Fourteen of the 21 bills enacted last year contained gag orders, which PEN defines as direct censorship.
Last year was a record year for education scrutiny. More than half of U.S. college students now live in a state with at least one law or policy that restricts what colleges teach or how college campuses operate, according to a new report from PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free speech and press freedom on campuses.
Last year, lawmakers in 32 states introduced a total of 93 bills to review higher education. Among them, 15 states have enacted 21 bills: Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
“Sadly, censorship is now an intractable reality on college and university campuses, with serious negative impacts on teaching, research, and student life,” Amy Reed, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Study program, said in a press release. “With the threat of formal sanctions and political retaliation from state and federal governments, campus leaders and faculty feel they have no choice but to comply and increasingly act preemptively out of fear. Politicians are expanding a broad web of political and ideological control over higher education on American campuses, reshaping what can be taught, studied, and debated to suit their own agendas. This is dangerous for free thought in democracies.”
The report highlights Ohio Senate Bill 1, a sweeping higher education bill that would require institutions to remain neutral on “any controversial beliefs or policies,” establish post-tenure review policies, ban DEI initiatives, and require institutions to demonstrate “intellectual diversity.” It also proposes Indiana House Bill 1001, Ohio House Bill 96 and Texas Senate Bill 37, all of which would limit or eliminate the Faculty Senate’s decision-making authority.
Fourteen of the 21 bills enacted last year contained gag orders, which PEN defines as direct censorship. Seven of the laws apply to higher education (the others apply only to K-12 education). In addition to the laws enacted, PEN documented five gag order policies enacted by state or university system boards, including Texas Tech University’s effective ban on teaching transgender topics and Texas A&M University’s weaponized ban on teaching racial or gender “ideology.”
The PEN International report noted that most proposed bills introduced last year contained some form of indirect censorship. It breaks such bills into six categories: curriculum controls; term limits; institution-neutral mandates; accreditation restrictions; diversity, equity, and inclusion prohibitions; and governance restrictions.
“Our research shows that legislators more frequently resort to indirect means to achieve the ultimate goal of censoring higher education, effectively expanding their web of control over the industry in multiple directions,” the report states. “Indirect censorship measures are wildly popular, with state legislators introducing more than twice as many indirect censorship measures as education gag orders (78 vs. 33).”
In all, state lawmakers passed 20 of 78 bills containing indirect censorship, some of which also included gag orders. The 26% pass rate was “very high,” the report said. New laws include the aforementioned Indiana HB 1001; Idaho Senate Bill 1198, which prohibits faculty from taking “critical theory” courses as a required course for majors or minors; and Kansas Senate Bill 78, which allows institutions to sue their accrediting agencies if they are penalized for complying with state law, primarily because some state laws in Kansas violate accrediting agencies’ academic freedom standards.
The PEN International report also covers federal pressure to review colleges and universities. In 2025, the Departments of Justice and Education launched more than 90 investigations into alleged Title VI violations. The Trump administration’s research funding goal is $3.7 billion, and Trump signed 19 education-related executive orders, including one ending DEI programs at colleges and universities. Also last year, the government recommended that 38 universities’ federal research partnerships should be suspended because of their recruitment practices.
“The government often defends its actions in the name of protecting free speech, but the record shows its purpose is to censor speech and control the spread of ideas,” Jonathan Friedman, managing director of PEN International’s U.S. Free Speech Program, said in a news release. “The ‘diversity of views’ they promote is not a value-neutral claim about real debate or diversity of thought, or even free speech. It is simply a code word for censoring certain progressive ideas while promoting conservative ideas. The obvious purpose is to turn colleges and universities into mouthpieces for government. That is not what our higher education institutions should be doing.”
