Harvard University was ranked the worst school in the US for free speech in 2023, according to an annual report by the nonprofit group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released recently. The group dubbed the state of free speech at the Ivy League school “abysmal.”
Despite being the most acclaimed academic institution in the country, the university received the lowest possible score on FIRE’s 100-point scale -- 0. The ranking was attributed to nine professors and researchers at Harvard who have faced calls to be punished or dismissed based on past written and verbal speech, Business Insider reported, with seven of them being professionally disciplined.
“I’m not totally surprised,” Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics at FIRE, told the New York Post. “We’ve done these rankings for years now, and Harvard is consistently near the bottom. I thought it would be pretty much impossible for a school to fall below zero, but they’ve had so many scholar sanctions.”
The publication noted that Harvard University's "actual score" was -10.69.
One of the most renowned universities in the world, Harvard accepts only about 3 percent of applicants, and as per a report by Bloomberg– the ultra-wealthy are taking the win-at-all-costs gamesmanship to five-star heights.
It takes about $750,000 (about Rs 6 crore) for consulting services to guarantee a student's acceptance into the university, the publication reported. The price is more than twice what it can cost to actually attend one of the eight elite universities with students beginning their preparations to apply to it as early as in Class 7.
The second worst school for free speech is the University of Pennsylvania, while Michigan Technological University was the top school for free speech with a score of 78.01 out of 100.
FIRE, which surveyed 55,000 current students from 254 universities, determined the ranking by factors such as the strength of a school’s free speech policies, instances of speech-related targeting, and the school administrators’ support for threatened free speech.
Read more: Ultra-rich buy ultra-luxury counseling to get kids into Harvard
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