Georgetown ranked 246th on that metric, while also getting very low ranks in “openness,” a measure of how comfortable students feel in talking about controversial subjects on campus.
Both schools received “red light” speech code rankings from FIRE. A red rating, according to the group, indicates the institution has “at least one [policy] that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.”
Students from both universities offered FIRE examples of the purported restrictive speech environments on the respective campuses.
“In many of my classes I feel like despite having the freedom to speak we have to be ‘politically correct,’” a student at Fordham said; another reported “pressure to conform on controversial topics.”
At Georgetown, meanwhile, one student reported feeling compelled to use the term “birthing person” when discussing maternal mortality rates; that term is regularly used by transgender activists to refer to women. Another reported being harassed “for expressing a typical but conservative opinion online.”
Georgetown reportedly has nearly four liberal students for every one conservative student, according to the FIRE report, with Fordham hosting a similar ratio.