(The Center Square) – Ole Miss and Mississippi State are nearly identical in the largest annual review of free speech for colleges and universities.
The only two of eight institutions in the state’s public system analyzed each earned a letter grade of D-plus. The University of Mississippi scored a 69 and was 27th nationally, and Mississippi State scored a 68 and was 34th.
FIRE, the acronym for Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, based the rankings on 68,000 students at 257 colleges and universities.
Claremont McKenna College, in Claremont, Calif., scored an 80 for a B-minus to lead the rankings. Purdue (76, C) and the University of Chicago (76, C) were next. On the other end, Northeastern (47, F), the University of Washington (44, F) and Indiana (44, F) were the bottom three.
Ole Miss dropped seven spots from a year ago. While the report credits top 50 for the categories of comfort expressing ideas, political tolerance and self-censorship, its score is harmed with no Chicago Statement adoption or policy of institutional neutrality.
The Chicago Statement is a reference to the 2015 policy adoption at the University of Chicago committing to “free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation.”
Mississippi State dropped 24 places in this year’s ranking. It is top 25 in administrative support and top 50 in political tolerance but bottom 25 for both self-censorship and openness.
FIRE bills itself as “nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience – the most essential qualities of liberty.”
It works to produce the rankings with College Pulse, a “survey research and analytics company dedicated to understanding the attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of today’s college students.” It has custom “data-driven marketing and research solutions,” utilizing a panel of “850,000 college students and recent alumni from more than 1,500 two- and four-year colleges and universities in all 50 states.”
