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For a number of faculty members, the threat of censorship is so pervasive on campuses across America that not even the cloak of anonymity is enough to make them feel safe expressing their ideas.

This year, ��֭���� surveyed 6,269 faculty members at 55 major colleges and universities for “Silence in the Classroom: The 2024 FIREFaculty Survey Report,” the largest faculty free speech survey ever performed.

What we found shocked even us here at ��֭����. A deeply entrenched atmosphere of silence and fear is endemic across higher education. 

We found that self-censorship on US campuses is currently four times worse than it was at the height of the McCarthy era. Today, 35% of faculty say they have toned down their written work for fear of causing controversy. In a major survey conducted in 1954, the height of McCarthyism, by the sociologists Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, only 9% of social scientists said the same. 

In fact, the problem is so bad that some academics were afraid even to respond to our already anonymous survey for fear of retaliation. Some asked us by email, or in their free response replies, to keep certain details they shared private. Some asked us to direct all correspondence to a private personal email. Others reached out beforehand just to confirm the results would truly be anonymous. Still others simply refused to speak at all.

For some, the danger is clear and concrete. As one professor wrote, “I am not at liberty to even share anonymously for fear of retribution.”

For others, it’s more nebulous, but the fear is no less real. 

“I almost avoided filling out the survey for fear of losing my job somehow‚” one professor told us, adding that they “waited about two weeks before getting the courage to take the risk.”

It is totally unacceptable that this is a reality on today’s campuses.

For what I’m paid to teach the courses that I do, it’s just not enough to outweigh the risk of potential public excoriation for wrong-think and its personal and professional impact on myself, my family, and my business.

We at FIREeven had to devise additional ways of disguising academics and their schools so others could not “out” them using their responses, including by describing certain schools in general terms such as “a flagship state university in the south.” As one professor remarked, “The fact that I’m worried about even filling out polls where my opinions are anonymous is an indication that we, as institutions and as society, have lost the thread concerning ideas.” This person isn’t wrong.

So the next time you’re talking politics with friends or having dinner conversation, remember this fact — four times as many faculty are scared to speak candidly than at the height  of McCarthyism!

FIRE SURVEY: Only 20% of university faculty say a conservative would fit in well in their department

Press Release

A third of faculty say they self-censor their written work, nearly four times the number of social scientists who said the same in 1954 at the height of McCarthyism.

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Few other university issues — arguably, few other issues in America, period — matter more. The exchange of ideas and information is the entire reason universities exist. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” For more than a third of faculty, that ending has already begun. 

Consider this final heartbreaking message from an educator who told us they felt the urge to self-censor on the survey even though it was anonymous. 

“I had already decided that this year will be the last one I teach at the university,” they reflected. “For what I’m paid to teach the courses that I do, it’s just not enough to outweigh the risk of potential public excoriation for wrong-think and its personal and professional impact on myself, my family, and my business.”

Read the full report and learn more about the full extent of what the climate of higher ed is doing to faculty’s search for truth in higher education today.