After revising its policies to be more supportive of free speech, Middle Tennessee State University has received a "green light" rating for free speech protections from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, one of 68 universities nationwide to achieve the highest rating offered.
FIRE, a national free-speech advocacy organization that routinely reviews both public and private universities’ campus speech policies, says the green light rating is reserved for institutions with "no written policies that seriously imperil student free speech rights."
MTSU had previously been ranked as “yellow light” school in January 2024 — on the red light, yellow light, and green light ranking scale — due to a number of vaguely worded policies that could be construed to limit speech.
For example, the “violence on campus” policy was revised to better “balance freedom of expression with the obligation to prevent physical violence on campus,” according to a university statement.
“Under this policy, only speech that constitutes a ‘true threat,’ defined as ‘a statement where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals,’ is prohibited,” the university said.
The school also improved its “amplified sound guidelines” by deleting a provision that banned "offensive language," and revised the “electronic mail acceptable use” policy to clarify that "annoying" emails are permitted, but harassment via email is not.
MTSU is home to the John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies, which promotes awareness of the First Amendment and quality journalism in Tennessee. The university is also home to the Free Speech Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy center that seeks to further First Amendment education.
"I'm pleased that the university, under the guidance of our Free Speech Center and Director Ken Paulson, has been able to work with FIRE on these relatively minor updates to our speech guidelines to ensure our students have the speech protections they deserve and to achieve this 'green light' rating," MTSU President Sidney McPhee said in a statement.
Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center and member of FIRE's legal advisory council, spoke highly of the improvements to MTSU’s free speech codes.
"Improving MTSU's speech policies did not take heavy lifting," Paulson said. "It was done by tweaking fewer than a half-dozen phrases without changing the university's original intent."
FIRE senior program officer Mary Griffin worked with MTSU on the revisions.
"MTSU students are now free to express themselves through protest, demonstration, and other means under the school's revised policies, which promise not to censor students based on what they say," said Griffin. "We are elated to see MTSU respect and protect students' expressive rights while other schools are finding reasons to silence and hamper student speech."
The USA Today Network - Tennessee's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.
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