The censorship of students on campus reached a record high this year, according to a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) documenting nearly 300 incidents in 2025 that involve attempts to investigate, censor, or punish students for constitutionally protected expression.
According to the “Students Under Fire Database” developed by FIRE, there have been 273 incidents recorded thus far in 2025 where at least one student or student group at a higher-education institution was investigated, censored, or otherwise punished for expression that is (or would be at a public institution) protected speech under the First Amendment.
The year 2025 set a new record, surpassing the previous all-time high of 252 incidents documented by FIRE in the year 2020.
“These findings paint a campus culture in which student expression is increasingly policed and controversial ideas are not tolerated,” said FIRE Senior Researcher Logan Dougherty. “College is supposed to be a place where ideas are freely shared, not where students should be concerned about whether their comments will be subject to university scrutiny.”
The FIRE database identifies the general topic surrounding each “controversy.” The topics listed in the database include “gender,” “sexuality,” “race,” “Israel-Palestinian conflict,” “political views,” “immigration,” “religion,” “abortion,” and “terrorism,” among others.
The “targets” in particular controversies that FIRE documented across the country include chapters of Turning Point USA, Students/Faculty for Justice in Palestine, College Republicans, the Federalist Society, Students Supporting Israel, Jewish Voices for Peace, Young Americans for Freedom, and greek-life organizations. Additionally, student-run publications and newspapers faced various forms of institutional action. The FIRE database also lists incidents where an individual student was the “target,” although not all are explicitly named.
In its press release, FIRE says it recorded an increase in efforts by government officials to influence a university’s response to student speech, particularly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. As an example, FIRE mentions that Republican Wisconsin Representative Derrick Van Orden announced on social media that his recently introduced legislation would deprive Oberlin College of federal funding — unless it expelled a student who stated “we need to bring back political assassinations” after Kirk’s death; Van Orden’s legislation was not targeted at universities specifically, but instead aimed to “prohibit federal funding for entities that employ individuals who condone and celebrate political violence and domestic terrorism.”
“Zero federal dollars. The legislation that I introduced will remove all federal dollars from this institution until this person is gone,” Van Orden posted on social media in response to a video of Oberlin student Julia Xu seemingly expressing approval of the murder of Kirk. “We are not gonna allow the American taxpayer to fund an institution that keeps somebody who calls for the assassination of American taxpayers.”
FIRE’s press release also mentions “especially grievous incidents,” such as the arrest of graduate student activist Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University, the University of Alabama’s suspension of two student magazines (one designed for a female audience, the other for black students) on the grounds that they violated the Justice Department’s guidance on DEI, and Weber State University’s attempt to censor mentions of DEI in a student’s presentation about censorship.
The database was launched in 2020 and relies on publicly available information to document these incidents.