34% of US college students support using violence to block campus speakers they disagree with: FIRE study

A new study has found a record number of students on college campuses across the country support using violence to stop a speaker from coming to their campus whom they disagree with, or otherwise attempt to block them from speaking. 

The study from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) surveyed 68,510 students across 257 colleges and universities between January 3 and June 5 of 2026. This is the sixth year that FIRE has conducted the survey on college free speech. 

The survey found that 71 percent of students support shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus, up from 62 percent in 2022, the lowest result in the years of the survey. Additionally, 54 percent supported blocking other students from attending a campus speech, up from 37 percent in 2022.

The study found that 34 percent of students support using violent means to stop a campus speech, up from 20 percent in 2022. 

FIRE wrote that the study’s results over the past six years paint a “sobering picture,” and that the atmosphere on campuses “isn’t just cautious — it’s hostile.” FIRE added, “Students continue to show low tolerance for controversial speakers, and troublingly, more believe it’s acceptable to shout down a speaker, block access to events, or even resort to violence to silence campus speech than ever before. These attitudes have either held steady or worsened in the past year.”

The percentage of students who said they would allow a speaker on campus to talk about six “controversial topics,” three being conservative stances and three being liberal, fell between 2024 and 2025. 

The percentage of students who said they would allow a speaker on campus who says transgender people suffer from a mental disorder fell from 32 percent to 25 percent. Students allowing a speaker to talk about abortion being made illegal fell from 45 percent to 40 percent. 

The topics students expressed the most difficulty speaking about were the Israeli/Palestinain conflict (53 percent), abortion (46 percent), the 2024 election (42 percent), and trans rights (41 percent).

Barnard College in New York ranked last for free speech on campus, with Columbia University, Indiana University, the University of Washington, and Northeastern University rounding out the bottom five. The top five were Claremont McKenna College in California, which received a B- grade, Purdue University, the University of Chicago, Michigan Technological University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder.