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Greg Lukianoff
The Dispatch
2025 was the worst year for campus censorship in decades, and that’s because it’s coming from every possible direction—especially the MAGAverse.
For most of my career, the biggest threat to free speech on campus came from inside higher education: the on-campus left (students, yes, but more importantly administrators) using the power of investigation and discipline to punish “wrongthink.” The right pushed, too, but those pushes overwhelmingly originated off campus. This makes sense, given that there simply aren’t that many conservatives in the student body, on the faculty, or—least of all—among administrators in higher education.
In 2025, what changed was the balance of power and the source of the pressure. The federal government and state governments, using the levers of state power, are now the leading forces behind attempts to punish campus speech. In the data my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, tracks—our Students Under Fire database—incidents involving censorship attempts from politicians or government officials jumped to roughly a third of all cases this year. In 2024, those incidents didn’t crack double digits.
If you are inclined to be skeptical of the reform movement — some would call it an assault — targeting higher education, much of it driven by political conservatives, a spate of recent scandals in red states will seem to confirm your suspicions.
A week before colleges must report years of admissions data to the federal government, a group of Democratic state attorneys general sued the Trump administration to block what they say is an unlawful demand.
In recent weeks, colleges and the institutional research offices tasked to collect and report the data have been sounding the alarm about the looming deadline. An association recently requested a three-month extension. The Education Department responded with a conditional three-week extension.
Almost immediately after Donald Trump took office for the second time, the White House and the Department of Education launched a shock-and-awe assault against its perceived foes in higher education, announcing a new investigation or seizure of funding seemingly every week. Their targets appeared overwhelmed by the speed and severity of the offensive.
But the aggressive pace that won the administration so many early victories eventually proved to be its great weakness. The government could move so quickly only by skipping almost all of the procedural steps required by federal law. Once universities and their allies recovered from their shock and challenged the Trump administration, they were able to block many, if not most, of the White House’s moves in court. Trump has certainly left his mark on America’s universities. But he has not broken them.
