Tag: FIRE

FIRE warnings confirmed again | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
A federal court has once again vindicated FIRE’s longstanding concerns with the Trump administration’s unlawful and unconstitutional approach to enforcing Title VI — including combatting antisemitism — in higher education. This time, the smackdown came in a ruling for plaintiffs at the University of California.

In a blistering opinion, the court found that the Trump administration has weaponized federal funding and “flouted the requirements of Title VI and Title IX,” all with the goal of “bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune.”

In light of this and a similar victory for Harvard in federal court, universities should take note: if they stand up for themselves, their students, and their faculty in court, there’s a strong pathway to victory.

To avoid future losses in court, the Trump administration must cease its pressure campaign and follow the congressionally mandated procedure for enforcing federal civil rights laws. Failure to do so will only hurt students who have actually experienced discriminatory hostile environments and need serious, lawful federal oversight. The federal government should seek to get things right the first time and not let procedural infirmities and unlawful demands delay civil rights enforcement.

Unlike the Harvard case, which was brought by university leaders alongside other stakeholders, this suit was filed by associations and labor unions that represent over 100,000 UC employees, faculty, and students. They brought their case after the administration fined the University of California, Los Angeles $1.2 billion and froze further research funding, asserting that UCLA violated the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI.

UCLA may well have failed to protect some of its Jewish students from unlawful discrimination, and the federal government should ensure that the university is now complying with Title VI. But the court found that the administration’s goals go far beyond the issue of antisemitism, explaining:

The record shows that Defendants engaged in a concerted policy to use allegations of antisemitism to justify funding cancellations, when their intent is to coerce universities into purging disfavored “left” and “woke” viewpoints from their campuses and replace them with views that the Administration favors.

This, of course, violates the First Amendment. And the court notes that even if the administration were solely focused on combatting antisemitism, it could not “accomplish that goal by coercing the UC into adopting practices with widespread chilling effects on constitutionally protected speech.”

Accordingly, the court’s preliminary injunction prohibits federal agencies from withholding funds, “or threatening to do so, to coerce the UC in violation of the First Amendment.” And just to ensure its message is clear, the court provided examples of funding conditions that would violate the plaintiff’s First Amendment rights, including:
- Requiring the UC to make hiring, firing, or funding decisions on the basis of Plaintiffs’ members’ protected speech or freedom of assembly.
- Requiring the UC to restrict its curriculum, scholarship, or research based on the Defendants’ preferred viewpoints.
- Requiring the UC to screen international students based on “anti-Western” or “anti-American” views and/or “socialize” international students to favored “norms.”
Beyond the First Amendment, the court also found that the administration failed to “follow longstanding, legally-required process that is intended to safeguard against coercive or retaliatory government actions under Title VI and IX.” These procedural failures include denying UCLA a hearing and the opportunity to voluntarily remedy alleged violations, failing to provide a written report to Congress, and failing to limit the scope of funding suspensions to noncompliant entities.

The federal government has a legal and moral obligation to ensure that schools are protecting students from discrimination, including antisemitism. But it must meet that obligation in ways that uphold the law and the Constitution. Unfortunately, the administration’s strategy has so far failed on both fronts. And ultimately, those hurt most by this failure will be students in need of lawful civil rights enforcement.
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November 21, 2025
He spent 37 days in jail for a Facebook post — now FIRE has his back

A 61-year-old Tennessee man is finally free after spending a shocking 37 days in jail — all for posting a meme.

Retired police officer Larry Bushart told a local radio station he’s “very happy to be going home” after his nightmarish ordeal.

But for Larry and FIRE, the fight isn’t over.

In September, after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Larry shared a meme on a Facebook thread about a vigil in Perry County, Tennessee. The meme quoted President Donald Trump saying, “We have to get over it” following a January 2024 school shooting at Perry High School in Iowa. The meme included the commentary, “This seems relevant today …”

The meme that Larry Bushart shared on Facebook.

Just after 11 p.m. on Sept. 21, four officers came to Larry’s home, handcuffed him, and took him to jail. He was locked up for “threatening mass violence at a school.” His bond — an astronomical $2 million!

Police justified the arrest by saying that people took the meme as a threat to their high school, which has a similar name to the one where the school shooting occurred 20 months earlier. However, police have been unable to produce any evidence that members of the public took the meme as a threat. As The Intercept noted: “There were no public signs of this hysteria. Nor was there much evidence of an investigation—or any efforts to warn county schools.”

Larry was jailed for more than five weeks. But that wasn’t the only thing he suffered. During that time, he lost his post-retirement job doing medical transportation and missed the birth of his granddaughter.

Bushart during his arrest in September, Perry County, Tennessee.

Prosecutors finally dropped the charges — only after the arrest went viral. Now a newly freed Larry, who spent over three decades with law enforcement and the Tennessee Department of Correction, is preparing to sue.

“A free country does not dispatch police in the dead of night to pull people from their homes because a sheriff objects to their social media posts,” FIRE’s Adam Steinbaugh told The Washington Post. Now, FIRE is representing Larry to defend his rights — and yours.

A meme doesn’t become a threat just because a sheriff says it is. In America, there are very few exceptions to the First Amendment, including true threats or incitement of imminent lawless action.

Jailing first, justifying later, flips those limits on their head. If officials can arrest you because they dislike your social media posts, then none of us are safe to express ourselves.

Stay tuned for updates.

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November 19, 2025
5 laws FIRE wants on the books to protect free speech

Even with the robust protections offered to us by the First Amendment and the decades of decisions made by our federal and Supreme courts, defending free speech is still difficult business. Infringements on our rights often take advantage of loopholes and gaps in our legal frameworks, leading to actions — particularly from those in power — that violate our expressive rights and chill free speech.

That’s why FIRE has long championed a variety of proposals to help safeguard free expression from government attacks and abuse, including federal legislation. But what would that legislation look like?

Here are five legislative proposals FIRE has recommended to Congress to bolster free speech rights for everyone and make censorship by federal officials more difficult — no matter what party is in power.

Improve transparency and accountability for jawboning

“Jawboning” refers to situations in which a government official informally coerces a private party to censor constitutionally protected speech.

For example, when the head of New York’s Department of Financial Services threatened to wield her regulatory powers over several insurance companies unless they stopped doing business with the National Rifle Association — because she didn’t like its viewpoint — that was textbook jawboning. The NRA sued, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that these acts, if proven, are unconstitutional.

More recently, when FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened Disney and ABC over talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s comments regarding the Charlie Kirk assassination, leading to Kimmel’s suspension, that was also a clear case of jawboning. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Jawboning is a growing threat to free speech as more discourse happens on social media, where the government can reach out to platforms behind closed doors and censor speech without anyone else — including the speaker — knowing the government was involved. When this happens, civil society and the public cannot track what’s happening or adequately respond. Often, it’s only through the leaks of information after the fact that we even become aware it happened at all, as we saw with the Twitter Files.

What is jawboning? And does it violate the First Amendment?

Indirect government censorship is still government censorship — and it must be stopped.

