Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, documented 273 efforts to target students and student groups this year. That number breaks the record, set in 2020, of 252 incidents.
Attempts to suppress free speech come from both sides of the political aisle but FIRE researcher Sean Stevens told AFN many of the efforts came from the political Right during the school year.
“A lot of these are politicians, or other government actors, targeting student speech. There's a few mass incidents of censorship,” he advised.
FIRE’s own article about 2025 shows one flash point was pro-Palestinian students who have denounced Israel and its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Stretching the limits of free speech, many of those same students violated local ordinances and university rules, harassed and attacked Jewish students, and praised Hamas and its war against Israel.
One example from FIRE is student activist Mahmoud Khalil, 30, the controversial Columbia University graduate student. Khalil quickly gained sympathy from FIRE after his campus activism made him a deportation target for the Trump administration back in March.
Attorneys for Khalil have called their client a victim of government censorship, and President Donald Trump himself has said Khalil engaged in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
AFN similarly reported Khalil is on camera, at a 2024 Columbia event, defending Hamas and its “armed resistance” against Israel.
As of December, Khalil is appealing his deportation to Great Britain that was ordered by a federal judge in September.
Beyond the pro-Palestinian protests, FIRE also documented the punishment of students and faculty who celebrated the death of Charlie Kirk, the assassinated Turning Point USA founder. A student at Oberlin College, Julia Xu, celebrated Kirk's death and praised "political assassinations."
Another free speech incident recorded by FIRE happened at Indiana University. That is where Jim Rodenbush, director of student media, was terminated in mid-October after he refused an order to censor the student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student.
AFN previously reported on the irony of Rodenbush’s firing: The university’s leaders were unhappy an upcoming article described IU’s poor national ranking for upholding free speech.
Among the U.S. states that engaged in campus censorship, Stevens told AFN the state of Texas led all others during 2025 because of new state laws.
“A number of the student groups and organizations that we documented as being sanctioned, or censored, in some way this year, are from universities in Texas,” he said.
