The nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression just released its latest College Free Speech Rankings, and its report includes some chilling revelations about college students’ attitudes toward free expression. (Disclaimer: I do some freelance consulting work with FIRE.) The organization surveyed 58,807 undergraduate students; here’s what it found.
A whopping 52% of students think it can be acceptable to block other students from attending a controversial campus speech, way up from just 37% saying the same thing as recently as 2022. Meanwhile, a shocking 32% of students think using violence to block a campus speech can be acceptable, up from 20% saying the same in 2022. And finally, an astounding 68% of students said “shouting down” a controversial speaker can be acceptable, up from 62% in 2022.
In an unfortunate but unsurprising twist, students who identified as “very liberal” were more likely to support these censorious tactics, and their support for censorship clearly skewed in one ideological direction.
A clear majority of students, 68%, said that a speaker who argues “transgender people have a mental disorder” should not be allowed to speak on campus. Meanwhile, two-thirds of students similarly said that campuses shouldn’t let someone arguing “Black Lives Matter is a hate group” talk at an event. Nearly 60% said the same about someone who would argue that “collateral damage in Gaza is justified for the sake of Israeli security.”
Whether one agrees with these opinions or not, students supporting their censorship are hopelessly misguided. These aren’t all even particularly fringe ideas, but even if they were, the answer to bad or upsetting speech is more speech: arguments that explain why something is wrong and offer another alternative. If ideas considered too “offensive” or “radical” are shut down instead of debated, the kind of social progress many of these young people claim to care about is hampered; after all, Martin Luther King Jr. was considered a “radical” in his day.
Their approach is also remarkably short-sighted. If tactics such as shouting speakers down or using violence to disrupt talks are allowed, there’s nothing to stop right-wing opponents from using those same tactics to disrupt speeches by the people from whom these very liberal college students do want to hear. These things simply can’t go only one way.
Regardless, the trend here is clear.
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Not only are college students fundamentally hostile to the idea of free expression, but that hostility, at least over the last few years, is only becoming more pronounced and widespread. This should be deeply concerning to anyone who values America’s unique legal protections for free speech, which are only preserved through our culture valuing free expression. And it has ramifications that extend far beyond the boundaries of college campuses.
Today’s college students are tomorrow’s CEOs, journalists, politicians, entrepreneurs, and teachers. So, if we cannot convince this country’s young people that they should believe in freedom of expression, then the demise of our free speech rights becomes a question of when, not if.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist, YouTuber, co-founder of BASEDPolitics, and Tony Blankley fellow at the Steamboat Institute.