Far too many colleges still aren’t getting the message that free speech should be the rule on campus, rather than that rules should limit free speech.
That’s the main, and discouraging, takeaway from a report released today by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Every year, FIRE reviews the speech-related policies at hundreds of colleges. While the good news is that the percentage of schools given a “red light” rating “for maintaining policies that clearly and substantially restrict free speech” has dropped in 12 years from more than 60% down to 20% (98 of 489), the trend in the past two years actually has ticked back upward. Another eight schools, or 1.6%, received a “warning” because “they do not promise students free speech rights at all.”
On the other hand, only 63 schools, or 12.8%, “earn an overall ‘green light’ rating for maintaining policies that do not seriously imperil free expression.” The remaining 320, or a whopping 65.4%, are in a worrisome middle zone, with policies that put too much of a damper on speech while not as oppressively as at the “red light” colleges.
For an example of a problematic standard, Adams State University (whose rules are fairly typical) defines sexual harassment as “unwelcome conduct that is of a sexual nature or is based on a person’s actual or perceived sex, gender…,” including “verbal, non-verbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.” That definition is so broad that it can put a student at risk of a sexual harassment inquiry merely for unspoken body language that someone else finds “unwelcome.” Meanwhile, Delaware State University “bans users of any campus technology … from causing ‘offense to others’ and even from causing ‘embarrassment’ to the university.”
Those Delaware standards are so vague, of course, that no student can possibly feel free to express himself on any topic of controversy because, of course, someone else might take “offense.”
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The good news is that four colleges — DePauw University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Radford University, and the University of Tulsa — moved from “yellow light” to “green light” ratings. At least some people, therefore, are getting the message that the very heart of a university is free inquiry backed by free expression.
This really should be easy: No university can encourage exploration of a universe of knowledge unless minds and tongues are free to offer alternative ideas and test them through rigorous debate. Universities should be where ideas flourish and passion reigns. To be anything else is to fail, abjectly, at their missions.