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As we’ll get into more deeply below, we’d like to see legislation to help deter these kinds of First Amendment violations, including jawboning, by allowing people to sue federal officials for damages when they violate constitutional rights.

However, for this to be effective against jawboning on social media platforms, we will need greater transparency into the government’s communications with tech companies. To achieve that, FIRE recommends Congress pass legislation to require federal officials to publicly report their communications with social media companies about user content on their platforms. One option is FIRE’s Social Media Administrative Reporting Transparency (or SMART) Act, which accompanied our Report on Social Media.

By forcing officials to either hold off on jawboning or do it out in public, where they’ll be subject to scrutiny and possible damage awards, we can curb backdoor censorship.

Codify First Amendment protections on campus

FIRE also recommends Congress pass the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act, or similar campus speech legislation, to better protect First Amendment rights at public universities by putting existing constitutional protections into federal statute.

This includes ending “free speech zones,” where speech is restricted campuswide except for small, designated areas — often remote and easily ignored — effectively nullifying student expression. It also includes the prohibition of excessive security fees that colleges sometimes impose on events involving controversial speakers, as a thinly veiled attempt to stop the event from happening.

Free Speech Zones

Free speech zones limit expressive activity to small and/or out-of-the-way areas. They are usually unconstitutional on college campuses.

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We’ve also long supported legislative efforts to rectify the Department of Education’s abuse of antidiscrimination law to suppress protected speech. One important thing Congress can do is to codify the Supreme Court’s Davis standard for when peer-on-peer harassment creates a hostile environment in violation of federal civil rights laws, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, or its sister statute, Title IX. Under Davis, protected speech only rises to a violation of these statutes if it is:

So severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and . . . so undermines and detracts from the victims’ educational experience, that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institution’s resources and opportunities.

The Education Department under both Presidents Obama and Biden explicitly claimed that Davis did not apply to its regulatory activities (only to civil lawsuits brought under federal antidiscrimination laws). Nor is the Trump administration following Davis in its Title VI enforcement efforts. Instead, under each administration, the Education Department has concocted similar-sounding standards that (unlike Davis) can allow a single instance of protected speech to violate Title VI or IX. This pressures schools to suppress any speech that is deemed hurtful to protected groups, leading campuses to commit an endless stream of free speech violations. The Davis standard prevents this while still ensuring the Department can address actual, undeniable discriminatory harassment.

We also recommend pairing the Davis codification with a codification of religion as a protected class under Title VI, and codification of longstanding federal guidance that says Jewish students and other groups of shared ethnicity can avail themselves of Title VI, based on its protections against discrimination on the basis of national origin. Taking these steps would create another protection against genuine student harassment without infringing on other students’ free speech rights.

Let people sue federal officials for damages when they violate constitutional rights

Much of the censorship federal officials engage in is already illegal. In many cases, these officials are committing straightforward constitutional and statutory violations, and asserting authority that they simply don’t have.

When state officials violate constitutional rights, including under the First Amendment, victims can sue them to obtain monetary damages and can collect attorneys’ fees. This provides a direct, personal incentive for state officials to respect Americans’ rights.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t exist at the federal level. Federal officials can only be sued to get the violations to stop, not to actually get compensation or accountability. This gives officials an incentive to continue their unconstitutional behavior because they have no skin in the game. They may be stopped after the fact, but they aren’t personally deterred from committing the violation in the first place.

FIRE recommends Congress pass legislation to let people sue for damages when federal officials violate someone’s constitutional rights. This would create a stronger incentive for federal officials to respect Americans’ rights by giving victims teeth when fighting back.

Create strong anti-SLAPP rules in federal court

A strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP, is a frivolous lawsuit someone files in order to punish a critic or opponent for their speech. The idea of a SLAPP is not to win on the merits of the case, but to retaliate against someone exercising their First Amendment rights. People who engage in SLAPPs do this by dragging their targets through a costly court process, or getting them to settle and retract their speech to avoid such costs.

Too often, the powerful use SLAPPs to send a clear, speech-chilling message: “Speak out against me, and I will ruin you.”

Most of these lawsuits come from private individuals and corporations, but lawsuits by government officials against their critics — including news outlets — have also become a problem in recent years. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News in June, arguing that host Jesse Watters “misleadingly edited a video” to claim that Newsom lied about a phone call he’d had with President Trump. Or consider President Trump’s $15 million suit, filed last month against Penguin Random House and The New York Times for news articles he claims were designed to limit his prospects in the 2024 presidential election.

For the rich, free speech — for others, a SLAPP in the face

Texas lawmakers once stood up for free speech. Now, some seem more interested in helping the rich sue critics into silence.

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Many states have passed robust protections against SLAPPs, which speed up the process to dismiss frivolous cases and require the person who filed the SLAPP to pay the other side’s attorneys’ fees. However, plaintiffs can often evade state anti-SLAPP laws by filing in federal court. FIRE recommends Congress pass a federal anti-SLAPP law to plug that gap.

Remove the FCC’s ability to regulate broadcast content

Last, but certainly not least, FIRE also recommends Congress pass legislation to clarify that the FCC has no authority to regulate content on broadcast TV and radio.

In every other medium of communication, the First Amendment bars the government from regulating the content of protected speech unless the action can survive strict constitutional scrutiny. Broadcast TV and radio, however, have been treated somewhat differently. Because the “airwaves” were historically seen as a finite resource, and one of only a small number of ways to share speech with a mass audience, the Supreme Court allowed the FCC to engage in some regulation of content by broadcasters.

But that leeway has always been minimal, and the Communications Act specifically denies the FCC the power of censorship. Courts over the past five decades have also grown increasingly skeptical of the few areas of content regulation that were considered permissible. Recently, FCC officials have ignored these developments and mischaracterized the FCC’s “public interest” authority as a blank check to regulate content. It isn’t — and never was.

Congress can play an important role by clarifying that the “scarcity rationale,” which was originally thought to support different constitutional treatment for the broadcast medium, has long since been eclipsed by technological changes. It actually said so once before, when it adopted the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but it should be more explicit this time by also deleting the few areas where the statute authorizes content regulation.

This should make clear that recent examples of the FCC’s misuse of the public interest standard are being beyond its authority. A prime instance of this is Chairman Carr’s invocation of the public interest standard to threaten ABC over the content of Jimmy Kimmel’s speech. This would also make clear that historic examples, such as the Democratic National Committee’s campaign during the Kennedy administration of filing FCC complaints to silence conservative radio commenters, were illegitimate.

Carr’s threats to ABC are jawboning any way you slice it

ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel hours after FCC Chair Brendan Carr suggested they could face consequences for remarks Kimmel made in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder.

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Another recent example of the FCC’s weaponization of its authorities is the FCC’s various actions to dust off an obscure policy against “news distortion” as a way to oversee broadcasters’ editorial judgments. As FIRE has noted in an FCC filing, that policy, originally designed to address “deliberate distortion or staging” of news events, was almost never invoked or enforced. That is for good reason: FCC commissioners understood that the commission could not function as the nation’s speech police. And until the past few months, the commission realized both the Communications Act and the First Amendment barred any attempt to revitalize the news distortion policy. Congress should remind the FCC of that fact.

