Once again, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has given us a warning. They say that because we do not guarantee freedom of speech in all cases, students should be warned that they may not get to exercise that freedom in all cases.
This is wrongheaded, as we have explained to FIRE already in the Wall Street Journal.
Source: FIRE’s own 2025 student survey.
The purpose of a college includes freedom of speech, but not as an absolute. Instead, students are guaranteed here that they may say whatever they please, if they can contrive to say it in a civil and academic manner contributing to thought. That is the purpose of a college. This particular college remembers that purpose.
Students are told about this at every stage of the admissions process, and they signify their understanding of it and other things like it in their signing of an honor code. This means that a warning from FIRE to our future students is otiose and misleading.
The result of our understanding is two-fold. The first is positive: we are able to learn together, which is what human beings are made to do. The second is that we do not have students roaming our campus, screaming venom at each other. Our classes continue with intensity and good order.
Let me suggest to FIRE that if they undertook the difficult business of managing a college, they would have a better sense of what a college is. In the meantime, they may carry on as outside, ill-informed critics, which is easier.
Best regards,
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Larry P. Arnn
President of Hillsdale College
