Indiana University Bloomington is no longer in last place among public universities in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) national college free speech ranking. However, despite a marginally higher score than last year, its position on the growing list of colleges went down by one.
It’s now ranked 256th of 261 schools, public and private. IU hovered near the bottom of FIRE’s annual list for the last two years.
The nonpartisan advocacy group surveys thousands of students attending American schools and reviews speech policies at each one to determine its annual rankings.
FIRE’s chief researcher Sean Stevens said student survey results showed confidence has been slow to recover since IU’s heavy response the pro-Palestine movement.
“The main thing with IU that I see in in the data is there's still a lot of fallout and impact from how they handled the encampment protests in the spring of 2024,” Stevens said.
The scoring system relies heavily on the survey results.
“We have specific questions that ask about student confidence in the administration and protecting freedom of speech and whether they're likely to,” Stevens said. “IU still does very poorly on those.”
Nevertheless, the change in position is sure to be a relief for administrators at the troubled institution, whose last place status became a frequent talking point.
IU’s adoption of the Chicago Principles in February also slightly bumped up its score. The set of guidelines on campus free speech is only symbolic but is a factor in how FIRE tallies results.
“It's good to do that, but when the rubber hits the road in a controversy, we'll see what happens,” Stevens said.
Notably, FIRE did not log any new speech controversies in 2026. But toward the end of last year, it declared that IU was experiencing a “free speech crisis”.
When the university fired its student media director and canceled printing for the Indiana Daily Student, the organization paid for billboards at entrances to Bloomington to run through football season.
There’s more IU can do to improve its position beyond the difficult work of rebuilding trust – for example, adopting a clear position on institutional neutrality.
FIRE also gave the school a yellow rating for some of its speech policies, indicating room for improvement.
Stevens said he was encouraged by the change of leadership at the flagship campus with the ascension of former Purdue administrator David Reingold to chancellorship.
IU’s historic rival placed seventh nationally.
“Purdue does very well in our rankings, so I do think they're trying to bring things from there to Indiana,” Stevens said. “But I also think given all that history, it's going to take a while to turn things around, probably.”
FIRE’s complete report and granular rankings for IU and other schools can be found on its website. According to students, last year’s most difficult topics to discuss were the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at 50%, Donald Trump at 46% and Charlie Kirk at 44%.
An IU spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
