Students rank Hillsdale College high for its commitment to free speech, but a national civil liberties group still deemed it a “warning school” in its annual college free speech rankings.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, surveys students at more than 250 colleges and universities each year on questions of free speech. FIRE polled 180 Hillsdale students for the 2024 College Free Speech rankings.
“The ‘warning’ rating is based solely on whether the written policies at a school clearly put other values above students’ free speech, such that students would not have a reasonable expectation of having the same free speech rights as their public school peers,” FIRE Director of Policy Reform Laura Beltz told The Collegian. “The policy rating doesn’t take into account how the school performed on the student survey results about the climate for free speech.”
The rankings consider 10 components — six concerning student perception of free speech, including comfort expressing ideas, tolerance for liberal speakers, tolerance for conservative speakers, acceptability of disruptive conduct, administrative support for free expression, openness to discussion of specific political topics — and four concerning administrative behavior.
“In FIRE’s assessment of free speech in higher education, Hillsdale emerged as one of the top institutions by its metrics,” Hillsdale spokeswoman Emily Stack Davis said.
Hillsdale is drawn into a separate warning category from the other schools at the bottom of the list, which could cause readers to not realize the college is ranked, Davis said.
“Oddly, FIRE placed Hillsdale in a special ‘warning’ category that doesn’t show up easily among the other ranked schools,” Davis said. “Then, FIRE used this arbitrary classification to lower Hillsdale’s overall score. FIRE’s methodology is further biased: They gave only six institutions this ‘warning’ treatment — all are Christian.”
Hillsdale received the best score available in five of the six student perception categories.
“When it comes to student perception, there is nobody, no college in the country, whose score comes close to Hillsdale,” Chairman of Mathematics Thomas Treloar said. “Not even close.”
In the first three categories concerning administrative behavior — scholar support, scholar sanctions, and speaker disinvitations — Hillsdale received zeroes, meaning the administration has not tried to suppress free speech.
“According to FIRE’s own results, Hillsdale students express a sense of support of free speech both from the administration and the faculty, feel comfortable sharing their ideas, and are open to engaging with controversial and challenging concepts presented by others,” Davis said.
Yet the fourth administrative behavior category — FIRE’s rating of the school’s speech policies — earned Hillsdale its warning status due to experts from the college’s student conduct handbook prohibiting inappropriate conduct, expression, or social media posts, as well as behavior undermining the college’s mission.
While the college otherwise likely would have been one of the highest ranked schools on the list for free speech, according to Treloar, the “warning” label bumped Hillsdale’s score down 20 points.
“While Hillsdale does hold itself out as an institution that values civil and religious liberty, it does not clearly promise its students free expression rights on campus,” Beltz said. “Instead, it mandates adherence to the college’s moral values.”
Hillsdale is one of six warning schools, all religious. Among these, Hillsdale has the best free-speech ranking, followed by Liberty University, Pepperdine University, Brigham Young University, Baylor University, and Saint Louis University.
Treloar said FIRE should either find a better way to rank Christian schools with moral conduct requirements, or not include such schools on the list. The “warning” schools are the only schools on the list that maintain a Christian identity, according to Treloar.
“The whole point of the warning is saying, well, there’s some things the school, through its statements, is going to consider more important than free speech,” Treloar said. “That’s going to be true of any Christian school.”
Hillsdale’s student conduct catalog prohibits “behavior that — on the part of individuals or student organizations — violates the bounds of common decency and civility or the high moral standards entailed in the College Mission; interferes with the open dialogue fostered by the partnership between the College and its students; disrupts the climate of academic reflection and discourse proper to serious study; or that attempts to undermine or disrupt the academic, religious, or moral commitments entailed in the Mission of the College or the policies pursuant to those commitments.”
Beltz said private colleges have the right to prioritize other values above the right to free speech, but most claim a commitment to upholding free speech rights in writing.
“While Hillsdale students report self-censoring at a relatively low rate,” Beltz said, “the written policies at Hillsdale do reserve the right of the administration to take action against speech that is protected under First Amendment legal standards.”
Institutions like Hillsdale should be allowed to demand decorum consistent with its purposes, said Bradley Watson, associate professor of government at the Van Andel School of Government.
“Inevitably, in the realm of free speech—as in every other realm—there might be unreasonable or unthinking behaviors, and individuals should be corrected when they engage in them,” Watson said. “But as an institution, Hillsdale should keep doing exactly what it’s doing. There are literally thousands of other places where priorities are different.”
FIRE’s methodology could be misleading, Treloar said.
“Students themselves are very happy, and they feel like this is a very good environment,” he said. “It’s just the FIRE group that is saying, ‘no, there’s a problem there because of their catalog.’”
Freedom of speech does not cover all forms of expression, according to Watson.
“At an institution of higher learning, arguments should always be welcome, whereas the hurling of gratuitous insults should not,” Watson said.
Freedom of speech is important on college campuses for the same reason it’s important in the real world, Watson said.
“Freedom of speech, properly understood, is an important aid to the pursuit of human happiness — it’s one means by which we can come to know the true, the good, and the beautiful,” Watson said. “But it shouldn’t be confused with them.”
Davis said free speech has flourished at Hillsdale since its founding in 1844.
“Regardless of FIRE’s opinion, Hillsdale College will continue its dedication to the liberal arts,” Davis said. “The outcome of that commitment – the rigor and excellence that can be seen in the work of our students – speaks for itself.”
