Why Free Speech Is Losing to DEI on Campus

Nico Perrino has spent his career defending the First Amendment. As executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), he has seen firsthand how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are eroding freedom of thought on campus. On the latest episode of the Goldwater Institute’s Dismantling DEI podcast, Perrino explains how speech once protected in the quad has become a liability in the classroom, the workplace, and even online.

“There is this epidemic of self-censorship on college campuses right now,” he warns. Students and faculty alike are afraid to speak, fearing professional or social ruin. What began with campus speech codes and small administrative offices has metastasized into sprawling bureaucracies that demand conformity and punish dissent.

The consequences are on full display. Perrino recalls how “words are violence” became the rallying cry behind shouting down NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly at Brown in 2014 and silencing Ann Coulter at Cornell. The chilling effect hasn’t stayed on campus. “What happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus,” he says. “Corporate America started calling us, saying, ‘What do we do with these graduates?’” In this new culture, the wrong joke, the wrong tweet, or the wrong opinion can end careers.

Yet Perrino is not without hope. Universities such as Harvard and MIT are beginning to roll back mandatory DEI statements, signaling a possible shift. The mission of higher education, he argues, must return to its roots: “Preservation, dissemination, and creation of knowledge.” Without that foundation, institutions will simply drift with political winds until they collapse under their own contradictions.

For Perrino, the true danger is not diversity itself, but the narrowing of political belief that DEI enforces. At UC Berkeley, he notes, nearly half of applicants had their materials discarded solely because of their DEI statements—before their academic credentials were even considered. Even world-class scholars could be rejected at the starting line. His ideal university, he explains, is one where truth-seeking is the North Star: “DEI is something that we can maybe consider, but it should not guide everything that happens.”

Ultimately, Perrino believes the future depends on principled free speech advocates willing to defend expression even for their opponents. “We need fewer free speech hobbyists,” he says. “Do unto others as you would want done unto yourself.”