Earlier this year, FIRE filed a comment encouraging the FCC to withdraw these and all of its other content-based regulations. A few of those regulations are required by federal law, and so it’s up to Congress to repeal them. Others are just within the FCC’s interpretation of its authority. To address those, we recommend Congress explicitly bar the FCC from regulating any constitutionally protected content.

Why this matters now, and why it will always matter

The bottom line with all of these proposed laws is simple: we must limit the government’s power to censor either directly or indirectly.

Although free speech issues are getting more attention this year as a result of the current administration’s actions, the threats these laws are designed to address began before our current political turmoil, and will continue long after it ends — unless Congress steps in to do something about it. Our goal is not to merely prevent one side or the other from abusing their power and targeting protected speech; it is to prevent any administration from doing so. This approach is the only way to successfully protect our First Amendment rights and the democratic culture it is meant to preserve.

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November 10, 2025
Princeton president misunderstands FIRE data — and campus free speech
The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. In his new book Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right, Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber reports on FIRE’s data on free speech and First Amendment norms on campus while making no effort to understand it and misusing the data of others. In other words, he’s skipped that first step — and now Princeton is tumbling down the staircase.

Eisgruber’s book makes many questionable claims, from dismissing good-faith critiques to muddying examples of censorship. But for our purposes here, let’s cabin our criticism to the nine pages of Chapter 5 that he devotes to dismissing data, including FIRE’s.

Our research

FIRE’s research — like all research — is imperfect, and we welcome criticism. Research isn’t about proving you’re right. It’s about stress-testing ideas to see what holds up. Scrutiny is how the process works, and it’s how the work gets better.

Our largest and most ambitious annual research project is the College Free Speech Rankings, which combines three factors: written speech policies, a national survey of student views on campus free expression, and outcomes from campus speech controversies. Reasonable minds can differ on how to weigh these factors, which is why we make all our data available to anyone who requests it. If someone believes these factors should be weighed differently, or has different factors they would like to include, they are welcome to do so, and to use our data.

College Free Speech Rankings

The College Free Speech Rankings is a comprehensive comparison of the student experience of free speech on their campuses.

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We’re also transparent about our methodology. This year, we preregistered our methodology before our survey data came back, in part to make clear that we do not — and cannot — reverse-engineer outcomes to put certain schools on top or bottom.

Every year when we release the report, we get feedback. We take the thoughtful critiques seriously and have often used them to improve our work. Again, feedback is part of the process. But not all feedback comes from a place of good faith.

Bias or projection?

Eisgruber introduces FIRE in a manner intended to discredit us, but that probably ends up saying more about his biases than any of ours:

An organization called FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) has probably done as much as any other entity to create the impression that free speech is under continuous assault on college campuses. FIRE is a nonprofit advocacy organization that describes itself as defending free speech and free thought for all Americans; it was founded in 1999 with a focus on campus speech issues and now receives a substantial portion of its funding from foundations often associated with conservative political causes.

Eisgruber provides no footnote explaining or citing the conservative foundations to which he objects, when the “now” period started, or how “substantial” are those alleged funds. In reality, FIRE is funded by a very politically diverse cohort, and in the last fiscal year, 74% of our funding came from individual donors compared to 26% from foundation grants.

Eisgruber’s implication is that FIRE is biased towards conservatives because we have conservative donors. (So does Princeton, and few would accuse it of being politically conservative.) He has to rely on these vague implications because if you look at the evidence, you have to contend with FIRE’s many cases on behalf of liberal students and professors. Or our lawsuit against the Trump administration. Or against the governments of Texas and Florida, in which we succeeded in blocking speech restrictions passed by deep-red legislatures.

If he actually had any evidence that donors were influencing our research or casework, he’d have shown it. And with regard to our research, if the methodology and procedures are solid, it wouldn’t even matter if we were conservative, liberal, or from another planet entirely. If someone you hate tells you the sky is blue, the fact that you don’t like them is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of their statements. So he’s just tossing out the accusation and hoping that’s enough to bias his audience against us in the section that follows.

Eisgruber then brings up FIRE’s supposed bias to praise another group’s research in a similar vein about free expression in the University of North Carolina system (more on that later):

Unlike at FIRE and its kin, the researchers brought no discernible ideological or advocacy agenda to their work: The three original collaborators on the project included one self-identified conservative (McNeilly) and one self-identified liberal (Larson).

If he had bothered to fact-check this claim by contacting FIRE, he would have found that our research department and those of us who work on the rankings share at least that level of political diversity (as does FIRE as a whole)! As for their indiscernible advocacy agenda, he may have missed their excellent recommendations for free expression:

In sum, we recommend that efforts to improve the campus culture for free expression and constructive dialogue be holistic and attentive to the diverse contexts in which students encounter politics. Tangibly, we suggest that the UNC system encourage researchers from member institutions to review these data, conduct their own analyses, and develop campus-specific plans for creating and evaluating their own interventions.

As agendas go, that’s a praiseworthy one to have, but it is an agenda.

But while Eisgruber is quick to baselessly accuse FIRE of bias, in all his discussion of our findings, he never once pauses to consider his own biases. His defense of the status quo for free speech on campus is, not coincidentally, a defense of his own record as president. That’s a pretty big blind spot, and it shows. Even worse, his desire to justify himself leads to some exceptionally lazy takes on our research.

When ‘it’s not clear’ really means ‘I didn’t bother to look into it’

Eisgruber takes issue with the methodology of FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database. He notes that before 2024, it was called the Disinvitation Database, and adds a footnote: “It is not clear what changed when the database expanded.” That’s not even close to correct, as we published a complete explanation about the changes on Feb. 8, 2024. It would be absurd for us to completely overhaul the methodology and purpose of our database without explaining those changes somewhere. That’s why we did explain it. He could have found this out with a simple Google search.

One might be forgiven for missing this kind of mistake when writing a critique on X. It’s less excusable in the context of a book, for which he presumably had research assistance and certainly had an editor. (Or did he? Curiously, the same footnote also says that the database was “accessed November 17, 2025,” which, at the time of this writing, has not yet occurred.)

As for the substance of his critique, Eisgruber calls the database a “hot mess,” claiming our inclusion criteria are too broad and that we “[conflate] disinvitation with deplatforming and censorship.” He never defines these terms, so it’s hard to know what distinction he thinks we missed. His example? He cites as “absurd” our decision to classify as a disinvitation attempt a situation in which NYU students tried to replace their commencement speaker, former Princeton President Shirley Tilghman, with someone more famous, followed by several similar efforts at Princeton.

Reasonable minds can disagree on what such episodes mean, but by our stated methodology, they clearly count as deplatforming attempts:

A deplatforming attempt . . . is an attempt to prevent someone from expressing themselves in a public forum on campus. Deplatforming attempts include attempts to disinvite speakers from campus speeches or commencement ceremonies.

