Campus free expression is in crisis. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), its 2026 College Free Speech Rankings found that student acceptance of disruptive protest tactics has reached record highs. More students than ever believe it is acceptable to shout down a speaker, block entry to campus events, or use violence to silence speech. For the first time, a majority of students oppose allowing any of the six controversial speakers - three liberal, three conservative - that FIRE asked about. The average school earned an F for its speech climate; only 11 of 257 institutions scored a C or higher.
These attitudes have consequences. Turning Point USA events at UC Berkeley have repeatedly descended into chaos. Charlie Kirk faced escalating threats before his murder at Utah Valley University. Public trust in higher education has collapsed alongside these incidents - Gallup and Pew consistently find that only about four in ten Americans express high confidence in colleges and universities.
Against this backdrop, Florida's public universities offer a revealing counterexample.
FIRE's annual rankings confirm that Florida's universities consistently outperform their peers. In the 2025 rankings, Florida State University placed third nationally - earning one of only three "good" ratings in the country. The 2026 rankings, released just before Charlie Kirk's murder, showed FSU dropping to 17th, with USF at 24th - still placing both among the handful of schools FIRE identifies as having "consistently outperformed their peers" over six years. These year-to-year swings illustrate a limitation of FIRE's methodology: with only a few hundred respondents per campus, rankings can shift dramatically from one survey cycle to the next.
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