October 28, 2025 · Episode 283
Free Speech on College Campuses: Insights from FIRE's 2025 Report
52 Min · By Dr. Drumm McNaughton
Insights from FIRE's 2025 survey and how higher education leaders can protect academic freedom, faculty expression, and open dialogue on campus.
Free speech on college campuses has become one of the most volatile and defining issues facing higher education. What was once a principle celebrated across political lines is now mired in polarization, inconsistent enforcement, and growing government interference. In this episode of Changing Higher Ed, Dr. Drumm McNaughton sits down with Dr. Sean Stevens, FIRE’s Chief Research Advisor, to discuss the real state of campus speech today—and what university presidents and boards can do to protect expression in an increasingly charged environment.
Stevens, whose background in political and moral psychology informs his empirical research, has spent nearly two decades studying how moral conviction drives political intolerance and motivated reasoning. He joined FIRE after serving as the first research director for Heterodox Academy, where he helped develop the Campus Expression Survey and later co-led the College Free Speech Rankings—an annual data-driven measure of campus climate around expression.
In their conversation, Dr. McNaughton and Dr. Stevens examine the declining tolerance for political differences among students, faculty, and administrators, the expanding threats to academic freedom from government actors, and the erosion of shared governance—the core framework intended to protect it. They discuss the steps higher education leaders can take to restore dialogue and intellectual curiosity on their campuses.
FIRE’s Mission and Expansion
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) began in 1999 as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, created by law professors Harvey Silverglate and Alan Charles Kors after The Shadow University exposed systemic free speech violations on campuses. In 2022, the organization expanded its mission beyond higher education to defend the speech rights of all Americans and formally rebranded; FIRE no longer stands for “Foundation for Individual Rights in Education” and now stands for “Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.”
Stevens described FIRE as “the old-school ACLU, but strictly for higher education.” While best known for legal defense, FIRE’s broader mission includes shaping a culture that values open expression. The organization employs lawyers, researchers, and communication specialists who use both the courts and public transparency to hold universities accountable.
Most of FIRE’s interventions don’t result in lawsuits. Instead, Stevens explained, “We found that it’s more effective to write strongly worded letters reminding institutions that they are in violation of the First Amendment.” The power of public scrutiny, through FIRE’s reports and Substack publications, often pressures universities to correct course.
FIRE also plays a data-driven role in national discourse. Under Stevens’s leadership, its research department has grown to ten staff members and produces annual surveys, including the College Free Speech Rankings and the National Speech Index, which track public opinion and campus attitudes toward expression, censorship, and tolerance.
Understanding the Data Behind Campus Speech
Stevens’s work is modeled in part on the General Social Survey (GSS) conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. “The GSS allows us to track trends over time,” he explained. “We wanted to create something similar for campus speech—something researchers and advocates could use to understand how things are changing.”
The College Free Speech Rankings includes a core set of twenty questions asked annually, supplemented by timely issues. Past surveys have included questions about George Floyd, October 7th, and other high-profile cultural and political events. In 2025, the next edition will include reactions to the Charlie Kirk assassination, which Stevens said already appears to be shaping the national conversation about campus expression.
The Decline of Political Tolerance in Higher Education
One of FIRE’s most concerning findings is that political tolerance among college students is declining. “Unfortunately, it’s decreasing,” Stevens said, “and not just on campus—across all of society.”
Through FIRE’s databases and survey data, Stevens and his team track both attitudes and outcomes, including attempts to censor, sanction, or terminate faculty and students for protected expression. What they’ve found is sobering: over the past decade, there have been more terminations of faculty members for speech than during the entire McCarthy era, when roughly 100 to 150 professors were fired for political beliefs.
“In just the past few weeks,” Stevens noted, “we recorded twelve faculty terminations tied to comments made on social media about the Charlie Kirk assassination. All came after universities were threatened by government actors who essentially said, ‘Your funding’s up—are you sure you want to employ this person?’ That’s not a veiled threat. That’s a direct one.”
This level of governmental interference, he warned, “is happening now.”
The Scholars Under FIRE Survey
FIRE’s recent Scholars Under FIRE report offers insight into the human cost of campus censorship. The survey reached over 600 scholars who had faced attempts to sanction them between 2020 and 2024, and more than a third responded—a strong rate given the sensitive nature of the topic.
The findings were striking:
- Most respondents reported severe personal and professional consequences, including PTSD-like symptoms, loss of sleep, strained family relationships, and loss of employment.
- Despite those repercussions, nearly all said they would “do it exactly the same way again.”
- Conservative faculty were more likely to say they would not change anything, while liberal faculty were more likely to express hesitation.
The most troubling pattern, according to Stevens, was the lack of institutional support. “Faculty reported receiving little to no help from administrators, colleagues, or even their unions,” he said. “Privately, some colleagues sympathized but said they couldn’t speak up publicly. That’s a dangerous environment. Faculty need to stand together rather than turn on one another.”
Protected Speech and Legal Boundaries
The conversation turned to the legal definition of protected speech—an area often misunderstood by the public. “The boundary for unprotected speech is much narrower than most Americans think,” Stevens explained.
Courts, not politicians, have drawn those boundaries over decades of First Amendment cases. Even inflammatory or celebratory remarks about the assassination of a public figure fall under protected speech if they don’t include true threats or incitement. “These professors weren’t acting as university spokespeople,” Stevens said. “They were speaking as private citizens on their own social media. These were not fireable offenses.”
McNaughton pressed on whether government threats to withdraw funding over such comments were legal. Stevens, though not a lawyer, was clear: “It shouldn’t be. The First Amendment exists to protect the speech we hate, because it’s easy to defend the speech everyone agrees with.”
From Charlie Kirk to Campus Fear
Following the September release of FIRE’s annual rankings, the shooting of political commentator Charlie Kirk triggered widespread fallout across academia. Stevens was mid-interview about campus violence when he received a message: “Charlie Kirk has just been shot.”
In the weeks that followed, he noted, “We saw multiple speaking events canceled under the justification that universities could not provide adequate security.” Some cancellations were thinly disguised administrative decisions to avoid controversy, even when peaceful discussions could have been maintained.
McNaughton pointed to one counterexample: conservative commentator Michael Knowles’s appearance at the University of Minnesota, which proceeded without disruption. “That’s what you want to see,” Stevens said. “Students engaging, asking questions, and discussing controversial ideas civilly. That’s what higher education should look like.”
The Role of Leadership in Upholding Free Expression
When asked what colleges can do to restore healthy discourse, Stevens didn’t hesitate: “It starts with leadership.”
