Posted on 12/22/2022 8:23:19 AM PST by george76
Majority of students opposed to bringing conservative speakers on campus, report found..
College students at America’s largest 203 colleges continue to censor themselves inside and outside of the classroom, a national survey of 45,000 students concluded.
Students play a significant role in censoring free speech on campus, but colleges can enforce policies that protect it, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s third annual College Free Speech Rankings, released in September, for the 2022-23 school year.
Adam Goldstein, FIRE’s vice president of research, told The College Fix in an email on December 16 that the wider culture has contributed to an atmosphere of thought and speech suppression on campus,
...
“To the extent there are clues in the existing data, cultural forces in the general public seem to create more discomfort than just on-campus interactions.” Goldstein stated. “For example, 41% of students were uncomfortable disagreeing with a professor in a written assignment, but 59% were uncomfortable disagreeing publicly.”
“Similarly, 48% of students were uncomfortable expressing their views on a controversial political topic on campus, while 60% were uncomfortable expressing unpopular opinions to fellow students on social media,” Goldstein stated.
However, Goldstein told the Fix that when it comes to students engaging in at least some forms of censorship, schools can play a big role in protecting free speech by enforcing policies against violent or disruptive tactics.
“Lots of campus censorship isn’t expressive, such as theft of newspapers, ongoing heckler’s vetoes that prevent speakers from speaking entirely, or trashing flyers from ideologically opposed campus groups,” he wrote. “To the extent campus policy or existing law prohibit those actions, enforcement is important. A policy is only ever as good as the will to enforce it.”
Columbia University ranked lowest, receiving a score of ‘Abysmal’..
FIRE’s lowest-ranked school for free speech “by far” was Columbia University, with a score of “Abysmal,” according to the report summary. University of Chicago ranked highest for the second time in two years. Other lowest-ranking schools included Skidmore College, Georgetown and the University of Pennsylvania.
FIRE calculated free speech scores for each school based on seven components, according to its rankings page. These included student openness to discussing challenging topics, tolerance for controversial speakers, students’ admission of whether they have withheld ideas out of fear and evaluation of written free speech policies.
The analysis includes the “largest survey on student free expression ever conducted” and “adds 45,000 student voices to the national conversation about free speech on college campuses,” according to a news release.
The report was completed in partnership with College Pulse, a marketing and research firm.
The Fix asked Goldstein whether the censorship it measured originated with student demands or administrative or faculty control.
“It’s tough to say, really, because it’s a chicken-and-egg problem” Goldstein stated. “Some students demand censorship, and schools occasionally justify their policies by saying the students demanded it.”
“Opposition to allowing controversial conservative speakers on campus ranged from 59% to 73% of the students surveyed, depending on the speaker,” according to the report. “In contrast, opposition to controversial liberal speakers ranged from 24% to 41%, depending on the speaker.”
Additionally, “more than three-in-five students (62%) said that students shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus was acceptable to some degree, down from 66% in 2021, and one-in-five (20%) said this about using violence to stop a campus speech, down from 23% in 2021,” the report stated.
Nonetheless, “large numbers of students demanding censorship is a relatively young phenomenon—not more than a decade old, really—whereas schools have been censoring student speech as long as they’ve existed.” Goldstein stated. “So I’m somewhat skeptical of the schools who say they had to censor something because students complained.”
Report indicates high rates of self-censorship..
Additionally, high numbers of students are censoring themselves, according to the report. Forty-two percent conservative students felt that they could not express their opinions freely, versus 13 percent of of liberal students who said the same. Sixty-three percent of respondents worried about damaging their reputation because someone misunderstood something they said or did.
Abortion, racial inequality, and COVID-19 vaccine mandates were rated as the three most difficult topics to discuss on campus, the report stated. Additionally 40 percent of students said they are are uncomfortable disagreeing with a professor.
“That so many students are self-silencing and silencing each other is an indictment of campus culture,” FIRE Senior Research Fellow Sean Stevens stated in the report news release. “How can students develop their distinct voices and ideas in college if they’re too afraid to engage with each other?”
Liberals are all for Free Speech, until they aren’t.
The other 41% are clueless.
and 99 percent of the professors fear disagreeing with their students..........................
This tells me that students are taught to disagree with conservatives by the professors. Some are catching on, but some aren’t. Then again, I would assume that there are a certain amount of good conservative professors as well. Potential college students are perhaps not as selective as they should be when picking a college to attend.
Today’s college environments put the “uni-verse” into University.
There are no real profs in the arts - nope, let’s be a bit more realistic - there are few real profs in the arts anymore. I’m STEM type, but have always loved and respected history, art, music. Now? Bwahahahahahahaha.
Classical liberals really did believe in free speech. Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter is the only classical liberal left. It is a shame - and a tragedy - that Carter does not speak up against this suppression of free speech.
As for today’s liberals, this famous saying certainly applies:
Scratch a liberal, find a fascist.
59% know the deal, then. The other 41% are sheep among wolves.
In the early 80s I was taking a grad course in Philosophy. The professor, chairman of the dept, had a syllabus which categorized all the various disciplines as this or that form of Humanism (7 or so different varieties, including sectarian [Christian]).
I went into his office to contend that labeling Christian philosophy as Humanism is a complete contradiction, in view of Humanism’s claim that “man is the measure of all things”.
He simply said: “whatever.” I got an A when all was said and done.
I gather that it’s not that way any more.
It’s called conditioning. This is why the right is weak. This starts in elementary schools and all the way up. The right have been conditioned to be silent.
they are there to learn, not interject their uneducated mindspeak into the classroom.
Colleges have children for customers. They simply terrorize them, because they can.
Their “providers” are overgrown children who never left school called “professors”. They act out routinely without moderation.
School consumers should demand accountability and complain loudly if such demands are met with grade retaliation.
You’re paying for an education. You should teach your children to be demanding consumers and help them do that.
Regurgitate what the professor wants to hear / read.
I’m very surprised the number is that low. I bet it was similar 50 years ago.
Professors chosen on the basis of kink, gender and color are usually stupid.
This is NOT to say that gays, blacks and women can’t be the most qualified - being hired on merit. It’s saying WHEN professors are chosen for kink, gender and color - they’re usually stupid.
Stupid professors produce stupid students including stupid ‘teachers’ who in turn produce stupid American students K - to 12... It’s a circle of failure.
Today we’re in a world where ‘professors’ are afraid of being challenged by students and afraid of hearing ideas outside of the ‘safe ones’ they already believe. It’s education for anti-intellectuals ... people fearful of ideas.
Depends on the prof.
Some are fine and don’t mind the challenges.
The “liberal” or “progressive” tolerant ones?
Forget it. Disagree at your peril and sacrifice your GPA.
It happens way before that. Public schools teach that disagreeing with liberalism is hate. Their parents must agree with that or they wouldn’t send them to public school.
I guess the real problem here is that groomer government high school teachers haven’t prepared students to make an argument or how to be prepared to really learn. While, it was a lot different when I was in college, I had profs that spewed bull crap, sometimes even being wrong in mathematics. If the error was big enough, I would call them out on it. I paid for my college education and I considered myself to be a customer first. I had a clear objective of learning specific things. I went to lectures not just to learn, but to validate what I had learned by studying prior to class. The difference could be illustrated by a student that can follow and confirm what a prof was writing on a blackboard as he wound himself around the room and a student that simply took notes and wrote everything the prof was writing, verbatim, only hoping to figure it out later.
Most people do not belong in college and unfortunately that includes a lot of educators too.
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