FIRE’s ‘green light’ schools top Heterodox Academy’s just-released guide to colleges

This week, Heterodox Academy released the latest edition of its college guide, which uses FIRE’s analysis of college speech codes as one of four factors in scoring. The top 13 institutions in the guide all maintain “green light” ratings from FIRE.

Heterodox Academy combats the lack of viewpoint diversity at America’s colleges and universities. Its “Guide to Colleges” ranks the top 150 national universities and 50 liberal arts institutions from U.S. News & World Report according to the amount of viewpoint diversity on campus. Along with the FIRE speech code rating, which makes up 30 percent of a school’s overall score, Heterodox uses three other factors to determine the score: whether the school has endorsed the statement on free expression by the Committee on Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago; ratings from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s “Choosing the Right College” guide; and relevant campus events.

The University of Chicago topped the national universities list, followed by a three-way tie among the College of William & Mary, George Mason University, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Perhaps unsurprisingly, four institutions in the bottom 10 — Harvard University, Georgetown University, the University of Oregon, and Fordham University — were also included in FIRE’s annual list of the 10 worst colleges for free speech.

Claremont McKenna College topped the guide’s list for liberal arts institutions. No green light institutions are represented in the liberal arts list.

FIRE’s Spotlight database rates speech policies at approximately 450 colleges and universities around the country. A “red light” institution has at least one policy that clearly and substantially restricts freedom of expression. A “yellow light” institution is one whose policies restrict a more limited amount of protected expression or, by virtue of their vague wording, could too easily be used to restrict protected expression. A “green light” institution’s policies do not seriously imperil free speech.

Take a look at the full list over at Heterodox.

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