FIRE’s rankings consistently show that universities performing well on free expression—those in the “top 25,” as Stevens put it—share one trait: strong, consistent administrative leadership. Presidents, provosts, and deans at those institutions clearly articulate support for freedom of speech and apply policies consistently.
By contrast, institutions that perform poorly tend to waver, censoring one type of speech while tolerating another. “Inconsistency erodes trust,” Stevens said. “And when administrators punish or reward behavior unevenly, it only encourages more disruption.”
Leadership isn’t just about policy; it’s about modeling intellectual integrity. “Students respond to the tone set at the top,” he added.
Building a Culture of Dialogue
Beyond policy, both McNaughton and Stevens emphasized civic education and curiosity as the foundation of democratic learning.
FIRE has observed measurable improvements at universities that invest in structured dialogue initiatives. Vanderbilt’s Dialogue Vanderbilt and Dartmouth’s Open Dialogue Project have shown statistically significant increases in students’ willingness to discuss difficult topics—from race and politics to gender and religion.
“After Vanderbilt’s first year with the program,” Stevens said, “we saw seven to eight percent improvements across nearly every issue. The only exception was Israel-Palestine—which, frankly, makes sense in 2024.” By the following year, even that topic showed progress.
Students, he added, “are craving this kind of engagement. They want to be able to talk across divides.”
Higher Education’s Purpose: Curiosity and Exposure to Difference
The discussion returned to the purpose of higher education itself. “It’s not just career preparation,” McNaughton said. “It’s about transformation—helping students evolve from teenagers into adults capable of critical thought.”
Stevens agreed. “We’ve drifted away from curiosity. Too many people think they already know the truth,” he said. “We need to get back to the Socratic mindset—acknowledging, like Socrates did, that true wisdom begins with ‘I know nothing.’”
He criticized the phrase settled science, noting that science is always subject to testing and revision. “Once we stop questioning,” he warned, “we stop learning.”
Intellectual curiosity naturally leads to encounters with controversial ideas. “Just because someone reads Mein Kampf doesn’t make them a Nazi,” he said. “Maybe they’re trying to understand how that ideology took root. That kind of exploration is part of education.”
Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards
Establish and Communicate Bright Lines
Universities must clearly define their speech policies and ensure they are applied consistently. Strong leadership means articulating the institution’s commitment to free expression—not selectively, but across all viewpoints. Presidents, provosts, deans, and boards must set the tone.Stand Firm in Times of Controversy
Even universities with exemplary policies face challenges. The University of Chicago, for example, still experiences protests and shout-downs. Stevens pointed to Indiana University’s response to student protests—calling in state police and positioning snipers on rooftops—as a failure of judgment. Transparency and adherence to principle are essential, even under political and donor pressure.
Promote Civic Dialogue and Intellectual Diversity
Programs like those at Vanderbilt and Dartmouth show how civic discourse initiatives can strengthen campus culture. Encouraging students to engage across differences helps them understand why freedom of speech—and the courage to defend it—remain central to democracy.
TCL’s Strategic Mandate: Auditing Governance for Free Expression
The conversation with Dr. Stevens highlights that threats to academic freedom are no longer just cultural issues; they are systemic challenges that expose structural weaknesses. For presidents and boards, your shared governance framework is the primary defense against internal inconsistency and external political threats. To build institutional resilience, The Change Leader recommends a collaborative audit focused on crisis preparedness:
Policy Alignment: Are the Board’s fiduciary policies, the President’s operational decisions, and the Faculty Senate’s academic policies clearly and consistently aligned on what constitutes protected speech? Inconsistencies erode trust and provide openings for legal challenges.
Crisis Protocols: Do key decision-makers (Board Chair, President, Faculty Senate Chair, General Counsel) have established protocols for immediate, unified response when external government or donor pressure threatens faculty or student expression? A unified front is essential for managing a crisis.
Trust and Communication: Is there sufficient trust across the constituent groups to ensure that faculty feel supported by administrators and the Board when taking controversial stances on protected, academic matters? When faculty feel isolated, it signals a breakdown in the system of shared authority.
Quick Overview
- FIRE’s research shows political tolerance on college campuses is declining while government pressure on universities is increasing.
- The Scholars Under FIRE survey found faculty face significant personal and professional repercussions for protected expression.
- Recent events, including the Charlie Kirk assassination, highlight how quickly institutions retreat from speech commitments under threat.
- Universities with strong, consistent leadership—such as those following the Chicago Statement—maintain higher free expression rankings.
- Civic dialogue programs at Vanderbilt and Dartmouth demonstrate measurable improvements in students’ comfort discussing controversial topics.
- University presidents and boards must set clear policies, stand firm during controversy, and promote intellectual curiosity as a cultural norm.
- FIRE continues to track faculty terminations, government interventions, and student attitudes to protect free speech on college campuses nationwide.
About Our Podcast Guest
Sean Stevens is FIRE’s Chief Research Advisor. He is a native of New Jersey, who obtained his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick in 2013. Since then, he continued his work at Rutgers University, in affiliation with the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In 2016 Sean became Heterodox Academy’s first Director of Research where he developed the Campus Expression Survey. Five years later in 2020, Sean joined FIRE as a Senior Research Fellow to run the College Free Speech Rankings. For almost two decades, Sean’s research has focused on understanding how moral convictions produce motivated reasoning within the political domain, how this motivated reasoning can distort research in the social sciences, and how motivated reasoning can lead to political intolerance and create obstacles to political compromise.
About the Host
Dr. Drumm McNaughton is the founder, CEO, and Principal Consultant at The Change Leader, Inc. A highly sought-after higher education consultant with 20+ years of experience, Dr. McNaughton works with leadership, management, and boards of U.S. and international institutions. His expertise spans key areas, including accreditation, governance, strategic planning, presidential onboarding, mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. Dr. McNaughton’s approach combines a holistic methodology with a deep understanding of the contemporary and evolving challenges facing higher education institutions worldwide to ensure his clients succeed in their mission.
Read the Podcast Transcript →
Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast 283 – with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Sean Stevens
Introduction to Changing Higher Ed®
Welcome to Changing Higher Ed®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.
[00:00:20] Introduction and Guest Welcome
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David. My guest today is Dr. Sean Stevens. He is FIRE’s Chief Research Advisor. For those of you who don’t know, FIRE, it is the foundation for individual rights and expression. Sean obtained his PhD in social psychology from Rutgers in 2013 and since then, continued his work with Rutgers and also was the founder of Heterodox Academy, he was the first director of research where he developed a campus expression survey. Five years later, he joined FIRE as its senior research fellow to run the college free speech rankings. For almost two decades, Sean’s research has focused on an understanding on how moral convictions produce motivated reasoning within a political domain, how this motivated reasoning can distort research and social sciences, and how motivated reasoning can lead to political intolerance and create obstacles to political compromise.
