It would be easy to look at Harvard’s headline result in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) 2027 College Free Speech Rankings and conclude that the University’s speech climate transformed in one year. Harvard jumped 174 places, from 245th out of 257 schools to 71st out of 261.
The reality is more complicated.
Much of Harvard’s rise came from the expiration of deductions associated with past speech controversies. FIRE’s ranking combines undergraduate survey responses with its assessment of university speech policies and responses to speech controversies, so Harvard’s 174-place jump doesn't necessarily translate to an equally dramatic change in students’ experience of free speech.
But with Harvard’s past weighing less heavily on its score, this year’s ranking is a cleaner snapshot of the College’s speech climate today. And the student survey results underpinning the score are encouraging, too.
There were multiple statistically significant changes in student responses compared to last year pointing toward an improving speech culture. These include decreased discomfort expressing disagreement inside and outside the classroom, increased confidence that administrators would defend free expression, and greater ease discussing contentious topics including Israel-Palestine.
Last year, we described Harvard’s gains as fragile. This year, they look more surefooted, following a year in which the College doubled down on open inquiry and constructive dialogue (OICD). It added a mandatory OICD training for first-year students; operated under Chatham House (speaker non-attribution) rules; and made Intellectual Vitality a core priority. FIRE’s survey doesn’t establish that those efforts caused the changes, but the results suggest Harvard College is moving toward its goal of greater open inquiry and constructive dialogue.
At the same time, Harvard’s improved standing obscures its weaker absolute numbers. 57% of students still say they are uncomfortable publicly disagreeing with a professor; 71% say shouting down a speaker is acceptable in some cases; and 53% say the same with blocking others from attending an event. Harvard still has considerable room to grow — even to lead — as it builds the culture of open inquiry it says it wants.
What You Need to Know
Harvard jumped 174 spots, from 245th out of 257 schools last year to 71st out of 261 this year. It now ranks second among Ivies, behind only 6th-ranked Dartmouth.
The jump reflects both real gains in student sentiment and the expiration of old deductions. Harvard improved across several student survey measures, while 11 of the 12 past controversies that previously weighed on Harvard’s score fully aged out.
Students reported lower levels of discomfort disagreeing with one another. Harvard’s Comfort Expressing Ideas ranking rose 134 spots, its biggest jump among its FIRE category rankings.
1 in 3 students said it was clear the administration protects free speech, compared to last year’s 1 in 5 students — though students’ views on administrative support remained Harvard’s weakest category.
Israel-Palestine remains by far the most difficult topic for students to discuss, despite some improvement this year in their comfort doing so. 64% of students said it was difficult to have an open conversation about the issue, down from 73% last year but still well above FIRE’s 50% national average.
Harvard ranks 7th nationally in Political Tolerance — students’ stated willingness to allow speakers on a range of controversial topics on campus — but contradictions with students’ tolerance in practice remain. 7 in 10 Harvard College students still say that shouting down a speaker is at least rarely acceptable, and roughly half say the same about blocking students from attending a speaker’s event.
Harvard’s written policies now stand between it and the near-top of FIRE’s rankings. FIRE calculates that if Harvard revised its policies enough to earn a “green light” rating, the University would have ranked 13th; if it also adopted the Chicago Statement, it would have ranked 5th.
Key Takeaways & FAQs
We analyzed FIRE’s data so you don’t have to. Keep reading for:
1636 Forum’s Key Takeaways
Who is FIRE?
What are FIRE’s rankings and how are they calculated?
Why does Harvard receive a D and a “yellow light,” even though it ranks 71st out of 261 schools?
What would Harvard need to do to move up in FIRE’s rankings?
1636 Forum’s Key Takeaways
Harvard’s rise was partly driven by the expiration of FIRE penalties from its past speech controversies.
FIRE’s ranking adds or subtracts points based on how universities respond to speech controversies. Each controversy’s points decrease by one point per year until they reach zero.
Last year, Harvard was still carrying 1-point penalties each associated with 11 past speech controversies — including deplatformings of Senator Joe Manchin and Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng — partially offset by a +2 credit FIRE awarded Harvard for President Alan Garber’s rejection of federal demands to change its policies and practices.
