College Free Speech Rankings: What Do They Say and How Can MIT Improve?
There are both good signs and warning signs in FIRE’s latest report.
MIT was one of nine institutions nationwide invited to sign the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education last year, and MIT President Sally Kornbluth was the first to reject it. MFSA supported Kornbluth’s decision, as in our view the Compact raised substantial concerns for free expression.
Infringements on free expression were one of the key reasons President Kornbluth cited for rejecting the Compact. As she wrote to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, “We value free expression, as clearly described in the MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom. We must hear facts and opinions we don’t like—and engage respectfully with those with whom we disagree.”
These are admirable sentiments, but how well does MIT live up to them in practice? The most recent College Free Speech Rankings, published by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), provide an opportunity to evaluate MIT’s performance comprehensively. The overall picture is mixed, though there are encouraging signs that MIT is trending in the right direction.
Here are some of the major takeaways:
MIT jumped 82 spots in this year’s rankings, to 82nd of 257 institutions, though FIRE still awarded it only a “D-” for its campus speech climate.
For the second year in a row, MIT students ranked highly on metrics related to self-censorship—that is, they reported self-censoring themselves far less than their peers nationally.
For the second year in a row, however, MIT ranked in the bottom quintile on measures of comfort expressing ideas and confidence in the administration’s willingness to protect free speech.
Israel/Palestine was by far the most fraught topic of conversation. On no other “difficult” topic did even 50% of MIT students say they had difficulty having an open conversation; on Israel/Palestine, 79% reported difficulty.
Had MIT adopted institutional neutrality and reformed its policies to earn a “green light” rating from FIRE—both actions MFSA has repeatedly urged—MIT would rank 10th in this year’s ranking.
For a more detailed look at MIT’s performance, read on.
How were the College Free Speech Rankings Calculated?
A breakdown of FIRE’s methodology can be found at this link, but quickly, the College Free Speech Rankings are based on: 1) student survey data; 2) university policies; and 3) recent history of administrative actions in addressing campus speech controversies.
Student survey data is collected in the following categories:
How confident students feel expressing views on controversial topics in various campus settings.
How frequently students self-censor due to fears of professional or social consequences.
How acceptable students view the disruption of campus speakers, including through violence.
How students view their administration’s support for free expression and the likelihood they would defend a speaker’s rights during a controversy.
How open students think their campuses are to discussion of a range of controversial issues.
How tolerant students are of the rights of both liberal and conservative campus speakers.
Universities are also rated on their policies as part of the rankings. Specifically, FIRE factors:
Universities’ ratings in their Spotlight system, awarding points to universities that have a “green light” speech code rating, meaning that they have no policies that unduly restrict speech, and penalizing universities with red or yellow ratings.
Whether the institution has adopted a statement on free expression modeled after the Chicago Principles.
Whether the university has committed itself to an official position of institutional neutrality.
Finally, institutions are judged based on their recent history of campus controversies and how their administrations responded. Of note for MIT, FIRE didn’t tally any such controversies for the 2026 report. Attempted or successful campus deplatformings are considered, as are incidents in which students or professors faced censorship or sanction, as measured in FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire and Students Under Fire databases. Universities can be rewarded or penalized in this measure depending on whether they stood up for the rights of speakers or allowed them to fall victim to censorship.
How did MIT Fare in This Year’s Rankings?
The top headlines for MIT’s performance in the rankings are generally positive – or at least represent significant improvements over previous years:
MIT ranked 82nd out of 257 institutions, an improvement of 82 spots over last year, when it ranked 164th.
MIT ranked 4th among 14 STEM institutions—a large improvement from last year, when it finished second to last among that group.
Against its “Ivy-plus” peers (the eight Ivy League universities plus Duke, UChicago, and Stanford), MIT finished in the middle, at 6th out of 12 institutions. Last year MIT ranked slightly higher among this cohort, at 4th.
Though MIT vaulted into the top third of surveyed institutions, the news is not all good. While accustomed to being graded on a brutal curve at MIT, the Institute’s overall speech-climate rating of D- leaves a lot to be desired, even if it puts MIT ahead of the majority of its peers, 166 of 257 of which received an F.
Where is MIT ahead of its peers?
MIT underperformed its peers on some metrics, but outperformed them on several others. We’ll start with the positives.
MIT students are less prone to self-censorship than their peers.
