Parker Hovis was four courses away from getting his computer science degree from the University of Florida when he was arrested along with several other students at a pro-Palestinian protest on campus last spring. While the charges against him were dismissed and a school conduct committee recommended only minor punishment – a form of probation – the university administration suspended him for three years. He’ll be required to reapply if he wants to come back after that.
Hovis, who has since left Florida and is working to pay off his student loans despite never graduating, is one of more than 1,000 students or student groups that were targeted by their universities for punishment between 2020 and 2024 over their speech, according to a report published today by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire). About 63% of them were ultimately punished.
“Open minds and free debate, not self-censorship and punishment, should be the standard on campuses, and we see far too frequently that isn’t the case,” said Logan Dougherty, the report’s author. “No matter where the pressure is coming from, administrations should resist efforts to punish students for protected speech.”
The free speech group tallied university efforts to investigate, censor, or otherwise punish students over constitutionally protected “expressive activity”, compiling a database of incidents at both public universities, which are bound by first amendment protections, and private ones, which are under no such obligation although many purport to value free speech. Among the most severe punishments, it found that more than 300 students or student groups were formally censored, 72 were suspended, and 55 were “separated from their institution or its funding”. According to Fire, data for the first four months of this year suggests the database of punished students “is on pace to double last year’s total”.
The report paints a picture of institutions of higher learning that are increasingly willing to punish students over the expression of their views – particularly during politically charged events like the “racial reckoning” that followed the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, and the 7 October Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.
Both periods saw an increase in school discipline – with some differences. Before the war in Gaza, most of the students facing calls for or actual punishment were targeted for “expression about race”, the report finds, with most demands for discipline coming from other students on the left in response to racist speech. Since 2023, students have been punished over pro-Palestine speech from the right, with politicians and university administrators themselves leading the charge more than in any other period.
The Fire data, based on publicly available reports, is not comprehensive. It notably excludes punishment meted out in connection to a wave of pro-Palestine student encampments last spring, which could be subject to “time, place, and manner” restrictions on the first amendment – meaning, schools may have had grounds for punishment if the students were violating the law. More than 3,200 people were arrested as police moved to clear many of those encampments, with some of the disciplinary processes that followed still under way.
The disciplining of students over pro-Palestinian speech, and the flurry of new restrictions universities introduced following last year’s protests, set a dangerous precedent, advocates warn.
Such policies “are now on the books and available to be used against speech critical of environmental policy, racial justice, or really anything college administrators or the politicians exerting pressure upon them don’t like,” said Tori Porell, a staff attorney at Palestine Legal. In a report published in April, the group, which supports pro-Palestinian speech in the US, saw a 55% increase in requests for help in 2024 over 2023, and a 600% increase over 2022. Two-thirds of the requests came from university campuses.
The disciplinary measures often went beyond the schools’ own rules. As students at the University of Florida began to protest, part of the nationwide surge of pro-Palestine encampments last year, administrators distributed flyers listing prohibited items and activities and warning that violators would face a “3 year trespass and suspension” from campus – even though neither the prohibitions nor the threatened punishment reflected official university policy.
While there were no tents at the protest, Hovis said the university accused him of violating the ban on “camping” because he was sitting in a camping chair, an item that had not been prohibited before. He said the university wanted to make “examples” of him and four others suspended over the protest.
“I was sitting there thinking, if they’re really going to arrest me and suspend me over sitting in a folding chair on the grass of the college campus that I pay tuition to go to – for protesting against a genocide – then let them do it,” said Hovis. “And they did it, and it has kind of uprooted my life. But I don’t regret it.”