That definition is public and consistent. It doesn’t depend on some subjective criterion for how “bad” we or Eisgruber think an incident was, or how justified students felt in opposing it. If Eisgruber wants to challenge our data, he could propose his own definition and see what share of our dataset fits it. Instead, he cherry-picks anecdotes he happens not to care about, and conveniently ignores more egregious examples.

He also objects to the idea that disinvitations — even successful ones — can threaten free speech, arguing that FIRE “confuses the exercise of free speech with threats to free speech.” But that’s a false dichotomy. The exercise of free speech can absolutely threaten others’ ability to speak.

As FIRE has noted on many occasions, calls for disinvitation are themselves protected speech — so are calls for violence in response to speech that don’t meet the bar for incitement.

Eisgruber agrees with FIRE that shoutdowns are never acceptable and are incompatible with free speech. But it’s hard to reconcile that with his position that disinvitation attempts can never threaten free speech. They often involve appeals to university authorities to shut down an event or speech. In other words, they are attempts by one group of people to decide for their peers what speech their peers will be able to hear, similar to a heckler’s veto.

Eisgruber also presents a heckler’s veto from 1970 that doesn’t appear in our database, as if to prove that campus illiberalism didn’t start with Gen Z. Believe me, we’re aware. We’ve written plenty about McCarthy-era censorship and the Red Scare. Plus, FIRE was founded back in 1999, long before today’s version of the culture wars. Illiberalism on campus isn’t new, and we certainly wouldn’t argue that it is new after 25 years of fighting it. It just takes different forms in different eras — and we track it wherever it appears. The reason Eisgruber’s example wasn’t included in our database is simply that we made the decision to limit the database to incidents that occurred since FIRE’s founding.

REPORT: Faculty members more likely to self-censor today than during McCarthy era

Today, one in four faculty say they’re very or extremely likely to self-censor in academic publications, and over one in three do so during interviews or lectures — more than during and Second Red Scare and McCarthyism.

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He praises Princeton for not having given in to a heckler’s veto since then: “Hickel got shouted down not by Gen Z but by members of an older generation that now criticizes young people for failing to respect free speech. Princeton students allowed every speaker in the next half century to have their say.” Unfortunately, this may have jinxed Princeton, as, apparently after Eisgruber’s manuscript was finalized, two speaking events at Princeton were disrupted.

Survey critiques suggest he didn’t read our survey

Eisgruber next tries to argue that concerns about self-censorship are overblown. He starts reasonably enough, noting that survey data can be tricky:

Polling data is, however, notoriously sensitive to sampling biases and small differences in the formulation of questions. Data about concepts such as free speech requires careful interpretation that it rarely gets.

We agree! But then he cites FIRE’s 2021 finding that over 80% of college students self-censor at least sometimes, and 21% do so often, only to dismiss it: “Should we worry about these numbers? Not without more evidence and better poll questions.”

What’s wrong with the poll question? He never says. He just moves on to talk about other surveys. So let’s stay on this one. What does he think about self-censorship? Well, as he defines it, he actually thinks it’s good:

Indeed, I am most concerned about the substantial fraction of people who say they never self-censor. Do they really say everything that pops into their heads? . . . Of course people self-censor! Politeness, tact, and civility require it. And as we become more aware of the sensibilities of the diverse people around us, we may realize that we need to self-censor more often or differently than we did before.

Do students share his conception of self-censorship as politeness or conscientious refusal to offend? Here’s how we have asked that question for the past four years:
This next series of questions asks you about self-censorship in different settings. For the purpose of these questions, self-censorship is defined as follows: Refraining from sharing certain views because you fear social (exclusion from social events), professional (losing job or promotion), legal (prosecution or fine), or violent (assault) consequences, whether in person or remotely (by phone or online), and whether the consequences come from state or non-state sources.

Q: How often do you self-censor during conversations with other students on campus?

Q: How often do you self-censor during conversations with your professors?

Q: How often do you self-censor during classroom discussions?

Never

Rarely

Occasionally, once or twice a month

Fairly often, a couple times a week

Very often, nearly every day
As you can see, this isn’t asking about garden-variety tact or politeness. To be fair to Eisgruber, we didn’t provide this definition when we asked the question in 2021 (though he should have sought the most recent data; that he did not is itself strange). Unfortunately for him, since adding this clarifying definition, the portion of students who self-censor at least rarely has increased to 91-93%, depending on the context, and those reporting that they often self-censor now stand at 24-28%.

In other words, a quarter of university students in America regularly silence themselves out of fear of social, professional, legal, or violent consequences. As for his request for “more evidence,” the responses are dire year after year. Maybe Eisgruber still thinks that’s fine, but we don’t.

Support for violence and shoutdowns is worse than he admits

Eisgruber also downplays how many students think it’s acceptable to use violence or shoutdowns to silence speakers, and tries to hand-wave away data in an explanation that utterly mangles First Amendment law:

One explanation highlights ambiguities in the survey questions. For example, American free speech law agrees with students who say that it is “rarely” or “sometimes” acceptable to stop people from talking. Not all speech is protected. If, for example, speakers are about to shout “fire” falsely in a crowded theater, or if they are preparing to incite imminent violence, you may and should do what you can to (in the words of the poll question) “prevent them from talking.”

We would be remiss to pass up an opportunity to once again address the immortal, zombie claim that you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater. Eisgruber did better than many others by including “falsely,” but it’s still incomplete and misleading (did a panic occur? Was it likely or intended? These questions matter) and has been for a very long time. It’s dispiriting to see it come from the president of an Ivy League university — one who has a law degree, no less. But also, the fact that you as a listener think someone might be about to engage in unprotected speech doesn’t mean you should dole out vigilante justice to prevent it. If you do, you’ll probably go to jail.

Different wording, same story: growing student support for violence and shoutdowns shows campus free speech is in danger.

But leaving that aside, what of his contention that the high levels of support are just an artifact of the “prevent them from talking” wording? Well, here’s the wording of our latest poll question on that subject:
How acceptable would you say it is for students to engage in the following actions to protest a campus speaker?

Q: Shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus.

Q: Blocking other students from attending a campus speech.

Q: Using violence to stop a campus speech.

Always acceptable

Sometimes acceptable

Rarely acceptable

Never acceptable
With this different wording, we find 71% at least “rarely” accept shoutdowns, 54% at least “rarely” support blocking, and 34% at least “rarely” support violence. Different wording, same story: growing student support for violence and shoutdowns shows campus free speech is in danger.

It’s important to note that Eisgruber offers only quibbles with question wording, and offers theories for how students may be interpreting questions. He doesn’t offer competing data. While that might be understandable for the typical social media critic, if all this could be debunked by “better poll questions,” no one is in a better position to commission said research (at least on his or her campus) than the president of a university. Instead of offering unconvincing dismissals of existing data, he could have contributed to the body of knowledge with his “better” questions. We still encourage him to do so. Seriously. Please run a free speech survey at Princeton.