Multiple surveys have now given MIT students high marks for their relatively low propensity to self-censor. In the 2026 rankings, MIT ranked 14th in this metric, an improvement from 21st in the previous year.
To break down the data more fully:
In classroom discussions, 65% of students nationally reported occasionally or often self-censoring. At MIT, only 46% reported occasionally or often self-censoring in this setting.
In discussions with professors. 61% of students nationally reported occasionally or often self-censoring, compared to 45% of MIT students.
On the metric of self-censorship in conversations with fellow students, MIT students fared slightly worse than the national average: 63% of MIT students reported occasionally or often self-censoring, compared to 59% nationally.
MIT students are generally tolerant of the rights of controversial speakers.
Students at MIT and nationally were given hypothetical scenarios involving six campus speakers – three with more stereotypically “liberal” viewpoints and three with more stereotypically “conservative” viewpoints. Across the board, MIT students were more likely than their national peers to say they would allow these speakers to speak on campus.
However, MIT students extended more forbearance to the liberal speakers than they did to their conservative counterparts. Even as they outshone their peers nationally, a majority of MIT students declined to support the rights of two of the three “conservative” speakers. This helps explain why MIT students ranked 5th nationally for tolerance of liberal campus speakers, but only 38th for tolerance of conservative speakers.
MIT students are quite comfortable having open conversations on difficult topics on campus, with one glaring exception.
FIRE asked students if they felt they could openly discuss a range of controversial topics on campus. These included familiar hot-button issues such as abortion, gay and transgender rights, immigration, affirmative action, and gun control, as well as topics like the most recent presidential election, climate change, and police misconduct.
In nearly all cases, substantial majorities of MIT students felt they could freely and openly discuss these issues on campus. For example:
While 46% of students nationally said they had difficulty openly discussing abortion on campus, only 20% of MIT students reported the same.
By similarly wide margins, MIT students reported feeling more comfortable than their peers discussing the 2024 election (by 18-percentage points), gun control (19 points), transgender rights (13 points), gay rights (17 points), and immigration (12 points).
MIT students reported greater difficulty engaging in open discussion than their peers nationally on four issues. On three of those issues, the difference was relatively modest:
19% of MIT students reported difficulty openly discussing China, versus 12% nationally.
28% of MIT students said it was difficult to openly discuss freedom of speech on campus, versus 20% nationally.
29% of MIT students reported difficulty openly discussing affirmative action, versus 21% nationally.
On the fourth issue, however, MIT stands out sharply from its peers, and it’ is the same issue that has disrupted dialogue and discourse on campuses nationwide for more than two years: Israel and Palestine.
Nationally, Israel/Palestine is the most fraught issue in campus discourse, according to FIRE’s rankings. It is the only topic on which a majority of students nationally (53%) report difficulty engaging in open discussion. At MIT, that figure is 79%.
This is actually a slight deterioration from last year, when 77% of MIT students reported difficulty discussing this topic, despite the fact that the most recent academic year was quieter in terms of protest activity and speech controversies related to Israel/Palestine than the previous academic year.
Given the prominence of previous speech controversies related to Israel/Palestine at the Institute, as well as instances in which President Kornbluth felt the need to publicly address antisemitic campus incidents, it is perhaps not surprising that the issue remains fraught. The persistence of such high levels of reported difficulty, despite a relatively more tranquil campus environment, suggests a deep chill around this particular subject.
Where else does MIT trail its Peers?
Despite MIT’s improved overall performance, there are several troubling data points, including some where MIT has consistently fared poorly year over year. Moreover, the areas in which MIT performs poorly highlight some striking tensions in how students think about free expression.
Students once again graded MIT poorly on the administration’s perceived support for free expression.
In last year’s rankings, MIT’s performance in this metric plummeted to 220th position. This year it fell even further, to 239th.
More specifically:
39% of MIT students said it was either “not very clear” or “not at all clear” that their administration protects free speech on campus, compared to 21% nationally.
37% of MIT students said it was either “not very likely” or “not at all likely” that, in a campus speech controversy, the administration would affirmatively defend the rights of the speaker, versus 21% nationally.
MIT continues to rank poorly on students’ comfort expressing ideas.
Last year, MIT finished in a dismal 243rd position on this metric. In FIRE’s 2026 rankings, MIT climbed to 212th, which is an improvement, but still places the Institute in the bottom quintile.
