There have been 1,080 attempts to punish scholars over the past 23 years: Report

A former law professor said university officials need to enforce their own policies after students and educators heckled a judge and stopped his remarks.

A free-speech group found that there have been over 1000 attempts to punish scholars over the past 23 years.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education released a "Scholars Under Fire" report showing that there have been 1,080 attempts to punish scholars over the past 23 years. The annual number of attempts has gone up from 4 in 2000 to 145 last year, according to the report.

The report also found that 73% of those attempts to punish scholars have resulted in some sanction, including 225 terminations. Furthermore, they report that 3/4 of the firings were untenured scholars.

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The report goes on to say show that 37% of attempts to punish faculty were initiated by undergraduate students. There were 213 sanction attempts that occurred in 2021 alone, more than in any other single year.

A general view of the buildings of the Main Quadrangle and Hoover Tower on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. (David Madison/Getty Images)

The report includes a chart that shows which topics have driven the attempts to punish scholars. Among 21 topics that FIRE lists on the chart, race is the leading issue where scholars have been subject to scrutiny when addressing it in their profession.

According to the report, some of the United States' most prestigious universities have had the highest number of sanction attempts, including Harvard University, Stanford University, University of California Los Angeles, Georgetown University, Columbia University, and the