The University of Idaho ranked 43 out of 257 colleges and universities for supporting free speech, according to a nationwide survey of students by a free speech advocacy group.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression released its 2026 rankings for free speech on college campuses on Sept. 19. Despite a comparatively high ranking and score of 65, UI still received a “D” grade for the survey results. The highest ranked college, Claremont McKenna College, scored a “B-.” The bottom-ranked school, Barnard College, received a score of 41, putting it and over 150 other schools in the “F” category . The survey was administered by College Pulse, a college-targeted nonprofit data organization, and received responses from 157 UI students.
From the responses collected, 25% of UI students believe that violence can be an acceptable method to stop someone from speaking “at least in rare cases,” while 59% more broadly believe it is acceptable to prevent or stop certain voices from speaking.
Across the entire survey, 34% said it was acceptable to use violence to stop someone from speaking, at least in rare cases. Other survey results include 72% saying shouting down a speaker is acceptable, at least in rare cases; 24% of students said they self-censor with other students; 28% said they self-censor in class discussions, and 27% said they think it was not likely their universities would defend a speaker’s rights.
“The statistic doesn’t mean that a third of students would use violence themselves. But, what it does reflect is a level of intellectual support for some students using it,” said Sean Stevens, Chief Research Advisor for FIRE.
According to Stevens, this statistic represents the bottom of the pyramid of radicalization: the people who would never commit a violent act themselves but would rationalize it. The top of the pyramid, the people who would actually commit a form of violence, only makes up 1-2%.
UI’s overall D rating is an average of six components: comfort expressing ideas (D+), self-censorship (D-), disruptive conduct (B), admin support (D-), openness (D+) and political tolerance (F).
About 39% of UI students reported that they self-censor at least one a once a month.
Brandon Brackett, UI’s director of Student Involvement, said he was not surprised with the results but was intrigued that UI ranked in the top 20% of colleges nationwide for free speech, while having an overall D rating.
FIRE reported that there were no incidents of silencing or violence against speakers at UI in 2025.
“I don’t know the legitimacy of the number or what the data skews as, but it seems weird … that being said, I don’t disagree with anything FIRE is advocating for, and neither does the university,” Brackett said.
Brackett also said that neither he nor the university was contacted by an employee from FIRE.
UI’s score rose 5.1 points, from 59.7 in 2024 to 64.8 in 2025, and raised the university’s score from a D- to a D. UI’s national ranking rose 20 places, from 63 out of 256 in 2025 to 43 in 2026. Openness, a category that measures how many controversial topics students feel they can openly discuss on campus, was the only one to decrease compared to 2025.
FIRE determined a ratio of 1.11 liberal-identifying student for every one conservative on the UI Moscow campus.
Boise State University, comparatively, ranked 48th out of 257, with a score of 63.4 in 2025. A greater percentage of BSU students, 34%, reported a belief that violence can be an acceptable method to stop someone from speaking.
Washington State University ranked 59th out of 257, with a score of 62.3 in 2025. WSU increased by 80 places, from 139 out of 257 in 2024.
The survey data was collected from Jan. 3 to June 5, 2025. The sample includes 68,510 undergraduates enrolled full-time in four-year degree programs from 257 colleges and universities in the United States. FIRE’s college free speech rankings were established in 2020 to help high school students and their parents identify which colleges support free speech on campus.
The survey will be conducted again in spring 2026 and will be available through the College Pulse app.
Emily Morales can be reached at [email protected].