Bad News
You may have seen the story this week about Michigan Tech being ranked as the top university for free speech.
It was told by The Detroit News and ABC10, and by numerous other outlets because Harvard was named worst in the rankings.
Given the reporting done by Copper Beacon on MTU's campus in the past year, I found the aforementioned claims to be questionable. I took the time to do a little digging online (though not true reporting, or research). Here’s what I turned up in just a couple of minutes of digging around.
First, I looked into the methodology of the study that formed the rankings. The sample size was 55,102 undergraduate students enrolled in four-year degree programs at one of 254 colleges and universities in the United States. That divides out to 216 students per school. Michigan Tech has 5,777 undergraduate students, so they probably interviewed about 4% of the undergrad student body, at most.
I couldn’t find any source that said a survey response rate under 5% was acceptable. If the number of students surveyed at a school is weighted by the size of the population, then this percentage would get even lower, as Michigan Tech has a below-average student body size.
The survey respondents are also self-selecting in two ways. First, they have to choose Michigan Tech. I probably don’t have to tell you the many ways in which Michigan Tech’s student body is already different from the average university. Second, they have to choose to be part of College Pulse’s American College Student Panel.
Schools also received “bonus points” for some things, among them:
Supporting scholars whose speech rights were threatened during a free expression controversy, as recorded in FIRE's Scholars Under Fire database. This support had to be unequivocal to be counted. That is, if an administration condemned the speech, apologized for the scholar’s expression, or sanctioned the scholar, despite issuing a statement of support, it was not included in the school’s total.
Digging into the database, the only information I found on Michigan Tech is a record of Jeffrey Burl’s letter asserting he, as a white man in academia, had faced discrimination for 40 years, and asking for an apology.
Michigan Tech largely ignored the issue, with an MLive article including this quote:
“I don’t think he would have been much less reassuring if he had just said ‘racism is indeed bad,’ signed Rick Koubek,” said Michigan Tech student Jess Fureigh.
and later:
In a statement to MLive, the university said Burl’s letter is an exercise of his right to free speech, as was the resolution. Anyone disagreeing with either statement is exercising the same right, the statement said.
However you feel about Burl’s letter, I hesitate to believe any organization is “the best” at anything if they achieved that rank by sitting on their hands. By that measure, dead people are the biggest champions of free speech.
After reading all of that, I headed over to Influence Watch. They’re an organization that tracks influential groups, their leadership, their activities, and their funding.
FIRE does not disclose all their donors, but Influence Watch has been able to confirm large donations from several right-leaning organizations, including the Charles Koch Foundation, through tax documents.
It also has information about the board of directors, many of whom are founders and board members of right-leaning organizations like the Hoover Institution and Cato Institute. A few of them also have ties to the ACLU and other civil rights organizations.
Finally, there is Copper Beacon’s own experience, as a news outlet. The University Media and Communications Department has gone to great lengths to stop us from being able to adequately report on Michigan Tech’s campus, including instructing faculty and staff not to speak with our (or probably any) reporters unless arranged through their department. They’ve also stopped us from speaking with board members. FIRE themselves have opposed universities for this kind of behavior.
As a publicly-funded university, Michigan Tech is open to the public. While nobody is obligated to speak with the press, Tech can’t legally limit free speech on campus, even by its own employees (as highlighted by their own statement, quoted above). They’re also subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
I also popped into the MTU subreddit to see what they were saying there. I can’t speak to the veracity of any statements, but the comments were worth the time spent to read them.
The survey's results may not have provided an accurate assessment of colleges with the highest degree of freedom of speech. Instead, it appears that colleges where divergent ideas and thoughts are not frequently contested tend to rank higher. It should be acknowledged that being challenged is essential for personal development, and challenging ideas is how we hone and shape them.
When news sources report survey findings from organizations such as FIRE, they should exercise caution. It is essential to thoroughly examine the methodology and purpose of the survey before disseminating any data. While journalism plays a crucial role in promoting genuine democracy, it loses its significance if conducted hastily.
