Universities, one would think, should be bastions of free speech. These institutions are, after all, where we (supposedly) send young people to be equipped with marketable skills, and one of those skills should perforce be the ability to disagree with others civilly, to face criticism, and to encounter people who think differently.

Not at Harvard. That once-great school has recently been named the worst school for free speech.

Harvard University is officially 2023’s worst school for free speech.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released its annual college free speech rankings on Wednesday, which dubbed the state of free speech at the Ivy League school “abysmal.”

“I’m not totally surprised,” Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics at FIRE, told The Post. “We’ve done these rankings for years now, and Harvard is consistently near the bottom.”

Despite being the most acclaimed academic institution in the country, Harvard received a 0.00-point free speech ranking on a 100-point scale — a full 11 points behind the next worst school.

FIRE says the dismal score was “generous,” considering Harvard’s actual score was a -10.69, according to their calculations.

It's interesting when you consider that the first sizable student protest in the United States took place at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, and was promptly dubbed the start of the Free Speech Movement. It's not at all unlikely that some backlash to the Free Speech protests resulted in Ronald Reagan being elected Governor of California in 1966. That backlash was in large part because most Californians, and indeed most Americans, saw the Free Speech protests as being driven by what was then the far left. Back then, you see, the left cared about free speech. Now? Not so much.

Harvard actually managed a negative score in FIRE's evaluation:

Harvard’s score was dragged down by the fact that nine professors and researchers at Harvard faced calls to be punished or fired based on what they had said or written — and seven of the nine were actually professionally disciplined.

“I thought it would be pretty much impossible for a school to fall below zero, but they’ve had so many scholar sanctions,” Stevens said.

What's interesting is the school rated best from the free speech standpoint: Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, earning 78.01 out of 100 possible points. A tech school, where one would presume there aren't a lot of political issues bandied about, easily comes in first, so perhaps that's not surprising; indeed, it might be encouraging that a tech school in the Midwest cares about free speech more than the cobwebbed old Ivy League schools.

Here's the thing: All of these institutions receive federal monies; Harvard, for example, from 2016 to 2022, received $22,000,000 from the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Work-Study Program. They are, in effect, a subsidized arm of the federal government, and so, one would think, this little gem should apply (emphasis added by me):

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I'm normally not a fan of government intervention, but since we aren't likely to see a complete decoupling of education and government - which I would greatly prefer - then perhaps some enterprising Republican lawmakers will put together and pass a bill defunding any university that does not meet some defined free speech guidelines. (I know, I know.) That would be, I think, an unalloyed good, which means it probably won't happen. If a college, like, say, Harvard, wishes to continue to suppress free speech on their campuses, let them do so funded by their enormous endowments, where, by the way, Harvard comes in at #3, with a massive fund of $53,200,000,000 at hand. That's $53 billion, folks.

Whatever the case, if one needs any further evidence that the Ivy League schools have largely outlived their usefulness, this is another indicator.