Students returning to campus after a school year marked by protests and encampments face a 'flammable' situation.

A recent survey shows that college students nationwide have decreased trust in university administrators to safeguard free speech, particularly on campuses where there were demonstrations regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The upcoming presidential election is not expected to improve the situation for researchers as students return to class for the fall semester.

According to Sean Stevens of the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, this semester is likely to witness a significant amount of unfavorable events.

Last week, FIRE released its annual College Free Speech Rankings, which were based on a survey of more than 3,800 students at 30 universities about encampments and protests.

According to the survey, nearly three-quarters of students said it is "rarely" acceptable to set up encampments as part of a protest, and 59% felt the same about occupying buildings.

According to Stevens, FIRE's chief research adviser, many of the encampments observed at universities such as Columbia, NYU, and UCLA last year likely breached time, place, and manner restrictions, which may have given colleges the authority to disperse the protests.

The survey found that liberal students had much lower confidence in their colleges' free speech climates on campuses where encampment protesters were arrested.

"Stevens stated that there has been a significant change in the attitudes of some students, with liberal students now being more concerned about the safety of free speech on campus than conservative students."

He observed that conservative students were typically more worried about free speech before the encampments.

Students' acceptance of protest-related actions was found to be inconsistent in the survey.

Students were asked by FIRE if it was acceptable for pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli students to engage in activities such as distributing flyers, marching, setting up camps, burning the American flag, or defacing school property. Despite the slight difference, a greater percentage of surveyed students deemed every protest action more acceptable when performed by a pro-Palestinian student.

Nearly 60,000 students in FIRE's main college speech survey showed another concerning attitude towards free expression, according to Stevens.

In 2023, 52% of students found blocking students from attending a campus speech to be at least "rarely" acceptable, an increase from 45% in 2022 and 37% in 2022. Additionally, a third of students said using violence to stop a speech would be at least "rarely" acceptable, up from 27% the previous year.

Stevens doubted the speech environment on campus would improve much this year.

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ongoing and could escalate, with Israel and Hezbollah exchanging missiles, while the upcoming presidential election is a highly charged topic for many people on campus."

Peaceful protests against Israel resumed on the first day of classes at Columbia last week, resulting in two arrests.

According to Reuters, the university has banned camping on campus and has closed gates, allowing only students and pre-registered guests to enter the grounds.

According to Stevens, universities that scored well on this year's free speech rankings demonstrate their dedication to upholding free speech, with the University of Virginia being a notable example.

"When a controversy has arisen, they not only refuse to cancel the speech or refuse to sanction a scholar or student or speaker, but they've literally stood up and explained why," he said. "It's like, 'No, we do not do this here. We do not censor, we do not disinvite speakers, we don't censor speech.'"

Harvard and Columbia, when they surrendered to protesters, signaled that they would repeat the action if someone made enough noise about an issue.