Free speech is under attack across the country. The censoring of conservatives on Google, Twitter and Facebook is one form, and another form of censorship occurs in the news media when many of the nation’s largest and most read newspapers, and most watched and listened to broadcast media, report only some of the relevant news.
This bias of selecting some news over other news is dishonest and dangerous. It creates a situation where millions of Americans are quietly forced, through their reading, listening and watching habits, to make a wide variety of often significant decisions with only some of the important information they may need.
Free speech is also under attack at many of America’s institutions of higher learning. Colleges and universities once were the places where the expression of a variety of ideas was highly regarded and encouraged.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recently released the results of what it called “the largest free speech survey of college students ever performed,” consulting roughly 20,000 students at a variety of institutions.
The 55 colleges involved were chosen “to represent a variety of colleges in the United States, including large public universities, small private colleges, religiously-affiliated colleges such as Brigham Young University, and Ivy League colleges.”
The results are not encouraging.
Sixty percent of students said they could not express an opinion because of how students, a professor, or the administration would respond. This position was held by 73 percent of “strong Republicans” and 52 percent of “strong Democrats.”
Black students are most likely to report an instance where they censored themselves, with 63 percent taking this position. Here are three examples from survey participants on self-censoring:
* “I was in a class where the professor pretty much made you feel as if your participation grade was at risk if you disagreed with them.” — Black female at Georgetown University
* “Whenever it is obvious that some of my professors are on the left, I felt like I couldn’t express my political opinions due to my grades.” — Asian male at Clemson University
* The professors within my college tend to be conservative. I worry with certain professors that my opinion would cause them to unfairly grade my projects. — Hispanic female at the University of Arizona
The survey also found that just 15 percent of students — 11 percent of females and 19 percent of males — felt comfortable publicly disagreeing with a professor about a controversial topic.
The FIRE report notes that “a number of questions focused on a tension between feelings, or emotional reasoning, with logical inference and deduction.” And some faculty members explained that “a number of their students place a ‘supreme importance’ on their own feelings even when what they ‘feel’ is right is contradicted by empirical evidence.” Here are two students’ responses on this:
“Just in general. You have to be very careful of your words in order to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. Sometimes it is very hard to debate on topics because of this.” — Multiracial male at Northwestern University
“Nearly every day I feel like I cannot express my opinion without hurting someone’s feelings.” — White female at Georgetown University
Over the last couple of years there have been several instances of speakers invited to campuses to speak, but were shouted down and sometimes threatened. Many of those speakers were unable to complete their speaking engagement.
FIRE found that Ivy League school students were slightly more in favor of using violence to stop a campus speech. Twenty-one percent — one of every five — expressed some level of acceptance for violence in such situations.
And, on whether it is “always” or “sometimes” acceptable to shout down a speaker in extreme conversations, only 15 percent of extreme conservatives agreed, while more than 60 percent of extreme liberals agreed.
FIRE rated the universities on a numerical scale, and color-coded them for Speech Code, meaning “whether college policies restrict student speech that is protected by the First Amendment.” The codes are: Green = Best; Yellow = Intermediate; Red = Worst; Pink = Warning.
The five institutions with the highest level of free speech are: University of Chicago, Kansas State University, Texas A&M University, University of California, Los Angeles, and Arizona State University, all with Green codes.
The five institutions with the lowest level of free speech are: Syracuse University, Dartmouth College, Yellow codes; and Louisiana State University, University of Texas, and DePauw University, Red codes.
No West Virginia institutions were among the 55 that were ranked, but two Virginia institutions were included. The University of Virginia was ranked 6th on the list with a high level of free speech, and a Green code. The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI) was ranked a respectable 8th with a mid-level Yellow code.
Censorship is a serious issue, one that is at odds with America’s First Amendment. Free speech is a cornerstone of this nation.
There really is only one reason why someone or some group would exercise censorship: They are afraid their ideas will not be able to win when competing with different ideas, and therefore they will be unable to inflict their will on others. It’s about control.
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