Table of Contents
Students Under Fire Database Methodology
Since our founding in 1999, FIRE has fought the culture of censorship on campus. Perhaps no one is more vulnerable to this than students themselves.
The Students Under Fire Database tracks attempts to sanction students for expression that is — or would at a public college or university be — protected by the First Amendment. The database thus treats all institutions as if they were public. For each incident, we provide the following information:
- The year of the sanction attempt.
- The school where the sanction attempt occurred.
- The name(s) of the student(s) or student group(s) facing sanction attempts.
- An explanation of the controversy describing the sanction attempt and its outcomes.
- The controversial topic(s) that generated the sanction attempt. (e.g., did the expression concern something about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, race, and/or religion?)
- The outcome of the sanction attempt. (e.g., institutional sanctions, if any, handed down to the student(s) or group(s).)
- The public response from the administration regarding the sanction attempt.
Important Notes
Only a portion of incidents captured by the Students Under Fire database have qualified for inclusion in this year’s College Free Speech Rankings (CFSR). The full database and accompanying report will be released in 2025 and will track additional details about each incident.
The Students Under Fire database relies on publicly available information from local and national media outlets, campus newspapers, social media, and the websites/profiles belonging to colleges and universities. As a general rule, this database requires credible evidence of an attempt to sanction a student or student group for expression/activity that is — or would at a public college or university be — protected by the First Amendment. Evidence can come in the form of direct quotations, video/audio recordings, and/or screenshots. Incidents are evaluated on a case by case basis and reviewed by multiple members of FIRE’s research team. Not every entry involves FIRE’s advocacy work.
Detailed Methodology
Key definitions
What is a sanction attempt?
A sanction attempt is a publicly known effort to have a student or student group investigated, penalized, or otherwise sanctioned by the administration or student government for expression that is — or at a public college or university would be — protected by the First Amendment.
A sanction attempt does not include instances in which a student or student group is harassed or otherwise intimidated but does not face threat of institutional sanction. Nor does it include incidents in which a student or student group faces counterspeech devoid of demands for institutional action.
Who is a student?
A student is any individual (foreign or domestic) who has applied to, been admitted to, or is enrolled at a U.S. college or university as an undergraduate or non-PhD graduate student. PhD students/candidates are in the Scholars Under Fire database.
When a student is not identifiable by name, they are entered as an “unnamed” student. If there is evidence that the student expression was intentionally anonymous, they are entered as an “anonymous” or “pseudonymous” student.
What is a student group?
A student group is any organized cohort or club of students at a college or university that is not engaged in graduate-level pedagogical or research activities. A student group does not need to be a local chapter of a national organization, nor does it need to be receiving funding from the administration and/or student government.
Occasionally, multiple student groups join to form a coalition. Whether organized in such a way or targeted by others for reasons related to a shared activity/feature (e.g., Greek life), a coalition is also considered a student group.
Some student groups include non-students as members (e.g., the Chinese Students and Scholars Association). As long as students are strongly represented in a group’s membership and/or significantly involved in its mission, leadership, or operations, this database treats it as a student group.
What is the administration?
The administration includes any professional agent of the college or university whose job involves establishing or enforcing campus policies, investigating conduct or moderating content, or contributing to the general operations of the institution. For the purposes of this database, campus police fall under this definition, whereas local and state police do not. Coaches and other athletics staff also fall under this definition.
Students employed by a college or university might also qualify as the administration when they are operating as an agent of the institution (e.g., as a Resident Assistant).
Many colleges and universities delegate their power to fund and recognize student groups to their student government. However, because the administration is composed of professional staff while the student government is composed of students democratically elected by their peers to represent them, this database treats the student government as separate from the administration. However, given that student governments’ function and influence on campus culture are distinct from other student cohorts, sanction attempts involving student government are also included in this database.
Multiple Parties or Outcomes
Sanction attempts sometimes involve more than one student or student group. Attempts might also result in more than one sanction. The following table summarizes how the 2025 College Free Speech Rankings treats these circumstances.
Table 1. How does the 2025 CFSR treat incidents involving multiple parties or outcomes?
| Situation | Treatment |
|---|---|
| Sanction attempts involving multiple students or student groups. | Multiple students and/or student groups involved in the same incident are combined in a single entry unless they experience different outcomes. |
| Sanction attempts involving multiple students or student groups from multiple campuses. | Occasionally student groups from different institutions will co-organize or participate in an event on one of their respective campuses. Should such an event be the subject of a sanction attempt, all organizations are combined into a single entry associated with the host institution. |
| Sanction attempts involving events hosted by student groups featuring invited speakers. | Student groups will sometimes host events featuring invited speakers. Unless the student or group hosting the event is sanctioned, efforts to cancel, disrupt, modify or shut down the event qualify the incident as an entry for the speaker(s) in the Deplatforming Database. |
| Incidents resulting in a student or student group sanctioned in multiple ways. | If a student or student group is sanctioned in multiple ways, only the most severe sanction is coded. |
Criteria for Inclusion
Students often inhabit numerous roles on campus and engage in a wide range of activities as members of student groups. Thus, sanction attempts can come in various forms. The criteria for inclusion in this database are found below.
