When is comes to censoring free speech on campus, it turns out the U.S. isn’t the only country with a problem.

The Telegraph reports.

Free speech rankings: over half of universities have ‘banned or censored ideas’

Nine in 10 universities have been accused of censoring speech, in the second annual survey of campus attitudes to free speech in the UK.

The number has risen from 80 per cent last year, when the rankings were first published by Spiked – the online magazine.
According to the report, policies are “creeping into every corner of students’ academic and social lives”, with 55 per cent of the 115 institutions surveyed marked ‘Red’ by the magazine.

‘Red’ indicates an institution that has “banned and actively censored ideas on campus”, with Amber indicating an institution that has “chilled free speech through intervention”. A ‘Green’ university has a “hands-off approach to free speech”.

The survey reveals an increase in the number of universities marked as ‘Red’, rising from 41 per cent in 2015, while the number of universities marked ‘Green’ has fallen from 20 per cent in 2015 to 10 per cent this year.

The analysis looks at both the policies and actions of universities and students’ unions.

Today’s figures reveal that student unions (SUs) are far more likely to censor speech or ideas than the universities themselves, with 62 per cent of SUs marked as ‘Red’, compared with 15 per cent of universities.

It comes as the #RhodesMustFall campaign continues to escalate at the University of Oxford – marked as ‘Red’ by Spiked magazine.

Last week, the new vice-chancellor of the university, Professor Louise Richardson, spoke out against the campaign to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College, adding that extremist groups must be allowed to speak at British universities because to ban them would stifle free speech.