Sean joins me today to talk about free speech on campus and what higher ed leaders can do in today’s political environment to ensure free speech stays in place.
*One note, whether you lean left or right, free speech is part of the First Amendment of our Constitution as a critical element to the education of our younger generation.
To that end, The Change Leader works with colleges and universities from all spectrums, and as such does not endorse any political leanings and comments expressed by guests are theirs alone. As a saying goes, take what you want and leave the rest. Sean, welcome to the program.
Sean Stevens: Thanks for having me.
Drumm McNaughton: It’s my pleasure, I’m looking forward to this conversation. Yes. You’re in the news a lot.
[00:02:06] Dr. Sean Stevens’ Background
Drumm McNaughton: You’re part of the organization FIRE, which, some people will say, “Hey, I love it.” Other people will say, “oh, they’re Commie pinkos.” Before we get to discussing those divergent points, tell us a little bit about you. You’ve got, what I would say, is a very interesting background for what you’re doing right now.
Sean Stevens: Yes, so my background is I have a doctorate in social psychology from Rutgers University, in New Jersey. While there I did a lot of political moral psychology research. Was always interested in the phenomenon of authoritarianism, so it’s something I’ve researched for a long time. And then, also became very familiar with John Heights Moral Foundation’s theory, which kind of comes back up in the story a little later.
I then did a postdoc, doctoral work at Rutgers, but it was joint with Rutgers and Stanford University. So I was at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences for about a year and a half as well. There I continued working with my PhD advisor, Lee Jo. But the professor at Stanford I worked with was John Krosnick, who has a very, very long storied record in survey research and survey methodology. So I learned a lot about that then. And then I became the first research director of Heterodox Academy, when John Hyatt was the day-to-day executive director. So him and I worked very closely together for about five years. Worked with him on revising his Moral Foundations questionnaire. So we have a new version that came out a few years ago. We tested it in 25 different countries across the world. It’s a pretty rigorous way of establishing a scale. And then through that work, I met Greg Luciano and some people at FIRE because, Greg and John were writing The Coddling of the American Mind. At the time I was working at Heterodox Academy, and it just, I kind of naturally gravitated towards FIRE and they had this idea of the College Free Speech Rankings project, and I was actually working on the questions with them, and then it kind of just made sense to go work at FIRE. So I asked if I could go work there and they said yes. And here I am now, six years later, still there.
Drumm McNaughton: Wow, so your background really is a quantitative researcher.
Sean Stevens: Yes. Empirical social science, quantitative background. Pretty strong in statistics for my field, I would say at least. I’m not a statistician by any means, but I do have some pretty good data analytic chops. Yes.
Drumm McNaughton: Well, there’s always that saying, “liars, damn liars, and statisticians”. So I’m glad you don’t call yourself a statistician. So with that, and just as an aside , one of my dissertation mentors and a good friend of mine was a sociologist, and he taught me a lot about statistics. It was incredibly important, especially for what you are doing, is being able to dissect and break down different demographics as to your survey. So, kudos for learning that stuff. I learned it from my dissertation. That was about it.
Sean Stevens: Yes, I think that’s in a lot of social sciences. I think there’s very interesting stuff that people do, and there’s definitely some very math savvy people, but I think on the whole, the level of sophistication in those fields isn’t, it’s not as high as what a statistician would like to see necessarily.
Drumm McNaughton: Course.
[00:05:36] Founding and Mission of FIRE
Drumm McNaughton: So FIRE, tell us about FIRE. Just the name, kind of goes, whoa, what’s this about?
Sean Stevens: Yes, so founded in 1999 on the heels of a book that was written by two law professors. One a liberal, one a libertarian-ish kind of person. And so that’s Harvey Silverglate. And Allen Charles Kors. So they put out this book, The Shadow University, talking about the issues of free speech on campus in the nineties. And basically they started getting like all these requests from students and faculty for legal advice and help.
So they founded FIRE, originally as the foundation for individual rights in education. So for about 23 years, FIRE was essentially, what I would say is like the old school, ACLU, but strictly for, students and faculty on college and university campuses. And then in 2022, we expanded this mission to now, basically defend the speech rights of all Americans, not just students and faculty. So we rebranded as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. We didn’t want to lose the FIRE acronym, as you pointed out, it’s pretty catchy. So there some thought went into how to keep that. And then just in a nutshell, we’re a non-partisan organization and our stance on the types of speech we defend is very simple. If it’s protected by the First Amendment, we will defend it. No questions asked.
Drumm McNaughton: Well. It’s interesting, I do love the acronym FIRE, because sometimes that’s what happened is somebody needs to set something on FIRE to make change.
Sean Stevens: Yes.
Drumm McNaughton: But, you’re not the only organization out there. Recently, AAUP has started taking much more of a proactive stance against some of the things that are going on, and Penn America is similar as well.
What’s the difference between you guys and Penn America?
Sean Stevens: So Penn America generally, I mean, they’re much older organization. Founded, I think, a little over a hundred years ago. Their main mission is in, like writing and literature and defending rights in that domain. So they do a lot of stuff with library censorship, book censorship, censorship authors. So they kind of have like a broader mission in one sense, but then they kind of have this narrower focus when it comes to free speech. It’s mainly for literature and literary figures.
Drumm McNaughton: Well that may, that makes sense. Although they’ve been getting into some of the stuff that’s going on-
Sean Stevens: They’ve started to, Yes. Just like the AAUP has as well. Yes.
[00:08:19] FIRE’s Broader Mission and Activities
Drumm McNaughton: Exactly, so tell us about some of the things that FIRE does. because most people, they hear FIRE, they associate it with one thing, but your mission and what you do is far broader than most people think.
Sean Stevens: Yes, our narrow mission is we are, we’re a legal organization that will defend the speech rights of all Americans. But, that’s like a narrow mission. We also, we want to develop like a culture of freedom of speech. And so we do a lot to, to that end. So while the majority of our employees are lawyers, we actually don’t take on many cases. We, found that it’s more effective to kind of write letters. Mainly, like this is colleges and universities, we found it to be very effective to write kind of strongly worded letters to them. Reminding them that they are, in violation of the First Amendment when they’re sanctioning a student group, or professor in some way. We’ve also found that, the court of public opinion can be pretty, influential as well. So we have a dedicated communications department, and we have like our own Substack and a new like on, on our site, there’s a news section, where we put out a lot of this information and try to influence things that way.
