(The Center Square) – Clemson and Carolina made the top 25 of the 257 schools analyzed in the largest annual review of free speech for colleges and universities.
Both schools earned a C-minus letter grade, with Clemson scoring a 72 and the University of South Carolina at Columbia a 70. Only two other schools from the state were analyzed – the College of Charleston (178th, 56, F) and Furman (195th, 55, F).
FIRE, the acronym for Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, based the rankings on 68,000 students at 253 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.
Clemson rose eight spots from the previous year. The report says, “Students offer some mixed assessments.” The university is bottom 50 for the self-censorship category, meaning “students feel uneasy sharing their views on campus.”
FIRE suggests, “Clemson could rise further by adopting an official commitment to institutional neutrality.”
Carolina is up 12 spots from the previous year. It also is encouraged to adopt “an official commitment to institutional neutrality.”
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.”
