Yesterday, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education upgraded Delta State University to a “green light” free speech rating. It is the 50th university to hold a “green light” rating at this time – an all-time high which displays the recent progress of the campus free speech movement.
FIRE began its speech code rating system in 2006. FIRE grades the speech codes of every major university in the US on a three-tier scale, assigning each school a “green light,” “yellow light,” or “red light” rating. According the FIRE’s website, a school receives a “green light” rating “[i]f a college or university’s policies do not seriously imperil speech.”
FIRE’s Senior Program Officer of Policy Reform, Laura Beltz, told the Washington Examiner via email that the organization is excited to see more schools adopting “green light” policies. “We’re thrilled that an all-time high of 50 institutions now earn our overall green light rating for eliminating written policies that imperil free speech,” Beltz said. “While about 90% of the colleges and universities in our Spotlight database still earn a red light or yellow light rating for maintaining policies that restrict protected expression, we are looking forward to welcoming more schools to our green light list in the future, as more and more colleges work with FIRE to revise their policies to better meet First Amendment standards.”
Though the overwhelming majority of schools are not “green light” schools, there is still significant progress to be celebrated. In addition to more “green light” ratings, we’ve also seen more schools progress from “red light” to “yellow light” ratings. According to FIRE, the number of “red light” schools has gone down four percentage points in past year.
State legislatures are enacting legislation to help on this front as well. Last month, David French of National Review wrote that more states have passed campus free speech legislation in 2019 than in any other year in American history, and we still have half of 2019 left. According to FIRE, Texas became the 17th state to enact such legislation last month.
This may come as a surprise, as we’re well-aware of the insane things Leftists students and faculty have done on college campuses. But if we look at the situation from a birds-eye view, everything makes sense.
We must realize that the fight for free speech on campus is a two-front war: there’s a culture war, and there’s a policy war. As I’ve noted, we are killing it on the policy front. In the culture war, we’re not doing quite as well yet. However, on this issue, winning the policy war is the first step towards gaining more victories in the culture war.
The more a school welcomes free speech, the more ideological minorities such as conservatives and libertarians can voice their ideas. This inspires like-minded people to come out of the closet and join campus clubs such as Young Americans for Liberty, Students for Life of America, and College Republicans. These new advocates can then prompt even more people to get involved. Good speech policy allows the first flames to be lit, and once they are, our ideas can spread like wildfire.
If college campuses are Leftist echo chambers, the newly minted voters being educated there will reshape the electorate accordingly. Consequently, we must recognize the campus free speech battle as an issue of fundamental importance to our nation’s well-being. This is not simply a concern for a college kids. This concerns us all.
The recent wave of speech policy wins is very important, very exciting, and the benefits of the these policies have yet to come to fruition. Conservative censorship and leftist authoritarianism on campuses are going to decrease in the coming years, and America will be all the better for it.
