US universities witnessed a record number of censorship attempts in 2025, according to a new report.

Research from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) documented 273 attempts this year to silence “constitutionally protected” student speech, up from the previous record of 252 in 2020. The organisation also noted a surge in 2025 of government officials attempting to influence colleges’ response to free-speech incidents.

The FIRE report’s authors highlighted particularly egregious examples of campus censorship, including the arrest in March of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestine activist at Columbia University. Other notable cases include the suspension of two student magazines at the University of Alabama earlier this month for running counter to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s guidelines on diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, as well as Indiana University’s censorship of its campus newspaper in October over the publication’s news reporting.

2025 set a new record for censorship on US campuses

Attempts to investigate and punish students for protected expression by year, 2020-25

Citing “an uptick in attempts by the political right to silence speech in 2025”, the FIRE report highlighted an increased crackdown by government officials on colleges following the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. Indiana University student representative Henery Cash mocked the shooting by saying that “the world just got a little better today” and calling Kirk a “Demon” who had been sent “back to Hell”. In response, the state’s attorney general called for constituents to pressure the university into firing Cash from his campus job.

Meanwhile, US Rep. Derrick Van Orden announced his intention to introduce legislation which would strip Oberlin College of federal funding after one of its students said in a social media video that “we need to bring back political assassinations.” These incidents follow a wider trend in national life, where hundreds of Americans have reportedly lost their jobs or been investigated for posts criticising Kirk after his death.

The previous record for instances of campus censorship occurred against the backdrop of the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns and widespread protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In September FIRE noted a record number of annual attempts to censor academics on US campuses, while last year the organisation found that 85% of colleges across the country impose “restrictive” speech codes on students.

Logan Dougherty, a Senior Researcher at FIRE, said that “these findings paint a campus culture in which student expression is increasingly policed and controversial ideas are not tolerated,” adding: “College is supposed to be a place where ideas are freely shared, not where students should be concerned about whether their comments will be subject to university scrutiny.”