MIT’s performance was not equally poor in all settings, however:
MIT students slightly outperformed their peers nationally in their comfort level when disagreeing with a professor in a written assignment.
Similarly, they exceeded their peers in comfort expressing an opinion on a controversial political topic to fellow students in a common campus setting.
By contrast, MIT students were significantly less comfortable than their peers publicly disagreeing with professors on controversial political topics.
They were also substantially more uncomfortable expressing views on controversial political topics on social media accounts tied to their names.
MIT students exhibit fundamental tensions in their views on free speech.
FIRE, like MFSA, notes the tension between MIT students’ poor performance on measures of comfort expressing controversial ideas and their relatively strong performance on self-censorship. FIRE writes:
“[T]hese findings paint a nuanced picture: MIT students feel considerable pressure and discomfort around controversial speech, yet many push through that discomfort more than their peers do, resulting in comparatively less self-silencing.”
That’s not the only apparent conflict FIRE’s rankings uncovered. While MIT students were generally tolerant of the rights of both liberal and conservative speakers to speak on campus, they scored worse than the national average on their acceptance of disruptive tactics against speakers they oppose. In this metric, MIT finished 173rd.
More specifically:
MIT students were more likely than the national average – 83% to 72% – to support shouting down campus speakers with whom they disagree, at least in some circumstances.
MIT students were also more likely than their peers nationally to support physically blocking attendees from seeing speakers they oppose, by a margin of 61% to 54%.
By contrast, MIT students were slightly less likely than their peers to countenance the use of violence to suppress speech, With 32% of MIT students willing to support violence at least sometimes, compared to 34% nationally.
It is worth noting that MIT students’ support for violence represents a significant increase from the previous year, when 24% said violence was acceptable in at least some circumstances. FIRE also notes that overall student support for violence to suppress speech has risen for several years, from 20% in 2022 to 34% in the current ranking.
How did MIT’s Speech Policies Affect its Ranking?
Points can be added to or subtracted from a university’s raw score based on its overall rating in FIRE’s speech code rating system, whether it has a Chicago Statement-inspired statement on free expression, and whether or not it has officially adopted a position of institutional neutrality.
MIT’s raw score of 59.78 puts it in 82nd place. This score includes a deduction of five points because of MIT’s “yellow light” speech code rating, which means that MIT maintains policies (in this case, seven yellow light policies alongside four green light policies) that could too easily be employed to suppress student expression. On the plus side, MIT was credited three points due to its adoption of the Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom in 2023. MIT has not adopted institutional neutrality and so is not credited with any points, though none are deducted, either. Various policy reforms would have affected MIT’s ranking as follows:
Adopting institutional neutrality would have moved MIT’s ranking up to 55th, with a raw score of 62.78.
MIT reforming its speech codes and earning a green light rating would have moved MIT’s ranking to 26th (69.78).
Both adopting institutional neutrality and earning a green light rating would have raised its ranking all the way to 10th (72.78).
What Should MIT do to Further Improve Its Ranking?
Making MIT into a community in which members feel fully empowered to participate in the marketplace of ideas cannot be accomplished overnight. Nor can it be improved simply by adjusting policies. An institution can look good on paper from a free speech perspective while its underlying culture remains weak. MIT must take strong steps to infuse a vibrant culture of free expression into the community, and it must clearly signal from the top that this is a high priority.
That said, MIT should commit to speech policy reforms, not only because they would improve its performance in FIRE’s rankings, but because they are a necessary ingredient in strengthening the university’s substantive commitment to free expression.
MFSA calls on MIT to undertake these three reforms:
First, MIT should work with FIRE to reform its speech policies and earn a green light speech code rating, improving on its current yellow light rating.
Second, President Kornbluth should commit MIT to an official position of institutional neutrality. This should, in principle, be easy to do, as for most of the last two years the Institute has practiced a de facto stance of neutrality or restraint as its apparent default position.
Third, MIT should initiate a program of education and training for entering first year students on MIT’s free speech values and policies, on methods for conducting civil discussions on contentious topics, and on acceptable behavior for dealing with speakers with whom they disagree. MIT’s students have surprisingly good values and attitudes about free speech given that MIT has not expended significant effort explaining these topics to students. A little attention given to educating undergraduates would have significant impact.
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We'll only be able to tell about MIT when someone-- faculty, student, or janitor-- says something offensive to the liberal elite, and gets punished or not. But of course the fact that nobody does say something liberals don't like is evidence in itself.