Chalking displayed in front of Traditions at Scott after the chalking ban, photographed on Sept. 9. Credit: Davis Beatty | Campus Editor
Ohio State has received a failing grade for its support of free speech.
Though Ohio State’s ranking among all colleges actually improved, the university scored 57.7 out of 100 on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, also known as FIRE, ranking released Sept. 9. FIRE is a non-partisan organization that defends free speech rights.
This score was created based on student surveys, campus policies and recent speech-related controversies and is meant to “reflect how open and supportive a campus is for free speech,” according to FIRE’s website.
Ohio State was ranked 124 out of 257 colleges and universities on free speech in FIRE’s 2026 College Free Speech Ranking, a 50-rank increase from last year. No university in the rankings received a grade higher than a B-minus.
Chris Booker, a university spokesperson, said “Ohio State has an unwavering commitment to free speech and freedom of expression.”
In addition to the rankings, FIRE assigns a color to each university depending on its policies and their effect on free speech — red is the most severe and green means there is no substantial threat of restricting speech. Ohio State is ranked yellow, which means there is at least one policy that can be used to restrict speech.
Any policy that falls under the yellow category is unconstitutional, according to FIRE.
Wright State University, ranked 49, was the highest ranked Ohio university in the survey, scoring a “D” for free speech. Ohio University, Bowling Green State University, Miami University, the University of Cincinnati, Denison University, Kenyon College and the University of Toledo all rank above Ohio State in terms of free speech — with each of them scoring a “D-” grade.
The University of Dayton ranks 224 on the list, with an “F” rating and a “red light,” indicating that there is a clear restriction in their university policy that infringes on protected expression, according to FIRE’s website.
The FIRE ranking claims that Ohio State has not adopted a statement of institutional neutrality, however that is inaccurate according to the university’s policy updated back in 2023 on the Philosophy on Institutional and Leadership Statements.
The university’s policy “holds that, as a community of scholars and learners, to maintain neutrality that assures academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression, Ohio State should refrain from taking institutional positions on complex political or global matters, events, natural disasters or tragedies that extend beyond the operations of the university itself.”
FIRE has ranked and scored colleges for six years and launched this ranking system to “help high school students and their parents identify which colleges promote and protect the free exchange of ideas,” according to FIRE’s 2026 website.
From Jan. 3 through June 5 of 2025, 68,510 college undergraduate respondents from 257 schools were surveyed by College Plus, via their mobile app, on “their perceptions and experiences regarding free speech on their campuses,” according to FIRE’s website. These responses helped assign scores and rankings to the colleges.
According to FIRE’s website, the scores were created by compiling 12 components, which included self-censorship, political tolerance, institutional neutrality and openness.
Out of the 12 components, six of them are centered around assessing student perceptions of their campus’ speech climate, three assess campus speech policies and three assess the behavior of administrators, faculty and students during a speech controversy on campus, according to FIRE’S website.
Claremont McKenna College, a private liberal arts college in California, was ranked No. 1 for the second time in six years, receiving a score of 79.86 and a speech climate grade of “B-,” according to the ranking. Purdue University, the University of Chicago, Michigan Technological University and University of Colorado at Boulder all fall within the top 5 universities ranked.
The last ranked college, Barnard College, received an overall score of 40.74, according to the 2026 College Free Speech Rankings Report. The other bottom five universities include Columbia University, Indiana University, the University of Washington and Northeastern University.
