Efforts to silence scholars hit record high

We’ve seen 309 in 2025 so far, up from 80 in 2024

In 2025, the U.S. government escalated its role in the war on academic speech. What used to be scattered pressure from students and faculty on campus, or from outside activist groups, has morphed into something far more chilling: a coordinated campaign, led by government officials, to punish scholars for their protected expression.

As of September 22, we’ve recorded 309 attempts to sanction a scholar this year alone. That’s more than one scholar targeted every day — the most we’ve ever recorded and 106 more than the previous record of 203 in 2021. And we only just started the fall semester.

Three incidents account for the bulk of this year’s record-breaking total:

• The U.S. Naval Academy pulled nearly 400 books from its Nimitz Library after Defense Secretary Hegseth’s office told it to review “DEI content” per Executive Order 14190 — most were restored about a month later. We’ve only gone through half the titles so far but have already identified 164 scholar sanctions.

• After the George Mason University Faculty Senate passed a resolution supporting their president, who was recently found in violation of Title VI by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the Justice Department launched an investigation into the faculty, adding 51 scholars to our list.

• After the killing of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, several lawmakers called for professors to be fired over social media posts deemed “disrespectful” or “anti-American.” These calls, amplified by state legislators and federal officials, add 35 sanction attempts to the list, including 12 terminations.

This marks a disturbing shift in the landscape of campus free speech. Over the past decade, we’ve documented over 1,000 attempts to suppress scholars on college campuses. But rarely did those efforts originate from the government itself.

Now, almost all do. And they are coming mostly from the right of the scholar’s expression.

Public officials — armed with the authority to investigate, defund, or intimidate — are increasingly willing to wield that power against scholars who express dissenting or unpopular views. The effect isn’t limited to those directly targeted. It sends a message to faculty across the country: Speak carefully, or else.

At a moment when higher education is already under political siege, the rise of government-led sanction attempts represents more than a free speech crisis. It’s a test of whether public institutions will remain spaces for intellectual independence — or whether they will buckle under partisan control.

Unfortunately, many already, like the University of Michigan, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Tennessee have.

We’ve seen what happens when governments treat dissent as disloyalty. The warning signs are flashing again.