2025: A Breakthrough Year for Free Speech on Campus

By Edward L. Yingling, Cofounder of Princetonians for Free Speech

INTRODUCTION:

It is now widely understood that for years many of our country’s colleges and universities have been losing their way; they are no longer bastions of the core values of free speech, open discourse, and academic freedom, nor are they focused on promoting learning and the advancement of knowledge. Instead, they have increasingly become focused on a specific agenda and advancing that agenda, in the process often repressing these core values.

There have been individuals and institutions fighting back, trying to reform universities and to restore these core values, but it often seemed a lonely fight. Much of the effort was to support those who had been “cancelled.” In more recent years the reform side gathered new advocates and began to coordinate. Existing organizations – such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), and the Heterodox Academy (HxA) – became stronger and expanded their efforts. Faculty across the country organized to form the Academic Freedom Alliance.  

On some campuses, groups of faculty members began to organize, often informally. Also, on some campuses small groups of students organized to support free speech and open discourse. In 2021, start-up alumni groups from Davidson, Princeton, The University of Virginia, Washington and Lee and Cornell announced the creation of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, which was launched in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in October 2021.   At least thirty schools now have active alumni groups supporting free speech on their campuses.

Still, it seemed progress would be slow against the entrenched opposition on campuses. But then, in the wake of the tragic attack on Israel in October of 2023, everything changed. The protests, and in some cases riots, on campuses, including on the campuses of leading universities, laid bare for all to see what had been developing for years. The blatant antisemitism was shocking. And the responses of the leaders of some of the country’s leading universities drew attention to their narrow viewpoints and the complicity of the trustees who had chosen them.

In 2024, there was important movement on many fronts in the battle to restore universities to their historic and critical role. Yet still there were warning signs of the walls that had to be scaled. Greg Lukianoff, President of FIRE, has stated that, according to FIRE’s database, 2024 was the worst year ever for deplatforming attempts, such as shout downs and disinviting speakers, since FIRE started tracking them in 1998. 

There were many green shoots in 2024, but 2025 is sure to be a year of dynamic and disruptive change. In fact the very broad and aggressive Executive Orders issued by the Trump administration guarantee that there will be significant changes. Individual advocates of campus free speech and academic freedom may believe some of these changes go too far or are counterproductive, and this outline does not attempt to judge the changes. The purpose of this article is to outline in one place areas where dynamic change will occur in 2025. It is not designed to be either comprehensive or rigorous in its analysis; rather it serves as a synthesis of the main areas of change, organized by constituency. 

STUDENTS, PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS, PARENTS AND EMPLOYERS:

There is already anecdotal evidence that applications are down materially at some of the most prestigious schools that suffered reputational damage as result of protests and the reaction to those protests. For example, Harvard refused to release information on early admissions as it has in the past, raising suspicions that applications were down. At the same time, there is anecdotal evidence that applications to schools that emphasize the values of free speech and academic freedom are up. Prospective students are voting with their feet. Some universities are stressing their values, implicitly contrasting them with elite universities the reputations of which have been badly tarnished. An example of this is Vanderbilt University, which has taken clear steps to raise its profile in supporting free speech.

In some cases, employers have indicated that they will no longer be recruiting at certain schools because of the values those schools are teaching. This will also influence where students want to go. This trend for students and employers was foreshadowed in a June 2023 article written by Stuart Taylor and Edward Yingling, Princeton alumni, entitled “Colleges should compete on Free Speech.”

While this trend of applicants and potential employers looking to schools with better values and records on free speech and academic freedom will take years to play out, 2025 may be the year the trend accelerates and is more widely recognized, as more prospective students and prospective employers become educated on the options.

FACULTY:

The faculty of many universities are not only overwhelmingly liberal, but highly progressive, according to numerous polls, and can be intolerant of free enquiry and intellectual pluralism. This is a huge long-term problem for viewpoint diversity that is likely to get worse in the short term as conservative and moderate professors age out. It is greatly exacerbated by the litmus tests of diversity statements often now required in applications to join a faculty.

In recent years, even many liberal faculty members have become concerned about the atmosphere on campuses that inhibits free speech and academic freedom. They have in some instances become afraid of the growing non-faculty bureaucracy that can criticize and even investigate them over one sentence said in a classroom if a student reports them. Surveys show many faculty pull back from fully expressing themselves in class or elsewhere, knowing that their careers can be ruined. According to Lukianoff, a 2024 FIRE survey found that one out of three faculty members admitted to hiding their political views to avoid censorship reprisals.

While there have been some small groups of faculty members that worked informally to promote the core values, they often worked behind the scenes and were largely made up of conservatives. As noted, in recent years, the number of these groups has increased, and non-conservatives have joined the effort. Heterodox Academy undertook an organized effort to promote such groups. The Academic Freedom Alliance was formed to support faculty whose free speech rights were threatened. However, in 2024, this movement began to accelerate. At several leading universities, groups of faculty members came together publicly to support core values. The one that has received the most attention is the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.  Princeton faculty members have formed the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom. And in just the last few months, similar groups have been formed at seven other universities, including Duke, Columbia, MIT, and Yale.

