A libertarian law professor who responded to FIRE’s recent national survey of law faculty offered a striking admission:
Whether justified or unjustified, I regularly hide beliefs from colleagues who are openly discussing important topics in the public interest out of fear of retaliation, particularly as a junior faculty member.
No administrator had disciplined him. No student had filed a complaint. Yet, by his own admission, he and another colleague routinely conceal their views at faculty meetings and other public events, not because anyone ordered them to stay silent, but because they worry that candor can exact professional costs.
That kind of silence is tricky to measure, but carries serious implications. And new data suggest it is relatively common in American law schools.
For a report released this week, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) surveyed 1,959 law faculty at 192 ABA-approved law schools. The findings reveal a profession caught in a contradiction: law professors overwhelmingly endorse free expression in principle, yet many describe an academic culture that discourages them from practicing it.
That should alarm anyone who cares about legal education. Law schools are supposed to be places that train students to make arguments they may not personally believe, stress-test ideas against the strongest opposing case, and examine precedents, doctrines, and historical cases that may offend some modern sensibilities. But that model depends on faculty willing to speak frankly and institutions willing to tolerate dissent.
More than half of the law faculty surveyed (56%) report that they at least occasionally feel unable to express their opinion because of how students, colleagues, or administrators might respond. And that number becomes even more striking when ideology is taken into account. Conservative law faculty, who are outnumbered three to one in the sample, were more likely than their liberal colleagues to report self-censoring (72% versus 50%), and three times as many conservatives, compared to liberals, reported at least occasionally hiding their political beliefs from other faculty in an attempt to keep their job (52% versus 17%).
The survey also found clear asymmetries in perceptions of institutional fit. While majorities of law faculty said a liberal individual would fit well in their law school, far fewer said the same about a conservative individual.
As one law professor put it:
In my law school, students get only half the story in most of their courses. There are no conservatives as full-time professors, and only a few moderates. Students who are moderate to conservative rarely share their views in class.
And this same professor connected that climate directly to his own choices:
For the past 15 years, I’ve seen our law students become less prepared for the adversarial nature of legal practice. I’m partly to blame, as I have modified my exams and exercises to avoid potentially controversial fact patterns and claims.
That self-indictment — “I’m partly to blame” — isn’t a complaint about administrators or colleagues (though they could be the other part). Rather, it’s an acknowledgment that retreating from difficulty is something he’s done, incrementally, over many years. All within the context of diminishing ideological diversity. Multiplied across a profession, that accumulation of small adjustments doesn’t just reflect the culture of law schools. It creates one.
Another law professor, a self-described strong Democrat, described the specific calculus self-censorship dynamics produce in his classes:
I teach cases without ever saying what actually happened in the case because I’m afraid to say those words (notably some First Amendment cases address words I didn’t even know were slurs before reading the case).
A First Amendment professor, self-censoring while teaching First Amendment cases. By this professor’s honest admission, we can see how his students are learning about free speech firsthand, but in this case by what isn’t being said. They are watching their professor decide that engagement with certain material is too risky, and filing that lesson away.
This is how habits can form and a culture can shift. Not necessarily through any speech code or disciplinary action (though it can come from there too). But through hesitation and daily acts of omission that students observe, absorb, and over time likely begin to mimic themselves.
Law students go on to become lawyers who argue cases in court, prosecutors who decide what charges to bring, judges who make rulings, policymakers who debate and enact laws and regulations. What they learn in law school isn’t just the law. It’s instinct. Habits. Principles. How to respond when an idea is uncomfortable. What to do when they’re on the unpopular side of an issue. Where to turn when silence is the path of least resistance.
In February 2024, the American Bar Association adopted Standard 208, which requires law schools to adopt, publish, and adhere to written policies that protect academic freedom and encourage free expression. More than 9 in 10 law faculty support free expression policies. But the professor who hides his views at faculty meetings already knows his school has a free expression policy. The policy is not the problem, and though it is a good step, it isn’t the complete solution either.
What we see from our new data from law faculty is that the culture within law schools appears to have taken a concerning turn. And written commitments alone don’t change cultures; people do. Through individual decisions about whether to speak or stay quiet. To participate in a debate, or pass. To publicly defend a colleague, or only offer private condolences. To prepare students for their professional careers by teaching the messy topics, or avoiding them in hopes of receiving better student evaluations. These decision points provide opportunities for faculty to model courage or model calculation.
Right now, for too many law faculty, silence appears to be winning… and their students are watching.
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Nathan Honeycutt is a research fellow and manager of polling and analytics at FIRE.
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