[00:09:30] Research and Surveys at FIRE
Sean Stevens: And then, our research department is fairly new. When I started at FIRE, there was no research department. I was kind of the only empirical researcher on staff. We now have, a 10-person department, that’s grown since 2020. We basically started the department, I think in like 2021 was like, okay, we’re going to have an actual research department now and kind of built out the infrastructure for that. And what we do at FIRE is, we do a lot of surveys, like public opinion surveys, obviously we’ll talk about the college free speech rankings a little later. That’s something we put out every year. But, we survey the general public as well. We do quarterly surveys of Americans that we call the National Speech Index. And then we’ve also done a number of one-off surveys on things that are relevant to our work, like social media, content moderation, the role of AI and political advertising, Title IX cases, regulations, et cetera.
We’ve surveyed the general public on all these things as well. Another thing that we do in terms of campus research is we track the outcomes of speech controversies. I’ll leave it at that for now. We can get more into that later, but we have multiple databases that do that.
Drumm McNaughton: Sure. And that’s one of the things I think you’ve brought to FIRE is that research capability to where you do have multiple databases, and in our previous conversation you talked about how you play off the General Social Survey and use things from that.
[00:10:54] General Social Survey and Its Influence
Drumm McNaughton: Which, tell people, for those who may not know about the General Social Survey, just you know, 30 seconds on what that is.
Sean Stevens: Yes, so in fields like psychology, political science, communication, sociology, the general social survey is widely used. It’s a survey that runs every two years. There was like a span of time where it ran every year, way back, but it basically runs every two years now. It’s done out of the National Opinion Research Center, at the University of Chicago. They have a battery of questions that they repeat every year, not every year, every iteration of the survey includes some set of questions that have been asked previously and been asked going back to 1972. So what this affords researchers is the ability to track trends over time. Cross-sectional trends,
It’s when the longitudinal research, it’s not the same people taking the survey every time, but we could still track trends. And what else the General Social Survey does is outside of that core set of questions, they have other questions that they put in that are relevant basically to what’s happened recently.
And that’s how we modeled our college free speech ranking survey. Like me having awareness of the general Social Survey and how researchers basically will download the data set and can basically write off a paper and almost like a week or two and then send it off for publication. It’s a very, having that kind of data and making it accessible to people is a very valuable resource. So part of what’s gone into the thinking of our ranking survey is we have a core set of 20 questions, that we ask every year. That’s what we use to calculate the student perception aspect of the overall score. But then we have space for another 10 to 15 questions usually that it’s, whatever seems interesting, whatever’s relevant. We’re definitely going to have something about Charlie Kirk next year, I imagine, on there. Or at least reactions to that incident. In years past, we’ve, we asked things about October 7th, we’ve asked things about George Floyd, things like that. But , that’s kind of it. It’s designed to both be a, tool for activism and advocacy and enacting change at universities, but we also see it as a very valuable tool for social science researchers.
Drumm McNaughton: It is. I, in fact, I used it on my dissertation years ago.
I did my dissertation probably around the same time you were going through, your teenage years.
Sean Stevens: -Now I’m talking to student reporters that, it’s like, I’ve been out of college longer than they’ve been alive, so…
Drumm McNaughton: I know it. It’s crazy. People ask me about, “Well, how did you get this white hair?” I’ve been in education a long time. That ought to explain it.
So FIRE, in itself, tracks broader trends.
Sean Stevens: Yes.
Drumm McNaughton: So it’s not just specific event perspectives, although you come out with your opinions on that, but, so what are some of the trends that, that you look at and have looked at in the past?
[00:13:42] Trends in Political Tolerance and Censorship
Sean Stevens: Yes, so through both our survey data and the databases we maintain, we can get a sense of kind of, with the survey data, it’s, what are, some of the trends we tracked is like, where’s political tolerance among college undergraduates going? Is it increasing, decreasing? Unfortunately, it’s decreasing, it seems like.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes, well across all society.
Sean Stevens: Yes. Across all society. And then, with our databases, like you said, we can highlight an individual case and, come up with an opinion on that. But the ability they afford us is we can comment on broader trends about campus censorship. Are these attempts increasing over time?
They are, unfortunately. But Yes, I, and kind of what that can allow us to do is, we’ve dug into deep into the McCarthy era. because that’s, that is the historical era that, I think sticks out to most Americans as this was, this is when speech was clearly being threatened by the government. It was clearly being threatened on colleges and university campuses. Communist professors and those sympathetic with communism were being denied tenure, being fired, being denied jobs. And it’s terrible time period in our history, but from what we’ve been able to unearth, is that somewhere between a hundred and 150 professors were fired during this time period.
And it’s a lot, and it’s not good. But I’m bringing that up because what we’ve seen over the past decade, and the McCarthy era, was basically about a 9- 10 year span. We’ve seen far more than that.
Drumm McNaughton: Wow. Really.
Sean Stevens: We’ve seen more than that. And basically in the past few weeks, we’ve recorded 12 faculty terminations.
All of these are in response to comments made on social media about the Charlie Kirk assassination. And all of them came after, I, I wouldn’t even call them failed threats. They came after the colleges and universities were threatened by government actors. Basically like, “Hey, your funding’s up you, sure you want to employ this person?” It’s not really a veil threat. That’s a, it’s a clear threat of what they intend to do.
Drumm McNaughton: That’s actually happening?
Sean Stevens: That is happening now, as we speak. Yes. I mean, maybe not right now as we speak, but it’s been happening over the last few weeks, yes.
Drumm McNaughton: Because I know there are far reaching implications to the Charlie Kirk assassination. Just as there were two , October 7th protests, pro-Palestine, et cetera. Before we get into those, I’d like to get into your most recent survey that you’ve done.
[00:16:22] Scholars Under FIRE Survey
Drumm McNaughton: Scholars Under FIRE.
Sean Stevens: Yes, so that’s a survey of faculty members that are listed in the mentioned Scholars Under FIRE database.
This is something we maintain, that tracks attempts made to sanction, we call it “scholars” because it’s primarily faculty. I would say probably 95, maybe even 98% of the people listed are faculty members.
