreed that Harvard has a troubling lack of ideological diversity among its faculty, while roughly 31 percent agreed. The split was little changed from last year, when 45 percent disagreed and 34 percent agreed — putting most respondents at odds with critics, including Trump administration officials, who have charged that Harvard’s faculty is too ideologically narrow.