Table 2: Inclusion criteria by type of sanction attempt
| Type | Database’s approach | What would be included (example) | What would not be included (example) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Student athletes | Student athletes are students first, and institutions have a responsibility to honor the expressive rights of students to the fullest extent possible, though institutions may punish students for substantially disrupting an athletic program. | A student athlete has their athletic scholarship revoked for an extramural social media post made years earlier. | A student is kicked off their athletics team for repeatedly and openly mocking the coach during practices. |
| Platforms and forums | Institutions have the authority to control platforms they own. They may place restrictions on how these platforms are used as long as the restrictions meet time, place, and manner rules and do not discriminate based on content/viewpoint. | A student is told to remove a BLM flag from the window of their dorm room while their neighbor is permitted to hang an American flag. | A student group is told by administrators to remove their large, inflatable “free speech ball” that is blocking a building’s entryway. |
| Student as employees or agents | Student employees are sometimes empowered with authority to act on the institution’s behalf. Universities can limit student employees’ speech as far as it is necessary for their job, but cannot limit their speech when it is not. | A student employed as a Resident Assistant (RA) is prohibited by the administration from speaking to the student newspaper about their campus experience. | A student employed as a RA is prohibited by the administration from advocating for a political candidate during official orientation meetings with students under their care. |
| Right to listen | When an invited speaker’s right to speak is violated, so too is the right of those in attendance to listen. These attendees would not be included in the database. However, in the event that no speaker’s rights were violated but an identifiable student listener’s were, the incident would qualify for inclusion. | A student bystander who is observing, but not participating in, a campus protest is stopped and interrogated by campus police. | Students who would have attended a speaking event that was shut down by administrators. |
| Religious freedom | This database does not include entries involving the free exercise of religion unless the incident includes a speech element. Additionally, it includes students or groups facing sanction attempts for their expression about religious freedom. | A religious student group is denied recognition for beliefs others deem hateful and offensive. | A student is suspended for seeking a religious freedom exception to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. |
| Association | This database does include sanction attempts concerning association when the sanction restricts expressive activity and/or the incident includes a speech element. | Based on the speech/activity of a single fraternity or sorority, the administration prevents all Greek life organizations from recruiting new members. | A student group chooses to remove one of its members for an offensive social media post. |
| Title VI, VII, or IX | Title VI, VII, and IX investigations of students/groups are not considered sanction attempts unless the investigation is in response to protected expression. | Administrators issue a no-contact order to a student on the grounds that they violated the school’s Title IX policy when expressing their views about same-sex marriage to another student. | A student is investigated for harassment after continuing to send sexually suggestive text messages to another student despite repeatedly being asked to stop. |
Time, Place, and Manner Restrictions
Colleges and universities may impose reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on expression as long as these restrictions are “justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech,” “narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest,” and “leave open ample alternative channels for communication of the information.” Students frequently engage in expressive activity falling within the purview of these restrictions such as tabling, hosting an invited speaker, posting promotional materials, and protesting. Students and student groups in violation of reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions are not included.
In 2024, encampment protests occurred on college and university campuses nationwide. Encampments are subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions, and students who violate these restrictions risk arrest and/or other disciplinary action. However, when punishment is viewpoint discriminatory, it violates a student’s expressive rights. Given that these distinctions are sometimes difficult to parse, and that many punishments are still being adjudicated by administrators or litigated in courtrooms, encampment-related sanctions are excluded from the Students Under Fire database.
Coding Decisions
Outcomes
The outcomes refer to which, if any, punitive actions were taken against a student or student group as a result of the targeting incident.
General principles:
- For sanctions handed out by the student government: A single option is selected if the student or student group was sanctioned by the student government.
- When sanctions are reduced or reversed: Occasionally a student may see their sanction reduced or reversed in light of new information or as a result of legal proceedings. In this situation, we still code the original outcomes but will update controversy explanations. Corrective measures, though laudable, do not change the fact that a sanction still occurred.
- Multiple sanctions: Students and student groups may be sanctioned in multiple ways; however, only the most severe sanction is coded.
Table 3: Possible outcomes of sanction attempts
| Outcome | Description |
|---|---|
| No Sanction | The student or student group was not sanctioned in any way. |
| Investigated | The administration investigated the student or student group and/or their expression or activity. |
| Censored | The administration forbade the student/group from conducting research or journalism; altered grades or materials; pressured the student/group to delay or retract publication; pressured the student/group to delay, alter, cancel, or shut down an event; assigned exorbitant security fees; imposed prior restraint or prior review of future expression; handed out a no-contact order; requested or required the student/group not to engage in the expression again. |
| Training | The administration compelled the student/group to attend training sessions, issue an apology, or complete an assignment. |
| Termination of Student Employee | The administration terminated a student’s on-campus employment. |
| Revoked Acceptance | The administration revoked a student’s admissions offer or scholarship. |
| Suspended | The administration placed a student/group on leave and/or suspended or restricted access to otherwise accessible resources indefinitely or for a certain period of time. |
| Deny/Rescind Recognition | The administration denied or revoked a student group’s application, recognition, status, or funding; removed the student group from the institution. |
| Expelled | The administration expelled a student from the university. |
| Student Government | The student government sanctioned the student/group in any of the ways described above and/or enforced or passed a proposal or resolution which restricts a group’s expression. |
Public Administrative Responses
Oftentimes, the administration will release a statement in response to a student or student group facing a sanction attempt. This database captures and assigns grades to these responses based on the principles espoused in the “Kalven Report” and “Chicago Principles.”