But it also includes postdoctoral researchers, research fellows, and PhD students. Effectively it’s anyone who’s like teaching, researching, or doing both, at a university, we would count as a scholar. So they go into database when they get targeted by, it could be students, it could be other their colleagues, it could be other faculty, it could be the administration, it could be members of the local community, it could be politicians, as I’ve mentioned. But what we do is we kind of track and document what these attempts look like. And so this survey that we did was we sent basically an email invite to the 600 or so entries at the time, that we had recorded from 2020 through 2024. Whenever we launched the survey. We got about a little over 200 responses. So pretty, that’s a very good response. It’s a very good response rate considering the pool was like about, the pool was about 600 people and we got about a third of them responding. I think that’s a pretty good, Yes, that’s good.
Drumm McNaughton: Especially with such a controversial topic right now, and the potential implications for becoming known to responding and doing something like this.
Sean Stevens: Yes. And so some of the main findings that we found here are, these sanction attempts, er, they have a lot of ramifications, and it’s not just on the individual faculty member themselves, even. They have a lot of downstream and like longer term consequences. Most faculty that we surveyed reported having negative experiences like loss of sleep, loss of friends, PTSD like symptoms, some lost their jobs. this had then downstream effects on family members and friends. But what was really interesting in the data, almost every single one of them, of the faculty members said they would do exactly what they did again.
Drumm McNaughton: Wow.
Sean Stevens: these consequences, the majority of them were like, “I would do it exactly the same again.” A little bit differences there with ideology where the conservative, more conservative leaning professors were very adamant that they would not change a thing about what they said. More liberal-leaning professors, had, it was more of a, “well, maybe I would”, and I look at that as that’s, the makeup of the professor is going to skew liberal. And so the liberal professors are more like, wait, I don’t want to necessarily get kicked out of the club, so maybe I would think about this and not do it exactly the same. Whereas the conservative faculty were like, well, I’ve already been kicked out of the club, so why would I change anything? So, that was a really interesting finding considering that they all also reported all these negative consequences that they experienced. But another thing that stuck out to us and I think is really relevant and is the main theme in the report we released is faculty members felt that they could not count on and they did not receive a lot of support from their institution. So from the administrators at their institution, from the, their colleagues at the institution, from their union, even, like the union they were a part of they reported receiving very little help from these sources. Publicly, privately, their colleagues would tell them that they sympathize with them, but they can’t say so in public. They can’t stand up for them. And that to me, and then that this is the theme in our report, it’s like faculty need, they need to stick together and defend each other, and not turn on each other in these situations. And I think, we’ve already talked about a little bit, and the aftermath of this assassination with all these calls to sanction and fire faculty like this is needed more than ever now. Like they, they need to stick together and the unions who are supposed to protect them should be doing that.
Drumm McNaughton: But isn’t there a, isn’t there a bright line between inflammatory remarks? And remarks that don’t cross that. Like for instance, if someone were to say, “Well, I’m really happy that so and so was assassinated” or whatever, “He deserved it” versus “It was a darn, it was not right that this happened. I don’t agree with it, but I do agree with, certain things that, are set against it.”
[00:21:01] Protected Speech and Legal Boundaries
Sean Stevens: there, there is a line, there certainly is a line, between, there’s a line you can cross with a speech is no longer protected for sure.
Drumm McNaughton: But before, I’m going to interrupt you there, the protected speech, where does, I agree there’s got to be protected speech and stuff that goes across the line, hate, threats, et cetera, et cetera. Who draws that line?
Sean Stevens: Well, Yes, that’s what I was going to get at is we’ve largely drawn that line through court cases. Right? We don’t want our politicians choosing where this line is. We don’t want our elected officials doing that, we’ve adjudicated this largely through the courts. What fits in that bucket of unprotected speech is probably a lot smaller than what most Americans think. Both of those comments that you said, in variation on the assassination would be protected. You probably, maybe should choose your audience a little bit better if you’re going to be celebrating it. I would maybe recommend not putting that on Twitter or X or whatever it’s called, or whatever other social media channels you might put it on and maybe, talk to your close family and friends about it because, you know, they’re not going to like, stab you in the back over the comment. All of these comments that these professors were fired over were protected speech, even if some of them effectively did celebrate the assassination. Yes, that’s like, I’m kind of saying it’s like, well, these are very smart people, I really wish they maybe just resisted the urge to put that out on, on social media.
Drumm McNaughton: Exactly! What comes to mind for me is the movie, The American President with Michael Douglas. When you’ve got somebody just railing, his girlfriend, and it’s like it’s none of your business, but it’s out there anyway. And as much as you may hate what that other person is saying, he or she still has the right to say it.
Sean Stevens: Yep. Yes, and I’ll, in the case of these professors, the university, there are cases where the university might be able to actually fire a professor for comments, right? If they were essentially acting as a spokesperson for the university, and said something like that’s very inflammatory, the school could be like, Yes, no, like you’re gone. But every single one of these professors did this on their personal X account or Facebook account or Twitter account. Like, okay, so it lists that they work at the university. It might not even list that. But this is their, this is just public comments made by a citizen.
They’re not speaking for the university. So they would, this, these are not fireable offenses.
Drumm McNaughton: They shouldn’t be.
Sean Stevens: Yes, they shouldn’t be.
Drumm McNaughton: They shouldn’t be, but Yes, they are. And it also depends too on where you are, public versus private university. And unfortunately, it also depends on, what color state you’re in.
Sean Stevens: Yes, a lot of these are happening in more conservative states and it’s conservative, republican lawmakers either at the state or federal level, targeting these professors and making these threats about funding, et cetera. Yes.
[00:24:09] Government Interventions and Legalities
Drumm McNaughton: And that’s where the, when we were talking the other day, the government interventions come into play. The threatening of funding. If you don’t do something about this person or this speech, then we’re going to pull your thing. Is that legal?
Sean Stevens: It shouldn’t be. I don’t think as a non-lawyer, I will say I don’t think it is. I’m sure though the attorneys I work with will tell me there might be some exceptions to that. They kind of, what I just, adjudicated about like the, if I’m acting as a spokesperson for the university, it’s a little bit different than if I’m commenting on my personal Facebook account. So I would imagine, I will be told that there’s probably some exceptions to that, but, for the most part, no, it’s not legal.
Drumm McNaughton: That’s kind of my thought as well. But you know, sometimes it’s really hard in the face of and I go back to one of my church ministers, he said, it’s not hard to do the right thing when there’s no threat against you personally. But when there is, that’s where it becomes far harder because you’re going to have to deal with implications.
And I think that’s why a lot of people may be sitting on the sidelines with all the things that are going on.
