The University of Connecticut (UConn) and Yale University retained their “Yellow” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in the organization’s newly released 2026 data.
FIRE is a nonprofit legal support organization and First Amendment advocacy group that primarily focuses on colleges and universities in the United States. Every year they issue a Spotlight on Speech Code report that analyzes and ranks the speech code of hundreds of public and private universities. This year, the report looked at almost 500 schools, including UConn and Yale. Each school is assigned a “Green,” “Yellow,” or “Red” ranking.
“Though less restrictive than red light policies, yellow light policies still restrict expression that is protected under First Amendment standards and invite administrative abuse,” FIRE’s 2026 Spotlight on Speech Codes report states.
UConn currently has a “Speech Climate Grade” of F, although its campus policies are not as poorly ranked. The most recent event that was successfully deplatformed happened in 2024, when the administration prevented a comedian, Kevan “K-von” Moezzi, from performing after he had been invited by the school’s chapter of Turning Point USA.
Yale received a “D-” Speech Climate Grade. Like UConn, this isn’t strictly a reflection of the university’s policies.
In October 2024, Yale President Maurie McInnis changed the university’s guidelines about commenting on political issues to discourage people speaking on behalf of Yale from making partisan political statements about “issues of the day.”
However, students and faculty report a high degree of self-censorship at Yale.
A recent survey conducted by the Yale chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) found that almost half of the faculty self-censored in certain ways. The survey reported that a “substantial” number of faculty felt like the political environment in the school since January, 2025 has interfered with their teaching, that there was a decrease in “public engagement” among faculty, and that there were attacks on “academic freedom.” The authors of the report specify that there is a difference between “academic freedom” and freedom of speech. Academic freedom is a “collective right” that allows professors to determine “whether speech meets the standard of their discipline.”
On the flip side, many students have reported feeling silenced by the university. In the spring of 2024, a few months before McInnis changed the university’s guidelines about public statements, two Jewish students sued Yale because of alleged antisemitic discrimination. In their complaint, they claim that Yale’s content-neutral speech restrictions were selectively applied in a way that limited pro-Israel advocacy and encouraged pro-Palestinian advocacy.
In the spring of 2024, a UConn official condemned a student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), after a protest, although the group was not sanctioned.
“The nationwide encampments and campus protests that followed Oct. 7 served as a stress test for institutional policies and campus free speech culture,” FIRE’s 2026 Spotlight on Speech Codes report states. “Broadly speaking, America’s colleges and universities failed that test. Many administrators either lacked written policies to address the protests or failed to enforce their standing policies reasonably.”
Nationwide, free speech has improved substantially at schools since the 2023-2024 academic year, including at Yale and UConn.
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