William Mattox: From ‘free shoes university’ to ‘free speech university’

Heartsick over back-to-back losses to start the 2025 football season, Florida State University fans got some good news late last week: FSU now ranks #3 in the nation — in a category arguably more important than football.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), FSU’s “protecting free speech and academic freedom” record now exceeds that of almost every other college in the country. Only the University of Virginia and Michigan Tech rank higher.

Apparently, the school that Steve Spurrier once called “Free Shoes University” (for violating NCAA compensation rules) should now be considered “Free Speech University.”

Former FSU President J. Stanley Marshall would be proud.

Marshall presided throughout campus unrest during the 1960s when FSU came to be known as “the Berkeley of the South.” His leadership in helping people on all sides appreciate the importance of free speech is commemorated today with a memorial wall on the FSU campus.

Moreover, the think tank Marshall founded in his post-FSU years – The James Madison Institute – continues his work of promoting campus free speech throughout our state.

Indeed, JMI recently commissioned a poll of Florida residents, which asked, among other things, whether Floridians believe our colleges and universities are doing a better job of promoting “intellectual diversity and free thought” than schools in other states.

The survey results were, in a word, mixed.

Twenty-eight percent said Florida universities are doing a better job, 23% said worse, and the rest said either “about the same” (33%) or “not sure” (16%).

What should we make of these poll results, especially in view of FSU’s #3 ranking?

For starters, Florida leaders need to do a better job of touting the successes of our university system. After all, in addition to FSU’s high ranking, the University of South Florida (#17) and Florida International University (#35) placed among the national leaders. Both the University of Florida and the University of North Florida currently hold a “green light” rating (FIRE’s highest) for their official policies regarding campus speech. And Florida became the first state – more than five years ago! – where all its public university presidents signed a joint statement affirming their commitment to campus free expression.

At the same time, some of our state universities clearly need to do a better job of living up to this stated commitment to free speech. After all, the University of Central Florida placed in the bottom half of FIRE’s rankings – #183 out of 251 – and five other Sunshine State universities (Florida A & M, Florida Atlantic, New College, West Florida and Florida Gulf Coast) hold only a middling “yellow light” rating from FIRE.

One way Florida policymakers could help our state schools “raise their game” would be to tie future “performance funding” (the bonuses universities earn for meeting specific metrics) to the results of the Florida Board of Governors’ annual campus-specific surveys. These surveys are designed to assess how well our state schools are cultivating a climate that fosters free expression and constructive dialogue. And they are an important complement to FIRE’s data (especially for smaller institutions, where FIRE metrics are not very broad).

Sadly, in recent years, Florida’s Faculty Union has sought to sabotage these anonymous surveys, fearful of what the results might show. They’ve encouraged students and instructors to refuse to participate in state assessments of campus culture.

If eligibility for future performance funding were to become conditional upon a university generating a valuable percentage of completed surveys, there’s reason to believe future boycotts would fail. And that Floridians would gain a lot more useful data to assess just how well our state universities (especially our smaller schools) are doing.

While policymakers ponder this performance funding proposal, all Floridians ought to crow about FSU’s #3 position in FIRE’s latest rankings. No, it won’t take all the sting out of a couple of disappointing losses to open the football season. However, Free Speech University has a much better ring to it than Free Shoes University.

Congrats, FSU.

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William Mattox is the director of the J. Stanley Marshall Center for Education Freedom at The James Madison Institute.