Academic freedom at universities and medical schools who seek taxpayer funded NIH grants
He isn’t yet sure how to measure academic freedom, but he has looked at how a nonprofit called Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression scores universities in its freedom-of-speech rankings, a person familiar with his thinking said.
The nonprofit scores schools based on a survey of students’ perceptions of factors such as whether they feel comfortable expressing ideas. Schools are also penalized if their administrators sanction faculty for opinions or disinvite a speaker from a campus event after a controversy.
Universities that are leading recipients of NIH grants but have poor FIRE rankings include the University of Pennsylvania (“very poor”), Columbia University (“abysmal”) and the University of Southern California (“very poor”). Schools with top scores in FIRE’s most recent rankings are the University of Virginia, Michigan Technological University and Florida State University.