As much as FIRE or Eisgruber may wish these poll numbers were different, we need to deal with the world as it is.

Refuting FIRE data with . . . data that agree with FIRE’s data

So what data does Eisgruber use to support his case that the situation on campus is rosier than FIRE’s data suggests? As mentioned earlier, he turns to a study of the UNC system called “Free Expression and Constructive Dialogue in the University of North Carolina.” We were darkly amused by this because FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens, who heads up our College Free Speech Rankings survey, was approached by that study’s authors based on his work on surveys for FIRE and Heterodox Academy — and they consulted with Stevens about what questions to include in their survey. Here’s Eisgruber:

I believe, however, that the analysis by Ryan, Engelhardt, Larson, and McNeilly accurately describes most colleges and universities. Certainly it chimes with my own experiences at Princeton.

This could be in a textbook next to “confirmation bias.” The data that jibes with his experience he sees as more trustworthy. Yet this survey does not refute FIRE’s findings, but is perfectly compatible with them. The rosy finding upon which Eisgruber puts a lot of weight is their finding that faculty do not push political agendas in class. This isn’t an area that FIRE studies, so it’s not a refutation of our work. More importantly, it’s not asking the same question.

Eisgruber goes on:

There is another reason why the North Carolina study’s conclusions are plausible. They mesh with and reflect broader, well-documented trends in American political life. A mountain of evidence shows that over the past several decades, and especially in the twenty-first century, political identities have hardened.

But FIRE’s data is also perfectly compatible with the idea of increasing polarization. It’s hard, therefore, even to find the disagreement to which he’s pointing when he says their data is good and our data is bad.

The UNC survey, like ours, found “campuses do not consistently achieve an atmosphere that promotes free expression” and “students who identify as conservative face distinctive challenges.” This is fully compatible with our data. It’s not clear where Eisgruber finds meaningful disagreement, and to the extent he frames this data as hopeful, it seems to misinterpret the authors’ findings.

Even if the data coming out of UNC schools were wildly different from our national-level data, it would be a mistake to take it as representative of the nation as a whole. The mistake, specifically, would be cherry-picking. Six of the seven UNC schools that we rank are in the top 20 of our College Free Speech Rankings. The most amusing part, from a FIRE perspective, is that this is not a coincidence. Those six each worked with FIRE’s policy reform team and achieved our highest “green light” rating for free speech, and have implemented programming to support free expression on campus. Indeed, since the early days of FIRE’s speech code ratings, FIRE has made a special effort to evaluate the speech codes of all of the UNC System schools, even the smaller ones, thanks to a partnership with the state’s James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (then called the Pope Center). So if UNC campuses are far more likely to have a “green light” than the rest of the nation, that’s in significant part because of FIRE’s ongoing work. Princeton, in comparison, receives FIRE’s lowest “red light” rating.

If anything, the UNC schools provide evidence that the way to improve free speech on campus is to address it head-on, rather than grasp about for some explanation to justify the current state of affairs. Speaking of which:

Don’t be like Eisgruber — real leaders listen

In the process of writing this piece, we received word of a very different response to FIRE data from administrators at Wellesley College:

“Both FIRE stats and our own research, in some ways, have been similar,” said [Wellesley Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs Tara] Murphy. “We are taking this seriously.”

In November [2024], Wellesley commissioned Grand River Solutions to conduct a survey on civil discourse among students. Out of 2,281 students invited to participate, 668 responded to at least one of the three questions, yielding a 29% response rate. The data was similar to the FIRE report: 36.8% of respondents said they felt either “very reluctant or somewhat reluctant” to share their views on controversial topics in the classroom, and 30% felt similarly hesitant outside of class.

That’s the kind of response we hope for. If campuses aren’t sure that FIRE has it right, they should be getting their own data so that they can address any campus free speech problems that the data may bear out.

We’re happy to report that in that sense FIRE’s rankings have been extremely successful. Many schools have reached out and worked with us to improve their policies and begin to implement programming to support free speech on campus. As dire as some of the stats can appear to be, FIRE has seen green shoots in the form of faculty and administrators who recognize the problem and want to do something about it.

Our research deserves, and has, more thoughtful critics. Princeton’s community deserves a president who is more curious about what’s happening on his campus, and serious about improving the environment for free speech. Maybe it’s a coincidence that the academic experience that ultimately led Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglate to found FIRE began when they met during their freshman year at … Princeton University. Or maybe it’s not.

If finding out ever becomes a priority for Eisgruber, we’d be happy to help.
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October 31, 2025
FIRE SURVEY: Colleagues and faculty unions fail to defend scholars targeted for speech

“I was afraid to leave my home for several weeks. I was afraid for the safety of my children. I received death threats.”

“I was vomiting throughout the day, couldn’t eat, was having constant panic attacks, couldn’t be around people or leave the house . . .”

“I was getting violent threats via email every day . . . The police were doing daily drive-bys because so many people threatened me with violence.”

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 28, 2025 — These are just some of the harrowing first-person accounts collected by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in “Sanctioned Scholars: The Price of Speaking Freely in Today’s Academy,” a new survey of scholars who have been targeted for any protected speech since the beginning of the decade.

“Cancellation campaigns are often wrapped in the language of preventing ‘emotional harm,’” said FIRE’s Manager of Polling and Analytics Nathan Honeycutt. “But our survey shows that it’s the mobs themselves that inflict lasting mental anguish on academics, many of whom still suffer the consequences long after the controversy subsided.”

FIRE reached out to the over 600 academics listed in its Scholars Under Fire database who were sanctioned or targeted between 2020 and 2024, of whom 209 completed our survey. (FIRE’s survey was conducted before the Sept. 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk, which was followed by nearly a hundred scholars being targeted, over a dozen fired, and 2025 emerging as a new record high.)

Nearly all (94%) who participated in the survey described the impact of their experience as negative. Roughly two-thirds (65%) experienced emotional distress, and significant chunks reported facing harrowing social setbacks, such as being shunned at work (40%) or lost professional relationships (47%) and friendships (33%).

For some, the consequences were severe. About a quarter of the scholars who completed the survey reported that they sought psychological counseling (27%), and 1 in 5 lost their jobs entirely (20%).

Nearly all institutions of higher learning promise academic freedom and free speech rights to their scholars. But many of the targeted scholars reported that they received no support from precisely the institutions and individuals who were supposed to have their backs in moments of crisis and controversy. Only 21% reported that they received at least a moderate amount of public support of their faculty union, for example, and a paltry 11% reported that they received public support from administrators.

Tellingly, colleagues felt more comfortable supporting the targeted scholars privately rather than publicly. Just under half of scholars received at least a moderate amount of private support from colleagues (49%), but only about a third (34%) received their support publicly.

In their open-ended responses to FIRE’s survey, many scholars reported that this was their deepest wound: the public silence and abandonment by their peers. “My biggest disappointment was in the cowardice of other faculty who refused to do anything public on my behalf,” one professor wrote.