For the first time in the history of FIRE’s rankings, Harvard incurred no net behavioral deductions for speech controversies. That’s largely because nearly all of the drag from prior years had disappeared, but also because FIRE identified no new speech controversies from the last academic year at Harvard.
The remaining positive and negative controversy points this year canceled each other out. The remaining points were a one-point penalty FIRE assigned this year to a canceled 2024 Lowell House panel on Islamophobia and antisemitism, and a one-point credit remaining from Harvard’s response to the federal demands.
Harvard’s written policies now account for much of the gap between its ranking and the top schools.
Harvard’s policies still have a “yellow light” rating overall, meaning FIRE believes at least one of its written policies could restrict students’ protected expression (whereas a “green light” rating means FIRE doesn’t find policies that threaten student speech).
Specifically, FIRE calls out Harvard’s harassment and bullying rules for definitions it says are overly broad; its requirements that events with “controversial speakers” and all outdoor events be registered in advance, and its anonymous bias hotline, which FIRE argues could chill protected expression.
If Harvard had earned a “green light” rating this year, FIRE says it would have ranked 13th nationally instead of 71st.
Harvard also hasn’t adopted the Chicago Statement, the University of Chicago’s set of free speech principles affirming open inquiry. The Statement has been widely adopted by other universities and is considered the gold standard for campus free speech.
If Harvard both had “green light” policies and adopted the Chicago Statement, FIRE says it would have ranked 5th nationally. By comparison, Vanderbilt and Dartmouth — both of which have “green light” ratings and have adopted the Statement — ranked 5th and 6th this year respectively.
Harvard is now the second-highest ranked Ivy, though it sits closer to the middle of a broader Ivy Plus group.
Harvard ranks 71st nationally, behind only Dartmouth (6th) among the Ivies. Yale is just behind Harvard at 72nd, followed by Brown (98th), Princeton (176th), Cornell (219th), Penn (227th), and Columbia (246th).
Several Ivy+ peers rank higher than Harvard: UChicago (1st), Vanderbilt (5th), Duke (50th), and Stanford (55th). Harvard ranks ahead of MIT (86th).
At the other end of the list, NYU ranks 261st and last nationally.
Harvard’s 71st place finish is also its best in the history of FIRE rankings. Harvard had consistently ranked in the bottom fifth of schools — including dead last twice — but this year finished in roughly the top third.
Students this year were significantly more comfortable expressing their disagreement with others.
Harvard jumped 134 spots, from 247th to 113th, on FIRE’s measure of students’ comfort publicly disagreeing with others in different settings, including publicly disagreeing with a professor, disagreeing in a written assignment, during classroom discussion with other students, in campus spaces with peers, and on social media.
The biggest shift was in students’ comfort in common campus spaces. About 1 in 3 students now say they are uncomfortable expressing controversial views there, down from roughly half last year. In class, 44% say they are at least somewhat uncomfortable, which is down almost a third from 62% uncomfortable last year.
Students remain most hesitant to post unpopular political opinions on social media (70% at least somewhat uncomfortable) or publicly disagree with a professor (57%).
Students now have more confidence that Harvard’s administration will protect free speech, though this remains Harvard’s weakest survey category.
Harvard rose 66 spots, from 247th to 181st, on FIRE’s measure of whether students think its administrators protect free speech and would defend a speaker’s right to express their views during a controversy.
29% now say administrators would be very or extremely likely to defend a speaker’s right to express their views, up from just 9% last year. 33% of respondents say it is very or extremely clear the Harvard administration protects free speech, up from 20% in the 2026 rankings.
This past year, Harvard’s leadership has repeatedly affirmed the school’s commitment to free expression and open inquiry — like President Alan Garber saying that “there’s real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom,” and Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker saying Harvard was “recommitting” to free inquiry and civil discourse.
A few topics were easier to discuss this year, including Israel-Palestine, though it remains by far the hardest.
The share of students who identified the Israel-Palestine conflict as difficult to discuss fell significantly, from 73% last year to 64% this year (the national average fell from 53% to 50%). Despite Harvard’s improvement, no other issue was nearly as difficult to discuss: the next-highest are Charlie Kirk (34%), abortion (32%), Donald Trump (32%) and immigration (30%).
