Pitt’s free speech ranking declines in new report

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked Pitt 208th out of 251 schools for free speech in their 2025 report on speech climates. Pitt’s ranking dropped compared to last year’s report, where Pitt ranked 130th out of 248 schools.

FIRE surveyed undergraduates through College Pulse, using student perceptions and experiences to analyze the free speech climate on campus. They looked at components including self-censorship, openness, tolerance, comfort expressing ideas and administrative support. 

Data from the survey was weighted to ensure a representative sample and calculated into a numerical speech rating along with university speech code policies and campus controversies. Pitt received a 38.04 overall score, its speech policies were given a “yellow” spotlight rating and speech climate was rated “below average.” Pitt ranked low in several categories, including tolerance for both liberal and conservative speakers and was close to last in rankings for disruptive conduct.

FIRE’s chief research advisor Sean Stevens summarized some takeaways of the report.

“Schools that do poorly tend to sanction speech in a lot of ways,” Stevens said. “The schools that do well don’t do that very often, so that’s one way that they set themselves apart.”

Stevens clarified that sanctions are not only imposed by the administration — it can include faculty canceling a speaker or even student government censoring speech in some way. He described FIRE’s speech code ratings as an assessment of the University administration. 

FIRE ranked the school’s policies by color. Green light means that the university’s policies do not imperil free speech. Yellow light means a school has at least one policy that restricts a limited amount of speech or has vague wording that can be used to restrict protected expression. Red light means a school has at least one policy that clearly and substantially restricts speech. Both yellow light and red light policies are considered unconstitutional at public institutions.

Pitt has six yellow light policies. FIRE flagged the Pitt Promise — which requires students to commit to maintaining “civility” — as the most concerning policy. 

Stevens noted that “a lot of the bottom-ranked schools actually have yellow light ratings and not red for their speech policies.”

“I think that’s because the red ones are clear in that they threaten people’s expression, whereas the yellow light ones are kind of ambiguous,” Stevens said. “They could be enforced arbitrarily in ways that aren’t content neutral, and we effectively see those schools doing that.”

Notably, Pitt performed well in some surveyed components. The University ranked at 6th for self-censorship, meaning students mostly do not self-censor because of how peers, professors and administration might respond. Pitt also ranked 27th for administrative support, with 31% of students saying that Pitt’s protection of speech is “very clear” and 54% saying it’s “somewhat clear.” Previously, Pitt was ranked near the bottom for administrative support.

Pitt nearly ranked last in student support for disruptive conduct at 249 out of 251, with an increase in support for “illiberal responses to speech” such as shouting down a speaker, blocking entry ways to events and violence compared to last year.

Additionally, Pitt performed poorly on tolerance for liberal speakers, ranking at 133th and on tolerance for conservative speakers, ranking at 216th. Surveyed students were presented with a list of 6 speakers, 3 with liberal views and 3 with conservative views, and students showed a strong bias in allowing controversial liberal speakers over controversial conservative speakers.

Senior neuroscience student and president of College Republicans at Pitt Josh Minsky is “not surprised” at Pitt’s low ranking for speakers.

“The fact remains that riots and political unrest had broken out on multiple occasions in the last few years, and the inability of the University to control it in the past short of appeasing these radicals has presented a threat to free speech,” Minsky said. “Pitt has gotten better in my time, but unfortunately once you tolerate bad behavior which breaks the law, it takes a long time to reverse.”

According to the report, three controversies negatively impacted Pitt’s score: the cancelation of Bhavini Patel’s speaker event through the Frederick Honors College in 2024, an incident when activists disrupted a Students for Life event in 2021 and the sanctions on professor Denise Turner as a result of a rape scenario assignment. Stevens said that penalties for events last more than a year, though they decay over time.

Stevens added that he believes “the administration bears a lot of responsibility for what the students think and their awareness of what policies are actually in place.”

“Being clear to students about what the policies are, and then being consistent in how they enforce them, sends one kind of message,” Stevens said. “And when we see student attitudes at schools where administrators have been inconsistent in how they enforce policies, this shows up in their administrative support score, like they do poorly on it … The students notice what the administration does.”

The report addressed nationwide campus unrest related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, identifying it as the only topic a majority of Pitt students (62%) found difficult to have an “open and honest” conversation about. In an anonymous response, a Pitt student told FIRE that “being a Muslim and having Jewish friends and not having a perspective in support of the extreme ends [means] I don’t voice my opinion.”

While some questions directly addressed the impact of the conflict on the free speech climate, Stevens said FIRE “did not penalize schools directly for what happened during encampment protests.”

“However, I can note that indirectly students punished schools where they were unhappy with the administration,” Stevens said.

Students for Justice in Palestine wrote in a statement that they were “unsurprised to learn that the University of Pittsburgh was ranked 208th.”

“Pitt maintains a professed commitment to discourse, dialogue and civility,” the organization said in a statement. “However we struggle to reconcile these claims with reality; students and community members continue to grapple with the physical, emotional and disciplinary/legal repercussions of Pitt’s violent response to calls for divestment.”

The University did not respond to requests for comment about the decline in Pitt’s free speech ranking.