“Free speech advocates have long argued that acts of censorship don’t just silence one person,” said Honeycutt. “They chill the speech of anyone who agrees with them, and even those who disagree but are too cowed to defend their right to speak. Our report shows that the academy urgently needs courageous faculty willing to stand up for their colleagues, even when doing so is difficult or unpopular.”

FIRE’s report also found a noticeable partisan gap in the level of public support reported by scholars. Larger proportions of conservative than liberal faculty reported that they received support from the general public (55% vs. 37%). But far fewer than their liberal peers reported that they received public support from their faculty union (7% vs. 29%) or their university colleagues (19% vs. 40%).

“Support for academic freedom should never depend on the views being expressed, but our survey shows that’s exactly what’s happening,” said FIRE Research Advisor Sean Stevens. “If faculty unions and institutions of higher learning won’t stand by scholars in their moments of crisis, they can’t claim to stand for free speech and inquiry.”

The Scholars Under Fire survey was fielded from Jan. 15 to April 15, 2025. A total of 635 scholars were invited to participate in this study, and 209 participated. The scholars recruited were individuals listed in FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire Database because they experienced a sanction or sanction attempt between 2020 and 2024. Participation in the survey was anonymous to encourage candid responses without fear of personal consequence, and to allow participants to speak more freely about their experiences.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought—the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE recognizes that colleges and universities play a vital role in preserving free thought within a free society. To this end, we place a special emphasis on defending the individual rights of students and faculty members on our nation’s campuses, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience.

CONTACT:

Alex Griswold, Communications Campaign Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]

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October 27, 2025
FIRE statement on the White House’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education

On Oct. 1, the Wall Street Journal reported that the White House is asking colleges to sign an agreement to secure preferential treatment for government funding. FIRE is working to obtain the full agreement, but initial reporting already indicates it raises threats to free speech and academic freedom.

The following statement can be attributed to Tyler Coward, FIRE lead counsel for government affairs.

Freedom thrives when the people, not bureaucrats, decide which ideas are worthy of discussion, debate, or support.

As FIRE has long argued, campus reform is necessary. But overreaching government coercion that tries to end-run around the First Amendment to impose an official orthodoxy is unacceptable. And the White House’s new Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education raises red flags.

The compact includes troubling language, such as calling on institutions to eliminate departments deemed to “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” Let’s be clear: Speech that offends or criticizes political views is not violence. Conflating words with violence undermines both free speech and efforts to combat real threats.

The compact also requires university employees to refrain from “actions or speech related to politics.” If the language merely barred high-ranking employees from engaging in partisan political activity on behalf of the university, it would reflect existing and generally permissible IRS restrictions. But the compact’s reported wording goes further by suggesting a blanket prohibition on all staff engaging in political speech. For public institutions, that is deeply problematic. Public university faculty have the First Amendment right to speak about politics in their teaching and scholarship. Outside of their official duties, faculty and non-faculty university employees retain full First Amendment rights to speak off-the-clock as private citizens on matters of public concern. Banning them from doing so would be flatly unconstitutional.

A government that can reward colleges and universities for speech it favors today can punish them for speech it dislikes tomorrow. That’s not reform. That’s government-funded orthodoxy.

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October 2, 2025
FIRE statement on coalition backing press freedom at Santa Fe arts school

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and three partner organizations demanded that the Institute for American Indian Arts and its new president Shelly Lowe drop all sanctions on student David McNicholas, who was punished for supposedly “bullying” IAIA administrators. The offense? Investigative journalism exposing an empty food pantry on a campus where many students live below the poverty line. Since then, McNicholas has faced over a year of retaliation from administrators. Most recently, IAIA said he couldn’t even put up posters soliciting student submissions for a new edition of his independent student magazine, since it is not a school-funded publication — despite the fact that school policies list no such requirement.

FIRE, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Student Press Law Center are urging Lowe to drop the sanctions on McNicholas and revise the school’s anti-bullying and posting policies to comply with the First Amendment.

The following statement is from FIRE Strategic Campaigns Specialist William Harris.

Student journalist David McNicholas isn’t backing down after the Institute for American Indian Arts tried to silence him yet again. And now, he has four national nonprofits on his side. IAIA’s forbidding McNicholas from putting up posters seeking student submissions — ironically, for a new, free-speech-themed edition of The Young Warrior — is just the latest attack in its retribution campaign against investigative journalism that put McNicholas on probation, cost him work, and even left him homeless.

Coalition Letter to IAIA, September 25, 2025

FIRE and other organizations urge the Institute of American Indian Arts to drop its sanctions against McNicholas and comply with the First Amendment.

Read More

IAIA’s brand-new president, Shelly Lowe, should know better. A former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an institution that has faced many attempts by politicians to police artistic expression over the years, she now leads a school whose attacks on press freedom and expression are straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

Such hostility towards the First Amendment is especially offensive at an arts school — the last place where free expression should be under attack. Strong speech policies protect the sort of expression that drives culture forward.

Over 500 members of the public have signed on to our Take Action campaign demanding that IAIA reverse course. Lowe should heed the call.

Stand with us and tell IAIA to end this censorial saga and restore free expression to campus.

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September 25, 2025
FIRE statement on FCC threat to revoke ABC broadcast license over Jimmy Kimmel remarks about Charlie Kirk

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is once again abusing his position to try to assert government control over public discourse, spuriously invoking the “public interest” standard to selectively target speech the government dislikes.

President Trump has recently called for the FCC to revoke ABC’s broadcast license because he does not like the way the network — and Jimmy Kimmel in particular — speaks about him. Just yesterday, Trump suggested to a reporter that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s statement about prosecuting “hate speech” might mean she will “go after” ABC “because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate.”

Now, Carr is threatening ABC for comments about Charlie Kirk’s shooter that Kimmel made during his opening monologue on Monday, insinuating that the shooter was part of “the MAGA gang.”

The FCC has no authority to control what a late night TV host can say, and the First Amendment protects Americans’ right to speculate on current events even if those speculations later turn out to be incorrect. Subjecting broadcasters to regulatory liability when anyone on their network gets something wrong would turn the FCC into an arbiter of truth and cast an intolerable chill over the airwaves.

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September 18, 2025
You can’t fire your way to free speech
Last week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University was a horrific reminder that political violence has no place in a free society. In the days since, colleges and universities have faced growing calls to fire faculty and punish students for speech critical of Kirk and justifying the shooting.

As government actors, public colleges are bound by the Constitution. Whether it is criticism of George Floyd in 2020 or Charlie Kirk today, the First Amendment protects speech, no matter how crude, offensive, or ill-timed some may perceive it to be.

Moments like these test our commitment to free expression. When a college caves to outrage, it invites more censorship and sends the message that no speech is safe. Punishing speech some deem offensive only moves the line of what’s “unacceptable” inward, constantly shrinking the already fragile space for debate.