Affirmative action saw the largest decline in reported difficulty of discussion, falling from 39% to 28%. Transgender rights, sexual assault, and the 2024 presidential election also saw significant declines.
Other topics polled last year were largely unchanged. For example, abortion moved from 33% to 32% and freedom of speech from 18% to 17%.
Harvard students say they are tolerant of controversial speakers on campus in theory, even as many still accept tactics that can prevent those speakers from being heard.
Harvard ranked 7th nationally on FIRE’s Political Tolerance measure, which asks whether students would allow speakers with a range of controversial views to come to campus.
Harvard students were 11 to 26 percentage points more likely than students nationally to allow the controversial speakers FIRE tested. But this was already a relative bright spot for Harvard; students’ responses didn’t change significantly from last year’s survey, even as Harvard’s rank rose from 64th to 7th.
And the same general tension we highlighted last year between political tolerance in theory and in practice remains: 71% of students said shouting down a speaker can be acceptable at least in some cases (down from 79% last year) while 53% said the same of blocking others from attending an event (down from 58%).
Who is FIRE?
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a national nonprofit focused on defending free speech. Founded in 1999, FIRE originally focused on higher education and has since expanded to broader First Amendment work in litigation, legislation, and culture.
FIRE emphasizes its nonpartisan mission. It has both sharply criticized Harvard — ranking the University’s speech climate “abysmal” and an “F” in recent years — and defended the University in its lawsuit against the federal government by filing a brief in support of Harvard’s argument that the government’s demands threatened its academic independence.
What are FIRE’s rankings and how are they calculated?
FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings assess how well U.S. universities protect and promote free expression. The rankings combine three elements: undergraduate survey responses, collected between January and June of each year; FIRE’s assessment of university policies; and speech-related events — tracked in FIRE’s Campus Deplatformings, Scholars Under Fire, and Students Under Fire databases — with schools earning penalties or bonuses based on how they respond to controversies. FIRE also produces more detailed “spotlight” reports on individual universities, such as Harvard.
FIRE’s survey questions were largely unchanged from last year, though it did add two issues to the list of controversial topics students were asked whether they found difficult to discuss: Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump. Where we compare Harvard’s results with last year throughout this Special Edition, we use questions asked in both years and focus on changes that were statistically significant at p < 0.05.
Why does Harvard receive a D and a “yellow light” even though it ranks 71st out of 261 schools?
Harvard’s D reflects its absolute score, while its 71st-place ranking reflects how it performed relative to other schools. Harvard’s score of 64.4 earned a D, compared with a national average of 61.4, which FIRE grades a D-.
Only 24 schools received a C or better this year, and even the top five schools averaged a C+. The #1-ranked UChicago received a B-.
FIRE gave Harvard a “yellow light” overall policy rating for maintaining 11 policies with language it says have the potential to chill protected speech. Specifically, FIRE says:
Harvard’s harassment and bullying rules use definitions of behavior that are overly broad, which may chill speech if students assume some language is “prohibited across the board as bullying”
Harvard’s advance registration requirements for outdoor events and controversial speakers can limit “spontaneous expression”
Harvard’s internet-use policy requiring users to be “careful, honest, responsible, and civil” could “easily be applied by administrators to punish disfavored speech”
Harvard’s Anonymous Reporting Hotline for bias-related incidents can suggest that “disfavored” speech may trigger “investigation or even punishment”
Harvard also has two policies rated “green light”: its University-Wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities and Recognized Student Organization Resource Guide.
What would Harvard need to do to move up in FIRE’s rankings?
FIRE’s clearest remaining recommendations are for Harvard to address FIRE’s concerns with its written policies and adopt the Chicago Statement. Those were recommendations FIRE made in previous years as well.
Harvard has made progress on areas FIRE recommended last year, including students’ confidence in administrators’ support for free speech and increased programming around open inquiry and constructive disagreement. FIRE encourages Harvard to keep applying its defense of expression consistently in future controversies and further expand opportunities for students to practice disagreement, especially around topics they find difficult to discuss.