Is there a free speech crisis on American university campuses?
According to a 2016 Knight Foundation survey, most college students feel confident about the security of their freedom of speech.
78% of college students reported they favor an open learning environment that includes offensive views. While a majority of U.S. adults (56%) believe their freedom of speech is secure, their confidence greatly lags behind college students (73%).
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A survey by the American Council on Education (ACE) found a disconnect between students' and college presidents' opinions on free speech.
When asked how they rated the importance of free speech in a democracy, 74% of college presidents responded "Extremely important", and none responded "Not that important". However, 56% of students responded "Extremely important" and 1% responded "Not that Important".
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An American Council on Education (ACE) survey shows most students and college presidents agree that free speech is important.
As part of the 2018 ACE survey, 100% of college presidents responded that free speech was one of the following: "Extremely important" (74%), "Very important" (24%) or "Moderately important" (2%). 99% of students chose one of those same options.
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Students on American university campuses believe most students at other colleges are bad at seeking out contrasting viewpoints.
According to an American Council on Education survey, 58% of students felt their counterparts at other colleges are less adept at listening to other voices. However, they felt students at their own colleges are doing a good job of seeking out and listening to different viewpoints
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According to a 2020 survey, most students on American campuses felt their ability to express their opinions were being stifled.
The Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE) survey found that 60% of students reported feeling they could not express an opinion because of how students, a professor, or their administration would respond.
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According to the 2020 FIRE survey, students at Ivy League schools were more in favor than others of using violence to stop a campus speech.
A total of 21% of Ivy League students expressed some level of acceptance for violence in these cases—with 1% saying it was “always” acceptable, 3% saying “sometimes” and 17% saying “rarely"—compared with 18% overall and 15% among students in the Southeastern Conference.
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Ivy League students are more likely than their counterparts to support shutting down speech through any means (including non-violent ones).
37% of Ivy League students say that shouting down a speaker is “always” or “sometimes” acceptable, compared to 26% of students not enrolled at Ivy League colleges. When it comes to removing flyers, the figures are 37% to 28%.
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In October 2017, a college professor's neck was injured when she was attacked by students for holding a talk.
Allison Stranger, a professor at Middlebury College, was injured in a melee following the campus appearance of Charles Murray, who co-wrote The Bell Curve—a book discussing racial differences in intelligence. While protesting against Murray, some students attacked Stranger.
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There is a growing trend of campus students using coercive means to curtail free speech at universities and higher education institutions.
People blocked from speaking include Janet Mock (TV host and transgender rights activist) at Brown University, Ben Shapiro (Jewish conservative) at California State University, and Nicholas Dirks (Chancellor of University of California, Berkeley) at his own institution.
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A 2017 Cato/YouGov survey showed that young, college-aged Americans are more likely to curtail free speech to avoid causing offence.
In response to questions asking whether respondents support a ban on speech offensive to different groups (e.g. white people, Muslims, the police), two age groups (18-24 and 25-35 year olds) supported banning offensive speech 44% and 43% of the time respectively.