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Texas universities fall in FIRE’s free-speech rankings amidst AAUP concerns over academic freedom
Texas earned an F letter grade in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) 2027 college free-speech rankings, placing the state below the national average of a D-. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.
Twelve Texas universities were included in FIRE’s 2027 list, with four of them landing amongst the bottom 15 out of 261 schools nationwide:
Texas State University ranked 259th
University of Texas at Dallas ranked 251st
Rice University ranked 250th, and
University of North Texas ranked 248th.
FIRE used a combination of student surveying, denoted campus speech policies, and university response to speech controversies to shape its rankings.
In the past year, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has expressed serious concern for the assault of free speech and academic freedom across Texas universities. It launched a statewide Committee of Inquiry focused on investigating the fallout of Senate Bill 37, which changed how governance and oversight were managed, this past June. Many of AAUP’s concerns regarding academic freedom and faculty rights are well represented by the shifts and declines in FIRE’s rankings.
Beyond low rankings, multiple universities in Texas also experienced sharp declines from prior reports. Texas State experienced the largest drop nationally, falling 147 places. FIRE attributed much of this drop to a decrease in student confidence that school administrators would defend free speech and how the university handled various speech controversies, including the high-profile dismissal of Dr. Tom Alter following political comments delivered at an off-campus gathering. AAUP criticized this decision as a violation of academic freedom in a statement they released.
Texas A&M also experienced a dramatic drop as well, falling 145 places from the year prior, owing to multiple speech controversies involving faculty censorship and a decline in student perception of administrative support. AAUP has also publicly challenged Texas A&M’s censorship policies for their limitations on free speech, filing a suit on the matter.
UT Dallas, Rice, and UNT also fared poorly for similar reasons. Academic freedom is important in its own right to ensure vigorous debate and an intellectual society. But these assaults on freedom of speech have also threatened Texas’s rightful place as a leader in higher education. This means fewer out-of-state students attending our institutions, drops in academic rankings, and brain drain of graduates and faculty alike. In order to preserve our competitiveness, we must resist these attacks at every turn and reverse these precipitous drops in free speech rankings.