In September of last year, the University of Chicago received an anonymous grant of $100 million to support free speech efforts at the Chicago Forum for Free Speech and Expression. 

With these strong examples, it seems likely that 2025 will be the year that this faculty movement really takes off, both in terms of the impact of existing faculty groups and in the creation of new ones.

ALUMNI:

As noted above, alumni of various universities have already begun to organize to promote free speech and academic freedom on their campuses, and at this point at least thirty such organizations have been created. Almost all are members of the umbrella group, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance. With support from ACTA and FIRE, this alumni movement is now set to expand in 2025.

Alumni also have raised concerns about what has been happening at their schools in other ways. There have been high profile cases of large donors cutting off contributions, for example at Harvard and Penn. While some of these situations have received significant publicity, there is no doubt much more alumni discussion with university administrators and trustees behind the scenes. Furthermore, there are now real examples of this trend in alumni giving playing out: After increasing every year for ten straight years, in 2024 Columbia’s Giving Day donation totals dropped by 28.8 percent and the number of gifts dropped by 27.9 percent.  (Giving Day was postponed in 2023.)

Also, behind the scenes, alumni are increasingly discussing ways to target giving to specific programs they support rather than to give to the university to use as it sees fit. As the numbers are reported in 2025, there will likely be significant drops in the amount given and in participation rates at schools that have failed noticeably to support the core values.

CONGRESSIONAL ACTION:

There are a number of ideas to address campus reform being discussed in Congress. Although there was little publicity about it, in 2024 the House of Representatives passed, by a party-line vote, a multifaceted bill on the issue. In 2025 the Congress will likely be much more active in considering important legislative changes in the area of higher education. The political atmosphere generated in large part by the events on campuses in 2024 will provide impetus to aggressive legislative approaches. However, the very narrow Republican majorities in the House and Senate and the historically large Republican agenda in Congress could limit how much is enacted.

A proposal that’s likely to be enacted is a higher tax on the income of large university endowments. This does not directly address the role of universities and their core values, but it will be a direct response to the political and reputational problems of many universities generated in 2024, and especially of the “elite” ones (which generally have the largest endowments, sometimes in the tens of billions of dollars). The weak political position of such universities is further exacerbated by the fact that Republicans will be looking hard for additional tax revenue to offset the extension of the Trump tax cuts and other suggested tax cuts.

Furthermore, there is already a tax on endowment income in the law, and so this would not be unprecedented. Under a provision enacted in 2017, income on endowments of over $500 million is subject to a 1.4% tax. Also in the last Congress, J. D. Vance introduced a bill, S. 3514, that would have imposed a 35% tax on the investment income of university endowments of $10 billion or more. If a broader tax on endowments is enacted, universities will face a constant political problem – it will be easier to increase the tax rate if they remain unpopular.

The reason this tax is likely to be enacted is that it could qualify to be included in the reconciliation bill, which will be enacted in the first part of the year, and which can be enacted by simple majorities in the House and Senate. While the process on reconciliation will be messy, there is almost no chance a reconciliation bill will not be enacted.

Another legislative measure not directly related to the problems on campuses, but that is likely to be actively considered, is significant change in the student loan program. There is talk among Republicans about requiring schools to bear some small percentage of the losses on loans to their students – to have “skin in the game.” Conceivably such a change, or other changes to the student loan program that would cut its costs, could be included in reconciliation as well, if not in a 2025 version, then in a 2026 version; but such changes will be complicated and are not yet fleshed out.

Other provisions affecting college and universities may be more difficult to enact. The House might pass a package with unanimous Republican support, but it likely would require sixty votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. Even if all fifty-three Republicans supported such efforts, seven Democrats would be needed to stop a filibuster. However, on some specific issues, given the unpopularity of the “elite” universities, it might be possible to attract Democratic support. In addition, specific items might be split out and put in other “must pass” legislation, such as appropriation bills. The bottom line is that in addition to an increased tax on endowment income, universities are likely to be at risk for other legislative changes they will not like throughout 2025 and beyond. The entire relationship between Congress and universities will change for the foreseeable future, providing pressure for reforms that may be traumatic for university leadership and faculty.

To see what these other potential changes might include, it makes sense to look at the bill that passed the House on a party-line vote last October – H.R.3724, the End Woke Higher Education Act. It will certainly be the starting point for Congressional action, and a version of that bill could pass the House in the first part of 2025, possibly with a few additional items. This House-passed bill: ensures colleges and universities are not forced to adhere to DEI principles or to support or oppose political beliefs to receive accreditation; makes free speech a condition for receiving federal funds under Title IV of the Higher Education Act; requires schools to educate students on their First Amendment rights; prohibits schools from forcing students, faculty, or applicants to take political litmus tests; and requires schools to annually disclose their free speech policies.

