Regardless of ‘D’ grade, SU’s FIRE ranking must be viewed as an improvement
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The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression recently released its College Free Speech Rankings for the 2026-27 school year. Syracuse University was ranked 65th of 261 schools, yet still received a failing “D” grade.
The full report describes declining support for SU students’ free speech on campus, especially among conservative students. Although SU received a “D,” it’s the highest score the university has ever received. Of the 261 schools ranked, 166 failed with a score below 60. SU actually rose 11 spots from its 76th-place ranking in FIRE’s 2025-2026 report.
The question shouldn’t be why SU is ranked where it is, but rather what made it climb those 11 spots.
Part of that answer traces back to 2024, when SU adopted a formal policy of institutional neutrality. It joined a wave of schools, including Harvard University and Stanford University, that were making the same move.
When universities declare neutrality, it’s viewed as an effort to duck difficult political questions, especially during such a period of division. Dig a little bit deeper, though, and you’ll find that isn’t quite true. Neutrality gives students the voice rather than the administration.
When SU stops commenting on major political and social issues, it stops signaling its opinion to students. Students with different opinions don’t have to feel like they’re arguing against SU itself.
Before this neutrality, students could expect an email from SU weighing in on controversial events. That email, regardless of what it said, set a standard for what was considered correct on campus. The administration was speaking for the students it oversaw, and students often felt they had to hold the same opinion as SU to stay in good graces with the university. Even a statement made with good intentions narrows the room for disagreement and discussion.
Neutrality removes that email. It isn’t because the university doesn’t care or is too afraid to comment on difficult issues. Rather, it stops the university from being the one that gets the final say in what students think. Conversations can happen without a predetermined right answer. It’s a difficult environment to build but one worth pursuing, even if it means the university stays silent on issues on which it feels wrong not to comment.
Around the same time, SU also adopted the Chicago Statement. This policy, created at the University of Chicago, is designed to defend free speech on college campuses. Together, these policies allowed the university to put its speech into the hands of the students, without the administration defining what opinions are right or wrong.
Conversations can happen without a predetermined right answer. It’s a difficult environment to build, but one worth pursuing.Peyton Tapp, Columnist
These are some of the biggest reasons that SU, unlike many of its peers, is climbing in the free speech rankings rather than falling behind. Schools that continue to make institution-wide pronouncements on political controversies invite the negative campus environment that FIRE is ranking. SU stepping back from that practice gives students more room to disagree, which is reflected in its improved ranking.
We obviously still have quite a long way to go. A “D” grade isn’t passing, and 65th is far from ideal. FIRE currently gives SU a yellow light spotlight ranking rather than a green light ranking. The green light ranking is reserved strictly for universities that have absolutely no written rules that restrict protected expression.
FIRE has been specific in the past about what’s holding SU back: broad definitions in SU’s harassment policies, its Sexual Harassment, Abuse, and Assault Prevention Policy’s definition of “other forms of sexual harassment” and its bias reporting policy.
This isn’t a bad place to be. What’s holding SU back from a green light rating isn’t a problem with the student culture. It’s a problem within policy drafting and the language we use.
Take SU’s bias reporting policy as an example. It defines bias as any behavior that expresses hostility based on a long list of characteristics, which makes sense until the end of the list. The end adds “or any other status protected by applicable law or policy.” The open-ended language is exactly the kind of ambiguity FIRE looks for and flags. The policy needs to make clear what falls outside of that definition, not just what falls within it.
This is a fixable problem. The gap between a green light and a yellow light can be bridged through language revisions, not an entire rewrite of the student handbook.
This is the real story behind the 11-spot climb. A quick glance at the given “D” grade is hard to look at, but grades only measure where you land, not trends. SU is moving in a direction that many universities aren’t, because neutrality isn’t an easy place to hold, especially for an institution that’s recently become accustomed to being in the national spotlight. SU chooses the discomfort of neutrality because the comfort of saying something puts its students in a bubble it doesn’t want them to be in.
Peyton Tapp is a junior majoring in philosophy and political science. She can be reached at petapp@syr.edu.