Sean Stevens: Yes, and this is why, at FIRE, I mean, yes, if you go through our databases, there’s some, odious characters in there I’d say basically. Something for everybody that you could find. And Yes, that’s pretty bad that the person said that. And it’s pretty offensive. It’s still protected. But then there’s also plenty of people in those databases where it’s like, wait, this person got punished for that? It seems a little odd. But this is, I’m bringing this up because in, in relation to what you said, I mean, this is why the First Amendment exists to, it’s, we have to defend the speech we hate because it’s easy to defend the speech that nobody finds offensive or harmless. It’s the controversial, offensive, hateful speech that requires defending.
[00:26:14] Odious Characters in Databases
Sean Stevens: So that’s why we kind of do what we do, and that’s why there’s plenty of odious characters in those databases.
Drumm McNaughton: Sure. And I’m sure I’m in there for something that I said probably 30 years ago. So please expunge your database for me if you would. No, I’m just kidding.
[00:26:31] Survey Rankings and Charlie Kirk Assassination
Drumm McNaughton: You guys, did your survey rankings on September 9th, and then on the 10th was the abominable assassination of Charlie Kirk. Tell us about that.
What do you think is going to be the aftermath because you’ve done survey data. Tell me more.
Sean Stevens: Yes, so we, our survey was done in the spring. We run it every spring and then we release the rankings in the fall, like you said. So Yes, we put them out on Tuesday, September 9th. We did a webinar for our donors and our faculty network that we then just opened to the public too, on September 10th, at noon.
And that ended at one, and then I was doing something similar, around 2:00 PM. I was recording a podcast interview to be aired the next week, and was being literally asked about, we have a question that asks about the acceptability of using violence to stop a speech. So I was being asked about that question when a colleague sent me a chat through Google that Charlie Kirk had just been shot. So I had to get that quick question repeated to me because I only got half of it. And then we kind of talked a little bit about breaking news and where things might go.
[00:27:53] Immediate Aftermath and Security Concerns
Sean Stevens: And I think we’re already seeing, things that, that we thought would happen or are already starting to happen. Just since you and I spoke last, we’ve seen, multiple speaking events canceled, due to the, as I think I hinted at, I was like, they’re going to start doing this because they’ll say that they cannot provide adequate security at the event.
And that has happened. That is happening.
[00:28:17] Canceled Speaking Events and Conservative Commentators
Sean Stevens: Ilya Shapiro was, just had a talk. Well, NYU will, I think NYU will say they didn’t cancel it. That they simply wanted the date changed and the venue changed. But Ilya Shapiro was scheduled to, he’s a law professor, was scheduled to give a talk on October 7th at NYU. Ilya Shapiro is, staunchly Pro Israel, and so the student group organizing it was asked first to see if, professor Shapiro can appear on a different date. And also can we do it in a smaller, more secluded venue that’s not, so high profile. They agreed. Sounded like they agreed to the venue change.
But Professor Shapiro was not able to attend on a different date, and they didn’t want to move the date they thought having him give the speak, the date was picked for a reason, clearly. And they want him speaking on that date. So this event, is not going on. There’s been a few others. I don’t have all the details on them yet, so I don’t necessarily want to say that it would be like the university kind of canceled this talk or that talk. Some of the details are still coming in, but we’re already starting to see this, which is something we’ve, we said we would be concerned about, in the immediate aftermath, because we have to keep people safe is, generally a convincing argument for a lot of people.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes. But at the same time, I just read something online that there was one of the very pro-con conservative speakers who came to one of the college campuses, and I’m sorry, I can’t remember who it was and where it was, but it went off without a hitch. And instead of people getting up and shouting, it was a dialogue back and forth.
Sean Stevens: I think you are talking about Michael Knowles, who appeared, I believe it was the University of Minnesota.
And so what, Yes, and so he’s one person who’s doing this and other, conservative commentators are doing this as well. Charlie Kirk had a whole tour planned with scheduled stops at something like a dozen universities.
So, other conservative commentators have said, we will do these appearances so that effectively the show still goes on. So Michael Doles has done one. Megan Kelly has done one. I believe Ben Shapiro is scheduled to do one at some point. I know Glen Beck is scheduled to do one. But Yes, that’s, I, the Knowles event, I think was, that’s what you want to see, right?
He took over the mantle. He came to campus. The event went off seamlessly. Students engaged with him. He basically did like what Charlie Kirk does, had done. He sits there and takes questions and then just engaged with them. And I think that was a very positive event. It’s nice to see that I kind of was I, I’ll admit, I’ve been monitoring each of these because the schedule’s out. , So this one’s up, this one’s happening today, is anything going on? It’s like you can check out if there’s anything kind of going on in the lead up. And we haven’t seen that really yet. So I think that’s a good, that’s a good thing.
Drumm McNaughton: I think so as well.
[00:31:15] Promoting Civil Discourse on Campus
Drumm McNaughton: So what can colleges do to help people express themselves today in today’s climate? Obviously, it’s digressed so much to where instead of talking with someone, we see it in Congress especially, instead of talking with people, helping to understand that old adage, “you don’t understand me until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes.” How can we get people to, to have civil discourse instead of shouting past each other, or god forbid, digressing into violence.
[00:31:51] Strong Leadership and Free Speech
Sean Stevens: Yes, so we need strong leadership from what president’s, provosts, the top administrators at these colleges and universities. They have, an ability to really set the tone. A common thread that runs through the schools that perform consistently well in our rankings year over year, and I’ll say, perform consistently well, the analogy I’ll use is, it’s like the top 25 in college football. You’re not going to be number one every year, but if you’re in the top 25, like every year, you’re probably doing something better than everybody else out there.
Drumm McNaughton: That’s one heck of a program.
Sean Stevens: Yes, basically, even if, I, and I know it’s like, oh, the highest grade was like a B minus. They’re pretty harsh on everybody. I’m still, I’m saying that those schools at the top still are doing better and should be looked at as kind of the models, even if they have room to improve. So the common thread there is all of those places have had strong administrative leadership who have very clear stances on freedom of speech in that they support it and they will protect it.
And while their records may not be perfect, when controversies arise, they typically do protect speech and resolve it in a way that we think is positive. The flip side in the contrast is, the schools at the bottom, it’s kind of the opposite. It’s, weaker leadership, or not, I don’t even know, I don’t even know weaker is the right word, but just inconsistent. Inconsistently applying policies, oh, well this speech we’re going to sensor, but this one over here, we’re not.
Technically could be censored under the policy we you use to censor the one over here. And so we see a lot of inconsistent application at these schools. At a lot of them there’s more controversies and I, I don’t know if that’s due to how they’ve resolved the ones in the past or not. But it as a parent and, a dog owner for decades, it’s, when you don’t punish bad behavior or you reward bad behavior even like, well that’s a surefire way to get them to repeat it.
