Tag: Campus censorship

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.”

The New York Analysis of Policy & Government examines the opposition to campus censorship in this two-part series.

The movement to oppose the harsh anti-free speech measures prevalent on American campuses has begun to gain traction.

Tom Lindsay, writing in Forbes, notes that “By now, everyone who’s been watching higher education knows that a growing number of American universities have jettisoned objective scholarship, open debate, and free speech in favor of advancing a left-wing political agenda. Having thrust themselves into the political fray, some of these schools may now begin paying the price for turning their institutions into ideological boot camps.”

Writing for the Philanthropy Round Table, Greg Lukianoff explains that “Freedom of expression is under serious threat on campuses, and has been for some time. You may have heard of the phenomenon of free speech zones at colleges. These are tiny areas, such as a 20-foot-wide gazebo, which students are told are the only places they can exercise their free speech rights. About a fifth of universities maintain such restrictions… Why are college administrators trampling on free expression? One reason is federal overreach. The U.S. Department of Education under the Obama administration…made things much worse. It provided a new definition of harassment that is completely stripped of the safeguards the U.S. Supreme Court had earlier put in place to protect freedom of speech. Instead of a standard of harassment being a pattern of discriminatory behavior that is ‘severe, persistent, and pervasive,’ the Department of Education bureaucrats decided to define harassment as any unwelcome verbal conduct or speech. And the department explicitly got rid of the longstanding ‘reasonable person’ standard, meaning that anyone who subjectively experienced ‘unwelcome’ speech has been harassed. That opens the door to miscarriages of justice.”

A Newseum white paper authored by the organization’s CEO Jeffrey Herbst found that “the real problem of free expression on college campuses is much deeper than episodic moments of censorship: With little comment, an alternate understanding of the First Amendment has emerged among young people that can be called ‘the right to non-offensive speech’…The crisis is not one of the very occasional speaker thrown off campus, however regrettable that is; rather, it is a generation that increasingly censors itself and others, largely silently but sometimes through active protest…”
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The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) maintains that “A culture of censorship has taken root and permeated universities, in part due to some students’ unfamiliarity or disinterest in their rights. A likely culprit, in my opinion, is deficient civic education in secondary schools across the nation. In the absence of engaging civics instruction and classroom debate, some students fail to grasp the content or significance of their First Amendment freedoms, allowing those rights to fall victim to restrictions on campus…”

The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal  reports that “Student intolerance and opposition to free speech have been gaining momentum. What began as isolated incidents at the University of Missouri and Yale University in fall 2015 quickly spread to other universities, leading to individuals being targeted for simply expressing their opinions… The good news is that state legislators have taken notice. Across the country… proposals have been introduced that would protect free speech on public university campuses. They would abolish unconstitutional barriers to free expression that many universities have erected under the guise of inclusion and safety. The need for such protections is pressing. A 2015 survey conducted by Yale University’s William F. Buckley Jr. Program revealed that more than half of U.S. college students are in favor of their school having codes that regulate student and faculty speech. This new, illiberal campus culture is unhealthy for students and for higher education’s purpose—the search for truth. If there is no pushback against these irrational tactics of the Left, they will only encourage others to replace factual arguments with emotional tantrums, and to treat with contempt those who hold divergent views.

“But the problem runs deeper than students’ attitudes; riots, protests, and other activities designed to suppress non-conforming speech often are enabled by university policies. Many universities are unreliable protectors of the marketplace of ideas and even students’ most basic rights. A recent survey of 440 American universities indicates that nearly half of them have adopted policies that infringe on the First Amendment rights of students. Also, many schools are willing to fire dissenting employees and create “free speech zones” for the sake of maintaining their public image and avoiding controversy. And in some cases a double standard has been established, where controversial expression is tolerated so long as it has a ‘liberal’ slant.”

The Report concludes tomorrow.