Survey Shows Majority of College Students Afraid to Disagree with Professors

More Students Support Violence Against Offensive Speakers

​A new poll of undergraduate students reveals they lack a basic understanding of the First Amendment’s guarantees and are growing in acceptance of the heckler’s veto and even violence against speakers on campus.
 
These are the results of the William F. Buckley, Jr., Program’s eighth annual survey measuring the opinions of college students at four-year colleges and universities. One might wonder if a survey commissioned by a group named for the famous conservative author of God and Man at Yale might have a built-in bias of its own. But the survey, conducted by McLaughlin & Associates of 803 undergraduates nationwide, shows a clear deterioration in basic understanding of the principles of free speech that matches growing reports of intolerance for speech on campus over the last year.
 

• Fifty-eight percent of students “frequently” or “sometimes” feel intimidated from sharing ideas, opinions, or beliefs in class that differ from those of professors. This is almost a ten-point increase from students who replied this way in 2015.

 

• Students are even more intimidated by their fellow students. Some 63 percent say they “frequently” or “sometimes” feel intimidated from sharing ideas, opinions, or beliefs that differ from their classmates. This is up from the 50 percent of students who felt this way last year.

 

• A near majority (48 percent) does not believe that the First Amendment protects hate speech. While 80 percent value the First Amendment, 44 percent – the highest level ever recorded – believe it is acceptable to shout down speakers. Forty-one percent of students also believe violence is justifiable to prevent a speaker from using hate speech or making racially charged comments.

 

• When asked about cultures in which “some types of speech merit the death penalty,” 48 percent agreed with the idea “that some speech can be so offensive that it merits such harsh punishment.”

 
The deterioration of speech principles in higher education begins as a failure in American secondary education. Students are not in disagreement with the American tradition of free speech and the Constitutional order as much as they seem to lack a basic understanding of what that tradition is.
 
As always, such discussions center around the most offensive speech imaginable, but the practical effect is to demonize anyone we disagree with as being the moral equivalent of a Nazi or Satan. Limiting speech on campus can come from conservatives as well as from liberals.
 
Students need to understand that – except for explicit calls to violence – hate speech, as contemptible as it is, is allowed in America. This is based on a mature understanding that once we outlaw one kind of speech, rhetorical contortions will be made to define any opposing argument as somehow being hateful and thus worthy of repression. Students are also not taught that outlawing hate speech does not eradicate it: rather, it drives such speech underground and glamorizes it. Repression endows hate speech with a glimmering allure for immature and unhealthy minds.