Brandeis University earned an overall F in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s  2026 free speech rankings, placing 149th of 257 U.S. colleges and universities. The school’s rules received a “yellow light” designation, meaning Brandeis has chosen policies that may be applied in a way that violates rights to free speech. “That means that there’s one or more speech code policies in a student handbook, faculty handbook, somewhere …  that they’re worded in a way that they could be applied unconstitutionally. It’s vague or arbitrary wording,” said Sean Stevens, chief research advisor at FIRE, in a Sep. 26 interview with The Justice.

Brandeis scored 56.8 out of 100 possible points for free expression, a 2.8 point increase from the 2024-25 school year, and a jump up of 82 spots in the national rankings for most free expression. The school also saw a positive increase in four of the six subcategories explored in the report, namely self-censorship, student comfort expressing ideas, administrative support and openness, where Brandeis was in the top 50 nationwide. Notably though, political intolerance and disruptive conduct both increased this past year.

“We work with a survey company called CollegePulse that has built databases of students in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” said Stevens. “We wanted to measure self-censorship and comfort expressing ideas. Also, attention to the administration [was] important. Other questions were assessing and showing increased support for certain disruptive protest tactics.” Panels of students at specific campuses first opt in to take the surveys via the organization’s app and then respond to them. A specific weight is applied to those responses creating a “demographically representative” model for FIRE to construct their final assessment. 

FIRE’s report has come out at a time when tensions surrounding free speech have grown to be increasingly contentious. In the past two years, campus protests related to the Israel-Hamas War have led to lawsuits and heated clashes with university administrators nationwide. “Anything related to Israel, Palestine, [is] certainly a big one, and traditionally has been a fairly big one in the past,” said Stevens, when asked what issues FIRE has observed to be some of the most controversial on college campuses. “Abortion is always a topic that causes controversy. Transgender rights as well.”

FIRE also monitors ongoing speech controversies on college campuses. Included in the report is the University’s 2023 decision to no longer recognize the group known as Students for Justice in Palestine, which ultimately docked the school one point. No further incidents were included in this year’s assessment.

More recently, the assasination of Charlie Kirk and attempts by the Trump administration to deplatform critics like Jimmy Kimmel have intensified national debates about what constitutes free speech and what institutions can do to protect it. “It certainly upticks our general work because we defend students and faculty who do face calls for sanctions,” said Stevens. “We’ve been busy fielding that. We maintain these controversy databases that track that stuff, so there’s been a heavy volume of that coming in ... We’re gonna launch another survey of undergrad soon in the aftermath of the [Kirk] assassination.”

The report includes information about Brandeis’ institutional policies pertaining to free speech. Brandeis, along with over 100 schools in the U.S., has adopted the Chicago Statement, which  is considered the standard for free-speech policy in institutions of higher education. The statement itself reads that, “[it] guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.” 

The Chicago Statement has been endorsed by FIRE, which awarded Brandeis points towards its overall score. The University has yet to adopt a policy of institutional neutrality — the idea that institutions of higher education should not take a position on political or social issues. That is unless those issues oppose the mission of the school itself, which in part states that Brandeis “considers social justice central to its mission as a nonsectarian university founded by members of the American Jewish community.” This is another FIRE-endorsed policy that would add to a school’s overall score. Brandeis’ mission is rooted in values of social justice as a nonsectarian university founded by the American Jewish community.

The initial survey also collected data about student political affiliations. At Brandeis, there are approximately 13 liberal students for every one conservative student. This follows in accordance with the national trend that FIRE has been observing, where college campuses have grown to be increasingly liberal spaces. Stevens believes this is a result of a larger trend occurring over a long period of time. “... The professor in academia as a whole has grown more and more liberal, more and more progressive over the past six, seven decades … there’s maybe a little bit of conservative scholars detecting hostility to their views, so they opt to not pursue further careers in academia.” 

Going forward, FIRE would like to see Brandeis and other schools continue to move toward a climate that supports free speech by encouraging students not to self-censor and for the University to clarify its policies. Stevens also highlighted the importance of holding events and forums for a wide variety of speakers with diverse opinions. Discussing FIRE’s work in particular, he also mentioned their current civic dialogue programs at various schools including Vanderbilt University, which has seen substantial improvements in its data. “If there aren’t more conservative leaning student organizations, those students should be encouraged to hold events and invite people in and start engaging in discussion and with ideas,” he said.