By: Michael Matthews | Publish Date: March 23rd, 2026
Brookdale Community College scheduled a drag queen story time as part of their Take Your Child to Work Day. The performer was to read children’s books and conduct a craft activity for the children of employees. The event was abruptly canceled following pressure from local officials and concerns from staff regarding what Brookdale Community College President David Stout called “comfort levels.” Some faculty criticized that it was a violation of inclusion values.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a new record was set in 2025 for attempts to censor, investigate, or punish college students for constitutionally protected speech. 273 documented cases in which students or groups of students were targeted for protected expression were found in 2025. This number surpassed the previous record of 252 in 2020.
“The findings reflect a campus environment where controversial ideas are increasingly policed, and students face scrutiny simply for expressing unpopular views,” said Logan Dougherty, a senior researcher at FIRE.
In April 2023, a student at the County College of Morris was suspended and removed from campus after school administrators said he was “preaching hate speech” while sharing Bible verses against homosexuality. The student, Kombe Sefelino, filed a lawsuit against the college, arguing his suspension violated his First Amendment rights to speak freely. In 2024, the case was resolved in his favor after which he was allowed to return to campus.
FIRE’s Students Under Fire Database tracks who calls for punishment, what speech is targeted, and the political direction of the attempt at censorship. It was found that in 2025 there was an increased effort on the political right to silence students’ speech. It also showed a sharp rise in direct pressure from government officials on universities, particularly following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
FIRE reports that state and federal executive orders were used in 2025 to justify bans on student-organized drag shows, cancellation of student film festivals, and disbanding student groups.
The conclusion of the report regarding the executive orders and bans is that students were targeted because it was controversial, not because their speech was unlawful. FIRE warns that this trend could “chill expression across entire campuses and shape a generation of students to avoid speaking out.”
According to Samuel J. Abrams, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he focuses on questions of civic and political culture and American ideologies, the days where Universities were “once trusted as training grounds for democratic citizenship…places where young adults wrestle with complex questions, debate passionately and learn to live alongside those whose views they may find challenging are quickly fading.”
Adams also said, “(that) the most alarming sign of this shift is the normalization of coercion.”
34% of students say it is acceptable to use violence to stop someone speaking on campus. Since 2022, this number has risen by 14 percentage points. 72% of students say shouting down a speaker is sometimes acceptable, and over half say it is sometimes permissible to physically block other students from attending an event on campus.
In 2016, a major dispute over student expression and faculty speech occurred at Kean Ocean. The situation involved an adjunct professor who was investigated and had her contract non-renewed following student complaints about her teaching methods. Students in her undergraduate Business Law course complained that she made offensive remarks regarding religion, gender, immigration status, and ethnicity. The professor argued that she was playing “devil’s advocate” to provoke critical thinking and discussion. Kean University investigated, and it was found that she violated New Jersey’s anti-discrimination policy, formally reprimanded her, required sensitivity training, and did not renew her contract for the fall 2016 semester. She sued the university, claiming her First Amendment rights were violated. The lawsuit lasted for years, with a federal judge dismissing her amended complaint in April 2020, ruling that her speech was not protected because it was made in her capacity as a public employee. The case was finally closed in July 2025.
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