Infographic: Free Speech Champions Ranked by Conference

Controversies over free speech on college campuses are in the news seemingly every week, whether it’s an unpopular guest speaker being shouted down, a voluntary student group being banned from campus, or a professor losing his job over something he said in the classroom. While most Americans consider open inquiry and academic freedom essential to the mission of a university, the debate over what can or cannot be said on campus is far from settled at most schools today. 

How serious is the speech problem in higher education? Is the problem widespread or just relegated to a small group of campuses? Which colleges and universities are doing a good job of protecting speech? RealClearEducation conducted a survey of experts on the campus speech climate in order to explore these questions. You can read a more thorough report about the survey here. 

Just for fun, we decided to rank schools in our speech survey by athletic conference. For a nation that's passionate about college sports, the graphic below offers a new twist on age-old campus rivalries.