By Samuel J. Abrams , Jason Jewell
December 29, 2025, Real Clear Politics

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 24^th – 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.

The more instructive evidence comes from Florida’s own data. For the past three years, the State University System has administered an annual Intellectual Freedom Survey measuring student attitudes toward free expression, dissent, and disruption. Several of its questions are identical to FIRE’s, allowing for direct comparison. Early iterations struggled with low response rates – just 2.4 percent in 2022, but subsequent rounds introduced incentives and extended completion windows, boosting participation substantially. In 2025, more than 32,000 students responded, over fifteen times the number of Florida students in FIRE’s national sample.

Here is the puzzle: when FIRE surveys a few hundred students at individual Florida campuses, their responses on questions about disrupting speakers track close to national averages. But when Florida asks identical questions to more than 32,000 students, tolerance for coercive tactics drops sharply. The most likely explanation is methodological – larger samples with stronger response incentives capture attitudes that smaller surveys miss. If so, Florida’s data suggest the state’s campus climate may be healthier than even its strong FIRE rankings indicate.

The numbers bear this out. A slim majority of Florida respondents say it is at least “rarely” acceptable to shout down a speaker, but fewer than one-quarter say it is “always” or “sometimes” acceptable. Fewer than one-third believe it is even “rarely” acceptable to block others from attending a campus event, and fewer than one in ten endorse that behavior more strongly. When it comes to violence, just 12.7 percent say it is at least “rarely” acceptable, with fewer than 5 percent expressing anything stronger than minimal tolerance.

Moreover, the trendline in Florida is moving in the right direction: the proportion of its students willing to tolerate violence to prevent campus speech has fallen by about 30% over the past year. Compare this to FIRE’s conclusion that campus toleration of such violence is at record highs nationwide, and Florida’s numbers look even better.

These differences did not emerge by accident. Florida has built a layered policy infrastructure around campus speech.

In 2018, the legislature enacted the Campus Free Expression Act (Section 1004.097, Florida Statutes), which designates outdoor campus areas as traditional public forums, prohibits restrictive “free speech zones,” and authorizes universities to impose only content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions that are “narrowly tailored to a significant institutional interest.” The law also creates a private cause of action for individuals whose expressive rights are violated.

The following year, the Board of Governors adopted a Statement of Free Expression, signed by the chancellor and all twelve university presidents. It declares that “a critical purpose of a higher education institution is to provide a learning environment where divergent ideas, opinions, and philosophies, new and old, can be rigorously debated and critically evaluated.” In 2021, Board Chair Syd Kitson launched a Civil Discourse Initiative, led by Governor Tim Cerio, requiring each university to develop implementation plans that align orientation programs, student codes of conduct, and employee policies with free expression principles.

At the institutional level, Florida State University and the University of Florida have published detailed guidance distinguishing protected expression from disruption. Both emphasize that counter-protesters “may not obstruct, disrupt, or attempt by physical force to cancel or discontinue speech by any speaker.” USF and other institutions have paired policy with repeated messaging that disagreement is central to academic life, but coercion is not.

The spring 2024 protests revealed how much this infrastructure matters. At Columbia, administrators called in the NYPD twice, watched protesters occupy Hamilton Hall, shifted to hybrid learning, and ultimately canceled the main commencement ceremony. At UF, police cleared an encampment within hours, classes continued without interruption, and graduation proceeded on schedule. Florida’s willingness to enforce time, place, and manner rules swiftly, while Columbia negotiated for weeks, produced starkly different outcomes. Applying these rules consistently is never easy, and Florida suspended several students in ways that drew scrutiny. But the broader lesson is clear: institutions that articulate and defend free expression norms fare better than those that respond with paralysis.

The results speak for themselves. U.S. News & World Report has ranked Florida the number one state for higher education for nine consecutive years, citing low tuition, high graduation rates, and minimal student debt. More recently, City Journal’s 2025 College Rankings – praised in a Wall Street Journal editorial – placed the University of Florida first in the nation among 100 leading universities, public or private, with Florida State seventh. The rankings evaluated schools on free speech climate, academic rigor, and civic education.

City Journal specifically praised UF’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, which has grown into one of the most ambitious experiments in civic renewal at any American university. Now a full-fledged school with 53 faculty members and more than 1,300 enrolled students, Hamilton offers majors in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law and Great Books and Ideas, with more planned. Its faculty includes scholars recruited from Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge. This year, Hamilton launched the Beren Program on Jewish Classical Education, supported by $15 million in philanthropic funding, to study the intersection of Jewish, Western, and American civilization. The program reflects a broader commitment: building institutional capacity for serious humanistic education, not just defending against disruption.

Florida has also become a destination for students seeking a welcoming campus climate. After the October 7 attacks, Governor DeSantis invited Jewish students facing antisemitism at other institutions to transfer to Florida, waiving certain application requirements and fees. City Journal cited UF’s response to campus disruptions as evidence of a “welcoming and tolerant climate for Jewish students,” and Florida International University earned a top grade from the Anti-Defamation League for its support of Jewish students. Jon Warech, executive director of Hillel at FIU, put it simply: “The administration here at FIU, they were never going to allow any of that, and it makes our students feel good, comfortable.”

Florida is not alone in pursuing this approach. Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, established in 2017, pioneered the model of legislatively-mandated civics education at public universities. According to ASU, seven other states have since copied its approach, creating similar schools and institutes focused on American founding principles, classical texts, and civic leadership. These include the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, the University of Tennessee’s Institute of American Civics, the University of North Carolina’s School of Civic Life and Leadership, and Ohio State’s Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society. What began as an experiment in Arizona and Florida is becoming a national movement.

None of this means Florida has solved every problem. Too many students still view coercive tactics as legitimate, and universities exist precisely to teach why they are not. But Florida’s experience demonstrates something many higher-education leaders have been reluctant to acknowledge: institutional choices still matter.

Campus speech radicalism is often described as an unstoppable cultural force, driven by polarization or generational change. Florida’s data complicate that narrative. They suggest that when universities articulate norms clearly, enforce them consistently, and take responsibility for the climates they cultivate, student attitudes follow – if unevenly, then at least measurably.

At a moment when trust in higher education is fraying and too many administrators respond to disruption with euphemism or paralysis, Florida offers a modest but important reminder. Free speech norms do not sustain themselves. They have to be taught, defended, and measured – or they disappear.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a scholar with the Sutherland Institute.  Jason Jewell is Chief Academic Officer and Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives, State University System of Florida.