And yet, across the country, institutions are doing just that. FIRE has already reviewed or intervened in dozens of such cases, but the number continues to grow. For instance:
- At Clemson University, administrators initially said they would uphold First Amendment protections after public outrage over social media posts by two faculty members and a staffer about Kirk’s assassination. In a September 12 statement, Clemson condemned the speech and, under pressure from lawmakers, falsely claimed the First Amendment does not protect speech that “undermines the dignity of others.” It then suspended one employee on September 13 and terminated them two days later. On September 16, Clemson announced it had also dismissed two faculty members following an investigation into “inappropriate social media content” related to Kirk’s death.
- At Florida Atlantic University, a tenured professor retweeted criticisms of Kirk’s rhetoric and Kirk’s own quotes. None of her posts condoned or advocated violence, but calls for her removal circulated on social media. FAU placed the professor on administrative leave pending an investigation.
- At Montana State University–Northern, administrators suspended an associate professor after she posted about Kirk’s assassination on her personal account. She explicitly stated that she did not condone violence, yet administrators still removed her from the classroom.
- At the University of South Dakota, a professor posted criticism of Kirk, calling him a “hate-spreading Nazi.” The governor shared the post and declared he was “glad” the Board of Regents intended to fire this professor. The university has since placed the professor on leave and issued an intent to dismiss him.
- At Texas State University, a student mimicked the Kirk assassination during a memorial event hosted by the local TPUSA chapter. Governor Greg Abbott publicly demanded the student’s expulsion, and the university complied, claiming it would not tolerate speech that “mocks, trivializes, or promotes violence.”
These are not isolated incidents. Across the country, calls for punishment of protected speech are reaching astonishing levels.

If you’re a student or faculty member facing discipline, FIRE can help.

Through our Campus Rights Advocacy program, we field thousands of submissions every year from students and faculty whose rights are under threat, and we intervene directly with administrators to resolve disputes.

Our Faculty Legal Defense Fund (FLDF) gives public college faculty legal help when they’re punished for what they say whether in class, scholarship, or public. Faculty can call FLDF’s 24-hour hotline (254-500-FLDF) or submit a case online. If the case qualifies, we connect them with a local attorney from our network — free and fast.

And if colleges are looking to make sure their policies on faculty and student speech are in good shape before controversial speech tests them, they can contact our Policy Reform team at [email protected].

The principle is simple: At public universities, the First Amendment applies. And without free speech and academic freedom, higher education can’t do its job.

Faculty must be able to speak their minds without risking their jobs. Public universities must resist the current political pressure to censor. FIRE will fight for First Amendment rights, no matter the content of the speech.
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September 17, 2025
Roll up roll up for the great higher education fire sale

Since the announcement, most eyes interested in “radical transformation” have been on the creation of a new “super-university” – Greenwich and Kent becoming the London and South East University Group.

But The Times is reporting a very different kind of tie-up – which if it comes to pass could have much more interesting implications.

It says that the University of Buckingham, the UK’s only “independent” university, is considering a £150 million sale to Global University Systems (GUS).

It suggests that the potential sale could compromise the university’s Royal Charter, non-profit status, and academic integrity – risking its identity as a “free speech and research-focused institution”.

Precedented

If that sounds and feels “unprecedented”, you may not have noticed the extent to which everything from research parks to student accommodation are already (part or fully-)owned by private companies.

You may also not have noticed any number of mergers, takeovers and fire sales among small private HE providers – many of which specialise in the kinds of franchised provision that have been generating considerable regulatory interest in recent months.

There’s also Richmond, the American University in London. When founder Sir Cyril Taylor died in 2018, he bequeathed his for-profit company (American Institute for Foreign Study) to his own charitable foundation (Cyril Taylor Charitable Foundation).

It created what former vice chancellor Lawrence Abeln called a charity “operating like a shell for a commercial company it wholly owns” – allowing commercial interests to control educational decisions through charitable structures while maintaining the appearance of independence.

Abeln argued that the foundation used funding as leverage to demand governance changes, including his forced resignation, threatening the university’s survival unless commercial interests were satisfied.

It mirrors concerns about the potential Buckingham sale – that once charitable educational institutions become dependent on private sector funding or ownership, academic independence becomes vulnerable to commercial priorities.

Even when the charitable structure remains intact, the substance of independent governance can be hollowed out, creating what critics might term a “stealth privatisation” where commercial control operates behind charitable facades.

Any number of things could be going on behind the scenes that already resemble that in universities that have breached, or are close to breaching, their banking covenants.

But the wholescale takeover of a university with a Royal Charter? Really?

We work at supplying HE

Back in 2020, five men registered a UK company called “GGE UK Newco” in a WeWork near London Fields. Within four months, it had acquired university title, degree awarding powers, and registration with the Office for Students – a process that typically takes years for new higher education providers.

The company pulled this off by purchasing the assets of the former Regent’s University London charity, including its degree awarding powers (awarded in 2012) and university title (granted in 2013). On September 29th, GGE UK Newco changed its name to “Regent’s University London Limited,” becoming the wholly-owned product of a partnership between the original Regent’s University and Galileo Global Education, a large international education provider with over 110,000 students worldwide.

The transaction appeared to have bypassed normal regulatory processes entirely. While new providers typically wait around 180 days and must pass a Quality and Standards Review, no such review appeared to have been conducted for Regent’s University London Limited. OfS was largely silent on the specifics, raising real questions about transparency and whether standard due diligence procedures were followed.

As DK noted at the time, the case was interesting insofar as it suggested that university titles and degree awarding powers can effectively be bought and sold as assets. With some independent providers still waiting on registration decisions, the apparent fast-tracking raised concerns about fairness and regulatory consistency, potentially setting a precedent for more financially-motivated restructuring in the sector.

And there’s more

Scroll forward to March 2023, when IU Group acquired the education and training activities of the London Institute of Banking and Finance through a structural split.

The original Royal Charter charity was renamed “The London Foundation for Banking & Finance (LFBF)” and continues as a charitable foundation, while the commercial education business now operates as “LIBF Limited” (a wholly owned UK subsidiary of IU Group) trading under the original name “The London Institute of Banking & Finance.”

That preserved the charitable Royal Charter structure while transferring the degree-awarding educational operations to private ownership.

Then in 2014, struggling Ashridge Business School was acquired by Hult International Business School in what was described as both a merger and acquisition driven by Ashridge’s need for “financial salvation.” Hult provided a £50 million investment, and the schools completed an operational merger in 2015.

Ashridge now operates as “Hult Ashridge Executive Education” – the executive education arm of Hult International Business School, with the historic Ashridge House estate serving as Hult’s flagship executive education campus. Unlike LIBF, this was a complete absorption rather than a structural split, with Ashridge’s independent existence ending as it became part of Hult’s global network of campuses across Boston, London, Dubai, Shanghai, San Francisco, and New York.

And then there’s the College of Law.

It can trace its origins to 1876 with the formation of Gibson & Weldon, a leading tutorial firm. In 1962, The Law Society created The College of Law by merging its own Law Society School of Law (founded in 1903) with Gibson & Weldon, establishing it as a specialist institution for training solicitors.

