Will Academic Freedom and Expression Improve in 2025?
Ten Stats for a More Informed Year in Academia
In 2024, campuses were racked by political protests, professors were sanctioned for speech, and some lawmakers started aggressively legislating what they want out of higher ed.
What does 2025 have in store? It’s hard to say for certain, but all signs point in the direction of needing to come together to protect academic freedom, foster open inquiry, and ensure that our institutions of higher education remain able to carry out their truth-seeking, knowledge-generating missions. Here are 10 stats to know as we begin the new year.
Faculty are self-censoring out of fear of retribution: 27% of U.S. faculty respondents to a FIRE survey say they feel unable to speak freely for fear of how students, administrators, or other faculty might respond.
The overall speech climate on campus is, in part, driving this self-censorship with 35% of U.S. faculty in an Inside Higher Ed (IHE) poll reporting that they are refraining from discussing certain topics with students due to the current campus climate.
Some topics are hotter than others: in surveys from HxA and FIRE, 47% of U.S. students, 54% of Canadian students, and 70% of U.S. faculty say they are reluctant to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, making it likely to be the most contentious issue on campus currently.
Despite these reports from faculty and students, 82% of U.S. college presidents and 62% of provosts in IHE surveys rate the climate for open inquiry and dialogue on their campus as good or excellent, suggesting a disconnect in the “view from the top.”
Due to campus unrest in the spring, 21% of US college presidents in an IHE poll say their campus speech policies were so stressed by world events that they may require revisions.
And revisions we saw! More than 100 institutions across the U.S. and Canada have adopted some version of institutional statement neutrality since HxA’s joint call with FIRE and the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) in February 2024.
This new policy measure is popular among faculty, with 66% of US faculty supporting institutional statement neutrality in a recent FIRE survey of faculty at top research institutions across the U.S.
The climate on campus is cause for real concern: 77% of faculty across 28 countries in a Times Higher Education survey agree that academic freedom of speech is more restricted in their country than it was 10 years ago.
And an alarming 91% of U.S. faculty in the IHE poll agree that academic freedom is under threat across higher education.
Some faculty feel good, though: 27% of U.S. Faculty in FIRE’s survey think that academic freedom is secure on their campus today.
Survey questions are simple, but academic life in 2025 is not. Building a campus culture of open inquiry and constructive disagreement takes brave leaders, policies to protect academic freedom, and individual academics modeling a better way. HxA members are busy working on all of the above. Learn more about our work here.
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