It’s the collective nightmare of all Notre Dame students: a failing grade.
But that’s exactly what our University received last semester on its “free speech report card.” According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Notre Dame ranks in the bottom 20% of universities nationwide when it comes to issues of free speech and free expression. While we aren’t alone at the bottom — Barnard, Harvard, U Penn, NYU and Columbia received similarly dismal rankings — the shock was enough to make waves in the Notre Dame network, both on and off campus.
The report was so starkly at odds with our self-image that initial responses, including ours, were largely skeptical. For instance, one headline-grabbing finding reports that “24% of Notre Dame students find it acceptable to use violence to stop a disagreeable political speaker.” Given the mild-to-neutral political climate among most students and in most classrooms on campus, many of us found this simply too hard to believe. And if a wild claim like that formed any part of the basis of the failing grade, it almost felt safe to assume bad intentions were somehow skewing the data collection or analysis. “We didn’t opt in to any class with this FIRE organization,” we thought. “Maybe they’re just another political organization trying to grift off widespread ill will toward elite institutions; maybe the rankings are just ragebait.”
But something about these findings struck a nerve. Even if we were being forced to take the course, and even if the grade seemed obviously unfair, we just couldn’t shake the confidence hit of seeing an “F” on a report card with our name on it. We decided we had to investigate. At the time, we, the authors of this piece, were covering the value of free speech and protected disagreement in God and the Good Life; one of us was teaching it, and the other two were taking it. We figured there wasn’t much to lose in doing a deeper dive to see if we could cut through the hype.
Here’s what we found.