The 2025 College Free Speech Rankings Report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) lists two colleges in North Carolina among the top ten in the country for free speech.
It was looked at how comfortable students were speaking out about things they were passionate about, even if their point of view was different from most others, whether they were in class or somewhere else on campus, and if they were willing to listen to speakers who might be challenging or even controversial.
The poll, which was made by FIRE and run by College Pulse, looked at 257 colleges and universities. NC State came in seventh, and UNC-Charlotte came in ninth. From January 25 to June 17, the poll was taken. These numbers come from a sample of 58,807 full-time students in four-year degree programs.
College Pulse made an adjustment after stratification based on how demographics were spread out across several data sets. Rebalancing the sample based on race, gender, class year, voting registration status, and financial aid status are some of the things that “weight” takes into account.
The University of Virginia was ranked number one. It was followed by Florida State University, Eastern Kentucky University, Georgia Tech, Claremont McKenna College, NC State, Oregon State University, UNC-Charlotte, and Mississippi State University.
There were other North Carolina schools on the list as well.
Eastern Carolina University came in at number 13, and UNC-Greensboro came in at number 22.
Barnard College, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and Columbia University were the five worst schools. Houghton University came in last for the second year in a row.
Since FIRE started the poll in 2020, NC State has consistently done well. The survey is the first of its kind to help high school students and their parents find colleges that support and encourage free speech.
Five fifths of students (55%) said it was hard to “have an open and honest conversation about” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on campus. This is the highest number of responses to this question in the five years that FIRE has asked it. Seventeen of the schools polled had at least 75% of the students answer this way.
According to FIRE, during the encampment protests, students took over buildings and tried to mess up a number of commencement events.
Administrators limited the speech of students and teachers before and after the protests, and in some cases they even called the police to arrest students. They say that the Free Speech Rankings scores of many schools show how they reacted to these events.
Since last year, the number of students who said it is at least “rarely” okay to yell at a speaker, block other students from getting into an event, or use violence to stop a campus speech has all gone up.
Concerns among students about self-censorship have gone down. This year, 17% of students said they feel like they can’t say what they think about something at least twice a week because of how other students, teachers, or the management would react. This number went from 20% to 22% between 2021 and 2022.