Drumm McNaughton: So there needs to be, what I’m hearing you say is there needs to be better guidelines of where that bright line is that you don’t exceed. You need to be defending free speech on those side, that is quote, “the protected speech”. What about civic education? What about teaching people to have, I don’t want to say nice discourse, but decent discussions to where you can learn somebody else’s point.
Sean Stevens: You beat me to the punch there.
[00:34:33] Civic Dialogue Programs
Sean Stevens: What we’ve seen at a handful of schools, we’ve seen what we would call civic dialogue or civic discourse programs enacted. They’re called something different at every school. I’m guessing there’s like copyright stuff there, right? So it’s like, Dialogue. Vanderbilt is the one at Vanderbilt and I think it’s Open Dialogue program at Dartmouth and Harvard has launched an intellectual diversity one. I’ll highlight Vanderbilt and Dartmouth in particular because, their programs have, Vanderbilt in particular has been around now it’s going into its third year I think.
But what we saw, and again, this is correlational, we’re not running an experiment with in tandem with them. Our survey’s just in the field and we kind of know that this thing started. And we have one question on the survey where we ask students, paraphrasing the prompt, but it’s effectively, here’s a list of topics that people say are difficult to discuss. Which ones do you find difficult to discuss on campus? And it’s a checklist and they can just check as many as they want, or they can say none of the above. And what we saw at Vanderbilt was after the first year of them starting this program, we saw significant improvements. And by significant, I mean, the percentage shift in terms of students saying they could discuss this was like at least seven, 8%. If not more. In most cases it was a lot higher, improvement on every single topic with the exception of one. And the one topic that there wasn’t significant improvement on was Israel Palestine. So I think that makes sense in 2024.
Drumm McNaughton: Of course.
Sean Stevens: And then this year, what we saw is we didn’t see improvement on every issue again. I mean, some of these issues at Vanderbilt are now basically at the ceiling of students saying like, Yes, we feel comfortable talking about that, so there’s not much more room to improve. But we still saw improvement on like something like six to eight of the topics. And this year there was improvement on Israel Palestine as students saying that they were able to, I it’s still a minority of students saying that they feel like they can discuss it, but there was an improvement.
And so I think that’s, again, it’s correlational. But through that and then other kind of anecdotal observations of Vanderbilt students saying, this program’s great, it’s really helped me, it’s helped me talk, like, be able to talk to people across divides. I think it’s having an impact. Dartmouth started one last year, so we’re kind of expecting to see more of the gains in next year’s data set, basically. because, these things, it takes time for these things to kind of get in and have an impact on student perceptions and attitudes. But there’s a lot schools can do with that and in my conversations with student journalists, I get the impression that the students want this, there’s a lot of students that want this and are craving it. So it’s there’s a demand and you’re going to meet the demand, and I think it’ll be a very positive thing if schools do that.
Drumm McNaughton: The other piece that I would say is really important, and I’m going to bring in a little bit of a controversial aspect with this. Not that you’re afraid to talk about controversy, I know that, but there is the, I don’t want to say perception, it’s more of a talking point, that colleges are brainstorming students to be leftist, woke, et cetera, et cetera. Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant.
[00:37:52] Purpose of Higher Education
Drumm McNaughton: But really what to me I think is relevant was when you go to “what is the purpose of higher education”? It’s not only to prepare people for a career through skills, but it’s also to help them transform from being teenagers to adults, et cetera, and to be able to make up their own mind with respect to what they think is important and relevant. The only way you can do that is through exposure to multiple different perspectives. Do you agree?
Sean Stevens: Yep. Oh, I agree. For sure. I think that there’s interesting, and interject an interesting data point on that. Faculty at a lot of law schools skew more liberal.
Drumm McNaughton: Mm-hmm.
Sean Stevens: And so there’s been some studies that show like conservative law students are better able to anticipate arguments made by liberal judges, than liberal students are able to anticipate legal arguments made by conservatives because they’re exposed to the liberal ones, and they know the conservative ones because they’re conservative, whereas some of the liberal students are not getting that exposure. And so then they, it like surprises them when a legal decision comes down in a way that it comes down and it’s like, look at the makeup of, the court ruling this, it’s like three to two Republican, and it’s that’s how they’ve ruled. And the conservative students aren’t surprised by that. So I just, I think that’s a good data point to go with what you’re saying basically. It’s like, you need this exposure.
Drumm McNaughton: So you need civic education. What colleges can do civic education, change in policies to make sure that there is a good bright line protecting those who don’t cross the bright line and exposure anything else?
Sean Stevens: I think we, in some ways, and I don’t know how. I think this maybe comes more bottom up from faculty and et cetera, but I think in some ways it feels like we’ve gotten away from like curiosity and exploring things and kind of getting more at, “oh no, we know the truth and like this is it.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes, because we read it on Facebook, right?
Sean Stevens: Yes. So we need to get more back into the Socratic. I love Socrates as a philosopher, largely because his comment about wisdom is , “the best piece of wisdom I can give you is , I know nothing. I don’t know anything. For sure”.
I think we need to get back to that mindset a little bit. A pet peeve of mine is hearing the term settled science. There’s no such thing. It’s never settled. Even if we think something is true and we have a quote law about it, we could still test it, see if it holds up, and maybe it doesn’t fully hold up or maybe it plays out differently in certain settings.
But Yes, that’s a more difficult thing to enact, I think, because it’s not like, “Hey, we can start a program about curiosity like we did, about like civic dialogue”. Like I think it’s a little bit different. It’s changing the mindset and trying to get out of feeling so certain about things. But I think that’s very important to all of this.
Drumm McNaughton: It is and I think that concept of curiosity is so important because, going back to the purpose of college, yes, career, et cetera, but helping someone transform from being a teen to an adult, to being a civic minded human being requires that exposure, requires that curiosity. And I can tell you that my opinions from five minutes ago, no, I’m just kidding. From 20 years ago or 30 years ago when I got out of the Navy to where they are now, it’s night and day. And if I had not been exposed, if I didn’t have a curiosity about other things, none of it would happen.
Sean Stevens: Yes, no, I agree.
[00:41:45] Controversial Ideas and Free Expression
Sean Stevens: This gets back into free expression in a sense because being intellectually curious, you will explore controversial ideas, dangerous ideas, maybe. And so it kind of feeds back into that as well, in, in terms of, hey, it’s like, you know what, like just because the person’s reading Mein Kampf it doesn’t make them a Nazi. Maybe they’re trying to understand the Nazi mindset and that’s probably a pretty good book to read to understand it, I would imagine.
