A civil liberties advocacy group found that the University of North Texas fared worse in protecting the freedom of speech this year than it did during an analysis of the 2025-26 school year.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonpartisan nonprofit group that promotes individual rights to freedom of speech and thought, recently released its 2027 College Free Speech Rankings.
The numbers
The report reviewed 261 public schools, with nearly 63,000 students responding to questions related to free speech.
In the analysis, UNT received an overall score of 52.5 out of 100, dropping 3.1 points from 2025. Out of 261 schools ranked for freedom of speech, UNT landed 248th, and earned an "F" in overall free speech climate.
FIRE ranked UNT in the bottom 25 schools for administrative report, which shows that students' trust in officials willingness to support free speech has eroded.
Conversely, and surprisingly, student responses put UNT in the top 50 in comfort in expressing ideas, which indicates they feel comfortable sharing their views on controversial topics.
The report includes universities that have tried to prevent some campus chapters of Turning Point USA from being recognized or that faced calls for their derecognition as an official student organization.
The Denton Record-Chronicle asked for an interview or statement from UNT President Harrison Keller, who previously said that promoting civil discourse would be among the chief commitments in the strategic plan, Look North: UNT 2030. Keller announced the commitment during a "state of the university" address in 2025. Keller didn't outline specific plans to promote civil discourse during the address, but said it was a key part of the strategic plan.
The university will create durable value "through the development of well-educated citizens who are ready to engage in productive dialogue and civil discourse," the plan says.
On Thursday, the Record-Chronicle asked Keller what education in civil discourse looks like now at the university, and what it will look like in 2030. Keller responded with a statement on Friday.
"The University of North Texas is committed to an environment where students, faculty, staff, and others in our community can express differing views, engage in debate, share ideas, learn and discover," he said. "Free speech and academic freedom are fundamental components of the University of North Texas’ education and research mission as a R1 research university dedicated to creating enduring value for the public good."
The foundation didn't include Texas Woman's University or North Central Texas College in the rankings.
Just one Texas university ranked in the bottom of the foundation's rankings: Texas State University.
This year’s report, which was released one day before the first anniversary of the assassination of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk, also looks at how Kirk’s death impacted the nation’s campuses. FIRE officials said the assassination of Kirk set off a series of firings, especially of educators, for social media posts lambasting Kirk and criticizing his work.
“The impact of Charlie Kirk’s assassination continues to negatively reverberate on campuses across the country,” said FIRE Chief Researcher Sean Stevens. “Rather than view the tragedy as a warning about the extreme results of partisanship and inability to peacefully engage in dialogue, many college admins took it as an invitation to double down on censorship.”
UNT didn't explicitly double down on censorship after Kirk's gruesome murder on a Utah college campus. But tempers flared on campus over the killing, and drew the attention of elected Texas Republicans.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into UNT following a confrontation between a member of UNT Turning Point USA and another student. Turning Point USA is Kirk's initiative to promote conservative philosophies and evangelical Christianity on public college campuses.
UNT has been on the foundation's radar for years now, from weighing in on the 2020 lawsuit by a music professor who was censured following a publication that drew criticism and allegations of racism to monitoring the more recent censorship of an art exhibit that criticized ICE.
Administrators are only part of the picture. FIRE looked at student beliefs, too, and found that UNT students are conflicted over free speech. The report shows that there are more self-identified liberal students on campus, with 3.36 liberal students to every one conservative student.
Forty-two percent of UNT students surveyed said they have censored themselves "at least once or twice a month," the report found, and 69% said shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is acceptable "at least in rare cases."
Thirty-three percent of the students surveyed said using violence to prevent someone from speaking on campus is acceptable "at least in rare cases."
Encouraging findings
Though FIRE's survey still corresponds to a "D" on the reports grading scale, the survey's average overall score, 61.36, is the highest recorded in seven years.
“At a tumultuous time for higher education, we are seeing some progress in campus free speech policies and indications that students may be less willing to tolerate shoutdowns and violence on campus compared to recent years,” FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff said.
Colleges and students can do better, Lukianoff said.
"The overall state of free speech on campus is grim," he said. "Too many college administrators wield their power to cancel controversial speakers, cave to government or student calls for censorship, and limit academic freedom. This report emphasizes the need for colleges to embrace their constitutional obligations wholeheartedly.”
