INSOMNIA THEATER (CHRISTMAS EDITION): In case you didn’t see it yet in The Wall Street Journal or in George Will’s recent column in The Washington Post, FIRE recently released its 2016 Spotlight on Speech Codes report, just in time for the holidays. The biggest news is that for the first time in FIRE’s history, the number of schools maintaining red light speech codes has fallen below 50%, to 49.3%. That’s down from 75% eight years ago. Moreover, not only have the red light numbers gone down, the number of green light schools have gone up, from eight institutions (2%) in 2007 to 22 institutions (5%) this year.
To give you a better visual of our progress, FIRE’s talented media team along with our speech codes expert, Samantha Harris, put together this terrific, short video.
But despite this progress, 49% of schools is 49% too many, and between the federal government and student demands for speech codes, 2016 is likely to be a big year in the fight for free speech on campus.