Free Speech at Davidson Earns a D-
FIRE report and student voices highlight polarization and fear of speaking freely at Davidson.
Davidson College came under fire this summer when the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released their annual report, finding that free speech on campus was severely limited.
FIRE, an organization dedicated to promoting free speech on college campuses, has taken a wide range of cases. In the early 2010s, FIRE opposed campus political correctness. Today, the group has drawn criticism from the Trump administration for defending noncitizen students with pro-Palestinian views.
FIRE’s rankings included over 257 U.S. colleges and universities, with more than 68,000 students surveyed. They found that the environment for free speech at Davidson scored only 60.40 out of 100, for a grade of D-minus.
While Davidson scored relatively high on measures like “[institutional] openness” at 51 out of 257, the college received a grim 198 out of 257 on the metric “comfort expressing ideas.”
The Davidson Lux interviewed students to find out who exactly felt uncomfortable expressing their ideas on campus. The results were surprising.
“When the college democratic socialists started posting on YikYak, the comments were genuinely insane,” said one student, who preferred to remain anonymous.“There were people saying we were evil, people saying they’d start a national socialism club to balance it out. The tone is just so polarized. There’s no room to talk.”
The Davidson Lux also spoke with Kiera Sanders ‘28, the leader of Students against Imperialism, a collective which seeks to “challenge U.S. economic, militaristic, and cultural hegemony.”
“There is definitely opposition to our voices on campus,” she said. “I can’t say what I believe in around everyone. I feel like I’d get a lot of flak for that, not just because of what I’m saying, but because I’m the one saying it.”
“We’re facing hate,” another anonymous student concluded. “It feels like there’s no place for our ideas.”
Davidson’s formal institutions have also been the source of free speech controversy. Last spring, FIRE sent a letter to President Doug Hicks ‘90 arguing that the college had overstepped its boundaries in pursuing disciplinary sanctions against Davidson’s Young America’s Foundation (YAF) chapter.
YAF is a conservative campus organization which provides external funding to college students in support of conservative causes.
“Our intent was simply to share the truth,” said Cynthia Huang ‘25, former president of Davidson’s YAF chapter. “Davidson and mainstream media prioritizes indoctrination over education, so we wanted to distribute factual information.”
Disciplinary sanctions were brought against Davidson’s YAF chapter for distributing a pamphlet deemed islamophobic, which included statements like “MYTH: Israel Is Occupying Palestinian Land.” The pamphlet remains in full circulation on Google.
While the pamphlet remains deeply divisive, it does not fall under the “historic and traditional categories” of unprotected speech as defined by United States v. Stevens.
In the end, the disciplinary sanctions were never finalized.
“They withdrew their charges, once we went to the press,” Huang explained. “At the end of the day, Davidson only cares about money. I speculate that once they knew that pressing charges would tarnish their public reputation (and upset some [of] their alumni donors), they chose to back down.”
Still, FIRE sees an institution which has crossed the line and chilled speech on campus.
“Davidson is obliged to prevent discriminatory harassment,” FIRE conceded, “but in doing so it must not sacrifice its duty to protect free speech. Even an investigation into obviously protected expression is likely to chill student speech—including when the process ultimately concludes in favor of the speaker—because such a process implicitly threatens punishment for that speech.”
In the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk on the campus of Utah Valley University, speech in colleges and universities is more polarized and restricted than ever. From the Oval Office to Davidson’s institutions and on the student body level, it appears that Davidson is no exception.
“If you’re going to silence one voice, you have the ability to silence everyone,” Kiera Sanders said. “That’s why we fight for free speech; we just have to. Nobody but us has the right to tell us what we can and cannot say.”