1 in 3 Students Say Violence is OK to Stop Speech
Luigi Mania, Gen Z Wanderlust, and Democrats’ Flop Era
A record number of college students now say violence is an acceptable response to speech they oppose. That’s according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression 2026 College Free Speech Rankings, released on September 9, just one day before Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while hosting a campus event.
The numbers: FIRE found that 1 in 3 students (34%) now believe violence is — at least “rarely” justified to shut down campus speech. That’s the highest level recorded — up two points from last year and up 10 points from four years ago.
That’s not the only noteworthy stat from FIRE’s findings.
Just 36% of students say it’s “extremely” or “very” clear that their school protects free speech
65% of students self-censor at least occasionally in college classroom discussions
More than half the schools surveyed received an F on their speech climate
53% of students say it’s “difficult” to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
A majority of students now oppose hosting any of the six controversial speakers FIRE asked about on their campus – on both sides of the ideological spectrum
The context: “This censorious streak has kind of ratcheted up on campuses,” Sean Stevens, FIRE’s Chief Research Advisor, told The Up and Up.
“Our survey data, for six years, has consistently found the more liberal students are kind of less politically tolerant, more accepting of these disruptive forms of protest. But the trend over the past few years is the conservative students are basically joining them now and are verging onto where the liberal students were,” Stevens said.
Think about the college experience for those in Gen Z 2.0, i.e. the younger half of Gen Z, who came of age during the pandemic and have gone to college in a post-Covid, post-George Floyd, post-October 7 reality, where the Trump 2.0 administration is taking aim at higher education.
In the past week alone, Stevens said, “we’re seeing a wave of faculty members being targeted or sanctioned.” Since Kirk was killed, according to Stevens, FIRE reviewed over 50 incidents for faculty and students,” and basically all of them are for comments made on social media about the assassination.” Stevens said the majority of these incidents included attempts to get faculty members fired, or students punished, for their response to Kirk’s death.
The Up and Up’s take: I’ve tried to understand where the “censorious”-ness that Stevens describes is coming from — and why members of my generation are willing to justify violence at all.
Let’s be real: Our elected officials hardly exemplify civility. At Kirk’s funeral, President Donald Trump said he doesn’t “want the best” for his opponents, and for years, Democrats have called him a fascist. But it’s not just that.
Zooming out, Gen Z has been desensitized to violence thanks to social media ecosystems that broadcast brutality in real time. Since middle school, we’ve watched tragedy after tragedy unfold in our feeds: Sandy Hook, Charlottesville, Parkland, George Floyd, January 6th, the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the assassination of former Minnesota house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the shooting of Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman, and now, the killing of Charlie Kirk. Violence isn’t abstract, it’s practically live streamed. This doesn’t create fertile ground for civil dialogue to reconcile our differences.
And yet, in my research, I see a strong interest in forums for authentic debate that fly in the face of what students say their school promotes. In fact, some of the recent campus initiatives are likely backfiring.
As I wrote in our back to school edition:
“Students aren’t looking for forced kumbaya moments or training modules during orientation that no one pays attention to. Instead, they want real, natural opportunities for debate and dialogue.”
Universities that miss that distinction risk fueling the very cynicism they’re earnestly trying to fix.
Other news
A Luigi stan is dating his AI alias… Democrats are recycling social media trends months late, and Airbnb says Gen Z travel searches jumped 26% this fall
Noteworthy reads
“What Everyone Gets Wrong About Our Generation” – According to 21 College Kids,
for GQ“This is Going to Radicalize Millions of Americans”: Young MAGA Plots a Future After Charlie Kirk, Olivia Empson for Vanity Fair
Palantir Wants to Be a Lifestyle Brand, Caroline Haskins for Wired
Shana tova
Today I’m celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. Before the holiday, I read a powerful oped from Zalman Rothschild in The Washington Post. Here’s a gift link.
“Democracy depends not on the absence of disagreement but on our capacity to engage with it. The High Holidays are a call to temper our certainties, to confess our arrogance, and to recognize that courage and wisdom are found not in silencing disagreement but in learning how to live with it,” Rothschild writes.
That line will stay with me.