The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has released its latest College Free Speech Rankings, and much attention is being paid to Harvard. It is, after all, Harvard. Out of 248 schools, it came in dead last for free speech, but Dartmouth College wasn’t much better.
The heart of Hanover notched an unrespectable 240th (out of 248).
- 26% of students say shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is never acceptable.
- 49% of students say they have rarely or never self-censored on campus.
- 42% of students say they are not worried about damaging their reputation because someone misunderstands something they have said or done.
- For every one conservative student, there are roughly 4.4 liberal students.
A quote from one student sums it up.
“there is no room for anything that doesn’t fall into the ‘hyperliberal’ category and people are not willing to see or understand other people’s perspectives.”– Class of 2025
This is not new or unexpected, but it is tragic. Dartmouth is an elite school and, as such, should honor the foundations of education, including debate. Suppose the only opinions anyone can express on either side of an issue (without fear) are the same. In that case, your graduates will be one-dimensional and ill-prepared for the real world.
Near the opposite end of the FIRE rankings is the University of New Hampshire. FIRE rated them at #72, making it a slightly more tolerable campus environment for opposing opinions, but not really. While UNH gets points for not going out of its way to suppress or oppress center-right opinion, it sounds like the student body and staff are allowed to do it anyway.
“In the past I was discriminated against by other students for having stickers on my laptop that expressed certain political ideologies. I was purposefully excluded from activities that occurred within class based on these stickers.”– Class of 2023
I’ve had past issues with FIRE’s favorable ranking for UNH, but likely because of things they are not measuring in their ranking. You have to choose what matters that can be measured across the board, so I don’t fault them for that – even though I think they have given UNH better grades than it deserved.
As for Dartmouth, they still have some work to do if they’d like to be the least tolerant campus in America regarding free speech. It shouldn’t be that hard. Hanover is filled with narrow-minded, intolerant leftists, and I feel confident they can get there from here.
