Who’s Afraid of a Little Data?

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | May 13, 2022 | Joseph M. Knippenberg

[karpov]

We’ve heard a lot, in recent years, about a free speech crisis on our college campuses. There are stories of speakers being shouted down and of students being afraid to voice their opinions, for fear of ostracism by their peers or retaliation from faculty and staff. Some have dismissed this talk as politically inspired rhetoric, a manufactured crisis cooked up to serve a “plutocratic libertarian” agenda.

To be sure, the anecdotes themselves are spectacular, with Ilya Shapiro at Hastings College of Law and Kristen Waggoner at Yale Law School turning Charles Murray at Middlebury and Heather Mac Donald at Claremont into yesterday’s news. It would seem to be helpful to gather data to put these appalling stories into context.

We’ve seen some national surveys, such as that undertaken by the Knight Foundation in 2020 and the annual effort of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). We’ve also seen the Florida state legislature mandate a campus climate survey, which has raised some hackles among my colleagues in the Sunshine State, who have characterized (or perhaps mischaracterized) it as a chilling effort at censorship.

Now there’s Wisconsin, where a new survey covering all the campuses in the University of Wisconsin system has become a bone of contention. The “Student Perceptions of Campus Free Speech Survey” was originally scheduled to be administered in April and May of this year but has been postponed to the fall. Designed by a team of researchers led by Professor Timothy Shiell of the University of Wisconsin-Stout and administered by the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service, this survey, approved by all the relevant Institutional Research Boards, gives even more urgency to the questions it is meant to address.

[Dr. Franklin]

First Amendment freedoms have been under attack in the U.S. for decades now. All someone need do is claim “harassment”, and too frequently some law enforcement type, particularly on college campuses, allege that the thought was expressed to “annoy or alarm” someone else, and “serves no legitimate purpose”. That is all that is needed to shut someone down, and charge that person criminally. They do it all the time.

[humblegunner]

Who’s Afraid of a Little Data?

Tasha Yar.

[real saxophonist]

Beat me to it. 8~)

[FreshPrince]

Tasha was a cutie

[Catholic and Conservative]

Campus progressives are again answering the question of whether there is a lack of free speech on campus by refusing to let people ask the question.