The leadership of the House Education Committee has taken a strong advocacy role on the problems on college campuses, as publicly demonstrated in the dramatic hearing held last year with university presidents and in the passage of legislation through the House in October. Congressman Greg Murphy of North Carolina, a former member of the Committee, has also taken a leadership role. These are Members very committed to the effort who, along with Senators who have already expressed a willingness to legislate, will drive change.

REGULATORY ACTION:

With the new Trump Administration, it is certain that the Department of Education will undertake an aggressive approach toward colleges and universities. It will be the complete opposite of the approach the Obama and Biden administrations took. There will be a strong effort to eliminate the Department; indeed, it will be among the highest priorities of the Department of Government Efficiency effort, although key leaders of Congress have expressed skepticism about the ability to fully eliminate it. In the interim, there will be a major focus on addressing free speech related issues within the purview of the Department. The new Secretary will look for innovative ways to make changes relating to higher education, including on DEI and diversity statements.

In the first Trump Administration, significant changes were made to Title IX of the Higher Education Act. The Biden Administration finalized a new rule on Title IX that not only undid most of the Trump changes, but also went much further. Some of the Biden changes had negative implications for free speech on campuses, for example by broadly defining prohibited harassing speech.

A decision by a Federal District Court Judge in early January threw out the new Biden rule in its entirety. While there is a possibility of appeal, there is no reason to believe the Trump Administration would support such an appeal. Legal analysts believe the result of the court decision is to restore the original Trump rule. Even if that is the case, the Trump Education Department is likely to review the Trump rule in view of recent campus developments and possibly strengthen its provisions relating to free speech and due process.

In addition to changes in accreditation policies contained in the bill that passed the House in 2024, changes could be made through regulatory action. Trump has publicly stated his interest in making major changes to accreditation, and the Education Department has authority to make changes. Furthermore, the new Executive Orders, discussed below, will impact accreditation policies. There is already an active process underway to create an alternative to the currently authorized accreditors, which, to many, appear to display an inherent bias in their requirements for accreditation. While the approval process for the alternative may take time, it seems likely to come to fruition. Thus, while changes may not be finalized, 2025 could be the year when the foundations are laid for major changes in the current accreditation process.

Finally, among the many Executive Orders signed by President Trump are three that, while not specifically addressing campus free speech or academic freedom, show the intention to move aggressively on these and related issues. The first relates to DEI policies in government and the second relates broadly to government censorship of speech at the federal level. The third, most important for higher education, aims to end discriminatory policies and restore merit-based opportunities throughout the country. According to the Wall Street Journal, this separate Executive Order requires federal agencies "to investigate diversity programs at publicly-traded corporations, non-profits, colleges, and foundations." The article also says that recipients of federal contracts will be required to certify that they do not have "programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination law" and that the Trump Administration "intends to use its executive order on DEI to force universities to drop their internal diversity programs." According to the article and other sources, grants from NIH in particular, a major source of funding for many universities, will be used to force such changes.

These sweeping changes under the Executive Orders will undoubtedly be complex to administer, and will take time. There will be many court challenges. But clearly, due to the threat of federal funding cuts, universities will be under enormous financial pressure to change or eliminate DEI policies and programs.

UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATIONS:

The most important changes, of course, must occur at universities themselves. In 2024, changes occurred in important areas on some campuses, changes that would have been unlikely only a year before. In 2025, the pace of these changes should accelerate as more college administrations and trustees are asked why they also have not made such changes and as pressure from applicants, potential employers, alumni, Congress, and the Trump Administration increases. Key issues on which change may accelerate include:

At universities, there has been a relatively small number of announcements of cutbacks on DEI programs, but now that DEI-related issues are receiving such scrutiny, the movement to cut back or eliminate such programs will accelerate in 2025. Already three states -- Texas, Tennessee, and Utah -- have enacted laws to stop such programs at their public universities, and more will in 2025; legislation to do so has been introduced in the majority of states. 

Of greater significance, as outlined above, Congress and the Trump Administration will have a very strong focus on DEI. The Administration has already acted aggressively through its Executive Orders.  Expect there to be significant pushback from some university administrators and faculty.  Nevertheless, the ability of the Administration to use the contracting and grant process to force change is an extremely powerful tool.

The number of these programs can be expected to increase significantly as more state governors and legislatures will want such programs in their schools, and private schools will want them to compete for student applicants. In fact, the limiting factor may be the need to increase the number of faculty able to teach in such programs.

In 2025 this could change, as more focus is put on these reporting systems. It is quite possible that continuing legal actions will force schools to abandon, or at least pull back, these systems. In 2024, a lawsuit by Speech First that challenged such a system at Virginia Tech reached the Supreme Court, which ruled against Speech First on procedural grounds. However, a strong dissent in the case lays out the rationale for the Supreme Court eventually ruling against a university that continues such reporting.

SUMMARY

Even without the protests and riots on campuses, resulting from the terrorist attacks in Israel and the war in Gaza, that shined a spotlight on the deep problems in universities, the movement to restore core values to campuses was already growing. However, due to this spotlight, in 2024 the momentum of that movement increased. 2025 is a year when change will accelerate and where more tangible results will be shown.