When President Donald Trump roared to victory in 2024, conservatives told themselves a number of just-so stories. Biden-era profligacy had driven the Democratic Party into its grave, leaving MAGA Republicans to plot America’s future alone. Former President Barack Obama’s “coalition of the ascendant” had permanently splintered. Most importantly, wokeness was spent as a cultural force. From now on, surely no one would insist that men could become women, that racism lurked behind every rock and tree, or that right-leaning speech ought to be muzzled.

Alas, someone forgot to tell the country’s undergraduates. In October 2025, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression conducted a nationwide survey of 2,028 college students, including an oversampling of students at Utah Valley University, the site of the Charlie Kirk killing a month prior. The findings, released in early December, make for a harrowing read and duly rocketed through the news cycle. According to FIRE’s widely shared summary of its data, 9 out of 10 undergraduates believe the self-evidently absurd claim that “words can be violence.” Tallied in a particular way, the figures also seem to reveal that 79% think “silence is violence.” Such irrational attitudes, it would appear, give the lie to assertions of wokeness’s demise.

What are we to make of these terrible numbers? For starters, and with respect for FIRE’s deservedly good reputation, we might push back against them a little. The “9 out of 10” figure, for instance, adds up only if one includes those respondents who “somewhat,” 28%, or “slightly,” 15%, agree with the “words can be violence” claim. Nevertheless, journalists from Reason to UnHerd to Minding the Campus uncritically quoted FIRE’s math. Nor is the 79% “silence is violence” mark quite as bad as it initially looks. As FIRE’s own executive summary makes clear, only 29% of students “mostly” or “completely” assent to that lie.

It is also the case that college campuses are where social science goes to die. As every pollster knows, social desirability bias is the specter haunting all survey........

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