The best statements to quote are official university statements on the incident or remarks made by the president or another senior leader. The higher the position in the administration, the more clearly the pronouncement can be understood as speaking for the school as a whole. Ideally, one quote from a high-ranking administrator (e.g., president, provost, chancellor) is collected unless a second is necessary to demonstrate that the school is being disingenuous or otherwise contradictory at the highest levels (e.g., if the president is neutral, but the Office of Student Affairs condemns the speech). Quotes from less senior administrators may be used if no other quotes are available. Quotes from institutional press releases or websites themselves are preferred, rather than snippets from second-hand sources, who might not have the full context.
Honor roll responses
We award colleges and universities with two bonus points in the College Free Speech Rankings for clear pro-free speech statements (“High Honors”). We also award colleges and universities one bonus point for statements when a higher ranking administrator explained to the student body why a lower ranking administrator did or said something wrong from a pro-free speech perspective (“Honors”).
High Honors — A statement that clearly supports freedom of speech, giving principled reasons that protecting even controversial or offensive speech is important for educational institutions or society at large. The school can’t have sanctioned the student or student group, nor can there be any evidence that other administrators disagree or acted inconsistently with the statement. If there are, “honors” may be possible if higher administrators denounce the anti-free speech conduct or statement.
For example, in response to a demand from an off-campus organization calling for the university to punish Students Allied for Freedom and Equality for chants made during their pro-Palestinian protest, administrators at the University of Michigan took no action against the student group and said:
It is clear that many within and outside our university community heard certain chants as antisemitic. We understand that perspective and thank those individuals for sharing their views, especially during this time in our nation’s history when there has been a rise of antisemitic speech and violence. At U-M all student protesters are expected to adhere to public safety procedures, but university policy does not – and should not – dictate or control the ability of students to protest or the content of their protest messages. One of our most important values as an institution – one we teach and model in and out of the classroom and one that is embodied in our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion – is the respect for those who have different opinions, have different life experiences, hold different world views. Also, our university freedom of speech policy says, in part, that the “expression of diverse points of view is of the highest importance, not only for those who espouse a cause or position and then defend it, but also for those who hear and pass judgment on that defense."
Honors — A free speech statement that doesn’t explain why free speech is important, as required for “high” honors. Or, an administrator said or did something wrong from a pro-free speech perspective before someone higher up explained to the student body what was wrong with what that person did or said and also mentioned corrective measures. Such measures might include training campus security not to remove or interrogate students just because they find speech offensive, or a promise to speak to a professor who asked a student to leave a campus meeting because the student expressed an opinion not shared by the professor.
For example, in response to State Representative Austin Smith’s demand that Arizona State University cancel an event hosted by Socialist Revolution, administrators took no action and said:
…as a matter of free speech, the university neither endorses nor restricts opinions or views expressed at student group meetings, rallies or other events.
Other kinds of responses
We also code for other statements that would not qualify as an honor roll statement. Colleges and universities are not penalized for these statements.
Neutral — When the only statement(s) available do not take a stand on either the particular speech in question or the value of free speech. Statements may simply describe what happened without expressing an opinion on the value of the speech or what, if anything, should be done. Administrators may offer resources to upset parties or make a statement that the school is not taking a position on what was said, without explaining why.
For example, in response to a lawsuit filed by Daria Danley against the university, administrators at Montana State University said:
Montana State University has accepted this settlement as a conciliatory mechanism to best serve the interests of our students. Rather than engaging in protracted litigation and a public debate of this matter, we have taken steps to allow the involved students to return to the privacy of their normal lives and to focus on their education.
Disingenuous — A catch-all category for when the administration says it supports free speech but does or says something that suggests otherwise, such as investigating or sanctioning a student or student group. It also includes contradictory statements by different administrators or within the same statement. Common examples of disingenuous statements are ones implying the institution’s hands are tied or expressing a legal obligation to uphold the First Amendment without agreeing with the principles behind the law.
For example, after erasing messages chalked by Students for Justice in Palestine, administrators at Rutgers University said:
Rutgers adheres to the principles of free speech and academic freedom. All members of our community — our faculty, students, alumni and staff — are free to express their viewpoints in public forums as private citizens, including viewpoints that the University itself may not share.
Condemned Expression — The administration issued a statement condemning the expression and/or the student or student group responsible.
For example, after forbidding Right for Life from purchasing tickets for or attending an event featuring Ben Shapiro, administrators at University of Notre Dame said:
This event is problematic. This speaker is problematic... For this event, we have determined that university dollars are not going to go to it.