Drumm McNaughton: I would say you’re probably right. There’s also a lot of stuff. We could at this point explore book burning. We could explore banning of books, all those sort of things. We don’t have time to do that. We’ll do that on another episode for sure.
Three Takeaways That University Presidents and Boards Need to Think About Right Now to Protect Free Speech and Their People
Sean, this has been fabulous. I really appreciate your taking the time. As we always do, final two questions. What are the three takeaways university presidents and boards need to think about right now to protect free speech and their people? I mean, we’re in potentially in dangerous times right now.
Sean Stevens: Yes. So three main takeaways are you need to start at a lot of the schools don’t do well because in our mind they’re not even doing the bare minimum policy wise, which is setting those bright lines. So this topic goes under that rubric of strong leadership, but you need to lead, you need to lead your university. You need to set the example for your students.
Drumm McNaughton: And this isn’t only presidents, this is boards too.
Sean Stevens: Yes. Yes. And this is presidents, this is provosts, this is deans. These are people in the leadership positions at the universities. Like, you get to set the tone and the students will respond.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes.
Sean Stevens: So I think that’s critical. And then once you’ve done this, once you’ve got the bright lines established and you’ve still, controversy is going to happen. It’s not going to go away.
University of Chicago, we praise them all the time. They have a green light speech code. They have good speech policies. They’ve adopted the instant of institutional neutrality. They authored the Chicago statement. So clearly they’ve adopted that we encourage schools to do.
But it’s not like they don’t have controversy. They’ve had shout downs. They’ve had students attempt to disrupt events. So when those things inevitably do happen, because they will, you’ve got to stick by your principles and show that leadership to the students and explain it to them. Don’t do things in the dark, do things out in the open. I’ll go to an example of this and try to keep it brief because it’s like shocking. But at Indiana last spring and in 2024 when the administration got wind of students planning to set up an encampment protest in a historic location on campus that 40 years prior had basically had the same thing happen to protest South African Apartheid and the school celebrates this. They held an 11th hour meeting, literally 11th hour, it was like at 11:00 PM at night to change the policies and they banned the erection of structures on campus and then they considered the tents structures. They called the state police in to break up this protest and the infinite wisdom of the state police was, they thought it was a real good idea to put snipers on the roof of a building there.
Drumm McNaughton: Oh
Sean Stevens: Not a good response. Not a good response at all. And the students have punished Indiana for this in the rankings. Accordingly, their administrative score is quite low and a number of student comments centered on this event basically. We ask students like, tell us about a time basically that you self-censored and I remember one comment in particular sticks out. It’s like, “well, the president called snipers on us”. That was the comment. So what do you think?
Drumm McNaughton: And that’s a typical state police response. You can understand that.
Sean Stevens: Not a good look on a college campus. Definitely seen as excessive. And so you’ve got to stand by your principles when controversy arises. And it can be difficult sometimes. You might be getting pressure from alumni, you might be getting pressure from students, student organizations. You might be getting pressure from faculty. More recently, we’re seeing you’re probably going to get some pressure from politicians.
Drumm McNaughton: And your board who have been influenced by the politicians. Of
Sean Stevens: And so this might be difficult, but I think if you stand up for your students, your faculty, and your college or university, you’ll be rewarded.
I actually will praise, even though they famously don’t do very well in our rankings. I will give praise to President Garber at Harvard for how he’s handled the past year, and not bending the knee to the Trump administration the way some of their Ivy League peers have.
Drumm McNaughton: Right.
Sean Stevens: Third point I would say is, I think it’s, go back to promoting civic discourse. Promote it
Drumm McNaughton: Yes.
Sean Stevens: Like, create opportunities for students to have these experiences and engage in dialogue, and learn why freedom of speech is so important in this country. Why we defend it, why we need it.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes.
Sean Stevens: it’s coming out right now, like we need it maybe more than ever on college and university campuses with the way our government is acting towards them.
Drumm McNaughton: Well there is a reason why the first article, the Bill of Rights, Article One of the Constitution, has to do with freedom of speech,
Sean Stevens: mm-hmm.
Drumm McNaughton: religion, the press.
Sean Stevens: Yes.
Drumm McNaughton: All things that are critical, and if you stop and think about it, what happened with Jimmy Kimmel? Jimmy Kimmel got yanked off the air. There was such a public outcry about this, and it hit Disney very badly in the pocket because people were upset. Disney owns ABC.
Sean Stevens: Yes.
Drumm McNaughton: He’s back on and he is also back on Sinclair and the other network, who had said, “no, we’re not going to do this”.
Sean Stevens: And it’s a good example of why censorship often fails and backfires, because his ratings are through the roof now compared to where they were a few weeks ago.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes, definitely. Well, this has been great. What’s next for you, Sean?
[00:48:07] Final Thoughts and Future Surveys
Sean Stevens: So next for us is we are actually, we have a survey in the field right now, surveying college undergraduates. We’re repeating a handful of questions from the ranking survey, but then there’s another set of questions on there that focus more on the assassination and kind of recent events that have occurred. We’re taking the pulse of students in that way. That is also going to include, an over sample of students at Utah Valley University where the assassination occurred. Like I mentioned earlier, we run a quarterly national speech index, so that runs every three months. So our next one for that’ll come out in January.
We’re going to be running one right now at the end of October, and so we’ll put the results of that out in November and then we’ll run that again in January. I’m very interested to see that, because as part of that project, similar to our ranking survey, we have five questions that we ask every time. One of them is literally a free speech tracker. So along the lines of are you happy with the direction of the country? Yes or no? It’s basically, what do you think of the state of free speech. Right? Good or bad? And so I’m actually very interested to see what those numbers look like now. They’ve been pretty stagnant over time, not much fluctuation overall.
Prior to the election, Democrats thought things were going well and republicans didn’t. That clearly switched after last year’s election. But overall the line has kind of stayed roughly like where it’s been like 35 to 40% say they’re happy with the direction of speech in the country. I’m just very interested in seeing what that number’s going to be this time, in the aftermath of the events of this month, this past month.
Drumm McNaughton: I am fascinated as well. Let’s have you back on the show to talk about it.
Sean Stevens: I’d love to. It’s been a great conversation.
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you very much. It has been a great conversation. Appreciate you, appreciate your time and all you’re doing.
Sean Stevens: Thank you.
Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening this week and a special thank you to my guest, Dr. Sean Stevens from the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression. Sean, it was a pleasure having you on the show. I look forward to the next time we get a chance to exchange ideas. To my listeners, thanks again for tuning in, see you next week.
