Hundreds of Stanford student activists on Monday lined the hallways to protest the law school’s dean, Jenny Martinez, for apologizing to Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan, whom the activists shouted down last week. 

Every couple of months it seems the news features another college-campus free-speech incident. In 2021, for instance, a University of Rochester professor was suspended after quoting texts that contained a racial slur; MIT canceled a lecture by a speaker who’d criticized diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and a handful of students across the country felt they were kept out of campus leadership positions due to their conservative beliefs.

A series of recent controversies helped a higher education watchdog fill out its list of 10 colleges it deemed the worst at protecting freedom of speech.

The Foundation of Individual Rights in Education announced its “ 10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech ” Wednesday, with several colleges recently embroiled in free speech controversies prominently featured on the list.

A group of scholars and journalists announced last month that they were founding the University of Austin on the belief that free speech is being stifled on college campuses across America.

“The reality is that many universities no longer have an incentive to create an environment where intellectual dissent is protected and fashionable opinions are scrutinized,” wrote Pano Kanelos, the inaugural president, in the initial statement.

Many socialists believe that education is a universal human right. But evidently, not Arizona State University's (ASU) Students for Socialism. On Wednesday, they staged a protest to pressure campus administrators to expel Kyle Rittenhouse, the recently acquitted Kenosha shooter.

"Join us and rally against racist murderer Kyle Rittenhouse being permitted on our campus," said the student group on Twitter.

Dorian Abbot is a geophysicist at the University of Chicago. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) invited him to deliver a guest lecture on climate change, then canceled the talk due to campus outrage over his views.

The following audio comes from meetings between a student at Yale Law School and two administrators: associate dean Ellen Cosgrove and diversity director Yaseen Eldik. On Sept. 16, the student was told that his membership in the "oppressive" Federalist Society had "triggered" his peers. On Sept. 17, he was reminded that "there’s a bar you have to take."

The meetings came in response to an email the student had sent inviting classmates to a happy hour at his "trap house," which elicited allegations that he was planning a blackface party.