The New York Analysis of Policy & Government concludes its examination of the opposition to campus censorship.
The growing opposition to campus censorship is giving rise to legislative action.
State legislators are acting on a legislative proposal written by Stanley Kurtz, James Manley and Jonathon Butcher for the Goldwater Institute. The authors have developed model legislation designed to ensure free expression at America’s public university systems. They reported that “Surveys show that student support for restrictive speech codes and speaker bans is at historic heights. As both a deeply held commitment and a living tradition, freedom of speech is dying on our college campuses, and is increasingly imperiled in society at large. Nowhere is the need for open debate more important than on America’s college campuses. Students maturing from teenagers into adults must be confronted with new ideas, especially ideas with which they disagree, if they are to become informed and responsible members of a free society.”
The report cited worrisome problems. One example: In November 2016, campus police at Grand Valley State University in Michigan threatened to arrest students for handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution.
The proposed measure:
- creates an official university policy that strongly affirms the importance of free expression, nullifying any existing restrictive speech codes in the process.
- It prevents administrators from disinviting speakers, no matter how controversial, whom members of the campus community wish to hear from.
- It establishes a system of disciplinary sanctions for students and anyone else who interferes with the free-speech rights of others.
- It allows persons whose free-speech rights have been improperly infringed by the university to recover court costs and attorney’s fees.
- It reaffirms the principle that universities, at the official institutional level, ought to remain neutral on issues of public controversy to encourage the widest possible range of opinion and dialogue within the university itself.
- It ensures that students will be informed of the official policy on free expression.
- It authorizes a special subcommittee of the university board of trustees to issue a yearly report to the public, the trustees, the governor, and the legislature on the administrative handling of free-speech issues.
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In June, Campus Reform reported that “At least 13 states have now proposed or implemented legislation designed to protect free speech on college campuses. While Utah, Colorado, Tennessee, Virginia, and Arizona have already passed bills that would crack down on disruptive university demonstrators and so-called ‘free speech zones,’ legislators from California, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin are attempting to push similar bills through their own state chambers.”
There is movement on the federal level as well. In May, Rep. Phil Roe, M.D. (R-TN) introduced H.Res. 307, which seeks to reinforce First Amendment rights on college campuses. This resolution is designed express a sense of Congress that institutions of higher education should facilitate and recommit themselves to protecting and promoting the free and open exchange of ideas, and that free speech zones and codes are inherently at odds with the First Amendment. “Today,” notes Rep. Roe, “we are seeing more and more frequently a vocal minority of dissenters essentially be allowed to drown out or block alternative viewpoints or thoughts from even being shared. With this bipartisan resolution, we can send a strong message that Congress expects universities to protect and foster the free and open exchange of ideas.”
The Newseum study maintains that more than legislation is needed, and that the problem on campuses should be addressed at grammar and high schools:
“Elementary and secondary schools must educate students on the First Amendment, how far the right of free expression extends, and the opportunities it affords to those who want to change society. Students carry attitudes with them to college so we must address young people when their views on free speech are first being formed. Colleges and universities must make an absolutist case for speech to a generation of students who have more complicated views.Critically, we must continually make the case that free speech particularly helps minorities and those who are alienated. The failure to understand the precise challenge to free speech has caused, to some degree, the debate over expression to become politically polarized.Colleges and universities will have to become much more deliberate about encouraging advocates of free expression. In particular, we must find ways for students to become the advocates for free speech for their generation.”