It was formally incorporated by Royal Charter on 5 December 1975 and registered as a charity in May 1976, with the stated aim “to promote the advancement of legal education and the study of law in all its branches.” This gave it constitutional status as a chartered institution dedicated to legal education. And in 2006, it was granted degree-awarding powers by the Privy Council.

So when it was sold to Montagu Private Equity for around £200 million in 2012, the transaction revealed just how valuable degree-awarding powers had become as tradeable assets.

The deal involved splitting the institution – the original College of Law retained its Royal Charter and charitable status under a new Legal Education Foundation, while the commercial education business, crucially including those 2006 degree-awarding powers, moved to a newly created for-profit company called “The University of Law Limited” (originally incorporated as “Col Subco No.1 Limited”).

DAPs, it seemed, could now be packaged and sold as part of a commercial education business – degree-awarding powers as an asset class.

At the time, constitutional lawyers questioned how powers granted to a Royal Charter body could legitimately transfer to what was essentially a separate company. But the then responsible Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) maintained that the powers remained valid because the “whole education and training business” had moved to the new entity. The precedent was set – and so in 2015, when the University of Law was acquired by GUS, its valuable degree-awarding powers travelled with it as part of the commercial package.

Or take Arden. Originally founded as Resource Development International (RDI) in 1990 by entrepreneur John Holden, the distance learning provider was sold to US-based Capella Education in 2011 as part of Capella’s international expansion strategy. The timing proved crucial – RDI was granted Taught Degree Awarding Powers in April 2014, gained full university status in August 2015, and was immediately put back on the market when Capella’s international strategy faltered.

By August 2016, GUS acquired Arden for £15 million – demonstrating how rapidly degree-awarding powers could travel through corporate hands. The transaction showed DAPs functioning specifically as tradeable assets – Capella had effectively acquired a company that later gained valuable regulatory permissions, then sold those permissions onwards as part of a portfolio optimisation. For GUS, acquiring Arden provided another set of degree-awarding powers to add to its growing collection, which already included the University of Law.

Royal charters

But the potential Buckingham sale arguably represents a qualitatively different proposition from previous transactions. While ULaw, LIBF, Ashridge, and Richmond were specialist institutions operating in commercial-adjacent sectors – professional training, banking education, executive development, or niche international provision – Buckingham is the UK’s flagship independent university, purpose-built to demonstrate that alternatives to state higher education could thrive.

Established in 1976 and granted its Royal Charter in 1983, Buckingham has operated successfully for over four decades as Thatcher’s “proof of concept” for educational independence. Unlike the struggling institutions that sought private sector rescue or the professional training providers that already operated in quasi-commercial spaces, in theory the sale of Buckingham would represent the commodification of the university ideal itself.

It would also signal that even the most symbolically important Charter institutions – those created explicitly to preserve educational independence – could be subject to market forces when financial incentives align.

Whether structured as a direct sale or following a version of a model of splitting charitable and commercial operations, a Buckingham transaction would force regulators to confront fundamental questions they’ve previously avoided. The Office for Students, the Privy Council and potentially the Charity Commission would need to justify why the commercialisation of Britain’s flagship independent university serves the public interest.

If it happens, regardless of the technicalities of its legal structure, it would also establish that Royal Charter status provides no meaningful protection against commercialization, making virtually any institution a potential acquisition target – completing the evolution of degree-awarding powers from constitutional privileges into tradeable corporate assets.

Back to the future

As Mary Synge demonstrates in her analysis of university charity law regulation, universities are charities whose trustees have a fundamental legal duty to act “in the best interests of the charity” – not commercial interests, and not even student interests – at least as variously defined by politicians.

When charitable assets and degree-awarding powers become tradeable commodities, this feels like a fundamental breach of charity law principles that have governed universities for centuries. The strategic goals of “maximising growth in income” that might benefit institutional finances are legally distinct from – and potentially in conflict with – acting in the charity’s best interests for public benefit.

But the regulatory conditions that make the Buckingham sale possible have been deliberately created. Synge’s research shows how OfS has systematically weakened charity law oversight compared to its predecessor HEFCE, removing transparency requirements, diluting governance standards, and abandoning serious incident reporting.

Where HEFCE demanded universities demonstrate compliance with charity law principles, OfS has reduced this to a mailing list subscription. The regulatory hollowing-out creates the conditions where transactions that should trigger intensive charity law scrutiny can proceed with minimal oversight.

When the regulator tasked with promoting charity law compliance barely acknowledges charity law exists, constitutional protections become meaningless.

Back to the future

As ever, we’ve been here before – or at least the FE sector has. Back in 2016, FE Week got hold of a leaked government document that revealed the Department for Education (DfE) was actively planning for private sector acquisition of failing FE colleges.

A draft “Framework for due diligence in the FE sector following area reviews” (a process which itself had nudged/inspired/funded a series of mergers and groups) specifically addressed the “acquisition of an FE college by a private sector organisation,” noting that private providers “may have different benchmarks and parameters as to what is acceptable in terms of both curriculum and financial performance.”

BIS guidance published that March had already unveiled government plans to introduce an insolvency regime for colleges, explicitly stating that following area reviews, government would “no longer bail out colleges in financial trouble, but would instead allow them to go bust.” Sound familiar?

Critics warned of potential “fire sales” where private equity firms could asset-strip college buildings and facilities, cherry-picking profitable courses while abandoning community obligations. And the University and College Union (UCU) pointed to American examples of private equity involvement leading to “derisory rates of graduation, crushing levels of debt and of course dubious value.”

The Technical and Further Education Bill (2016) created a “Special Administration Regime” for FE – essentially corporate insolvency procedures for FE colleges with an “education objective” twist. One battle during debate on the Bill came when Labour’s Gordon Marsden attempted to protect publicly-funded college assets from private acquisition.

Marsden argued that FE colleges represented decades of public investment – from 1950s local authority funding through the multi-billion pound Building Colleges for the Future programme – and warned that defeat would enable private equity “asset stripping” of educational institutions built with taxpayer money.

But then Minister Robert Halfon rejected the amendment – arguing that student protection must override asset protection, even if it meant transferring publicly-funded infrastructure to private companies. When the division was called, Conservative MPs defeated the amendment 8-5, explicitly authorising education administrators to transfer college assets to private entities if deemed necessary for the “education objective.”

It established the principle that educational assets, regardless of their public funding history, could be commodified and transferred to private ownership when market logic demanded it.

Here in 2026, we have a Labour, not Conservative government. It is already “interested” in what’s been going on in the franchised for-profit sector. But it doesn’t seem to have been especially keen to question what’s been going on from a profit/principle point of view. And it’s not clear that what is planned in regulatory terms will be nimble enough to tackle the real questions that surround outcomes or quality.

As is increasingly clear, the “line” between private and public interest has already been blurred by loans, accommodation, research parks and all sorts of other aspects of HE. What the government does or doesn’t do over a potential sale of Buckingham will tell us whether it’s interested in, or willing to, draw a line before the examples in blogs like this become much less obscure.

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September 15, 2025