Are Colleges Rebounding on Speech?

Free speech is a foundational value of American life, yet our college campuses are justly accused of not adequately fostering a free-speech environment. Few will have forgotten the tensions of Covid, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other recent political topics on which students did not feel free to speak their minds in many cases. Groupthink ruled the day. However, according to a recent survey, colleges and universities seem to have turned a corner.

A new report from the Lumina Foundation and Gallup indicates that the free-speech environment has improved on campuses across the country. While speech protections are still not perfect, 75 percent of students earning a bachelor’s degree believe their campus officials do an “excellent” or “good” job of fostering free speech. This number includes 73 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of Democrats.

While students feel free to express their opinions generally, when the topic hits closer to hot-button issues they become more hesitant. Furthermore, more than 60 percent of students working on their bachelor’s degree believe they can freely discuss issues related to race (66 percent), gender and sexual orientation (67 percent), and religion (62 percent) on their campus. These numbers decrease, however, when it comes to the current conflict between Israel and Hamas. Only 50 percent believe pro-Israel views can be discussed, while the sense that pro-Palestinian views are welcome is only slightly higher, at 57 percent. This indicates that, while students feel free to express their opinions generally, when the topic hits closer to the hot-button issues from today’s headlines they become more hesitant.

It would appear that actual conservatives feel freer to speak than the average student thinks they feel. Notably, students generally believe that those with liberal views can more freely express their opinions than those with conservative views, at 67 percent for liberal versus 53 percent for conservative opinions. Intriguingly, these data fail to track perfectly with the responses given by party-identifiers themselves, as mentioned above. It would appear that actual conservatives feel freer to speak than the average student thinks they feel.

This is not very surprising, given that colleges and universities have leaned liberal and woke for quite some time. Even so, a 53-percent speech comfort level for conservatives is better than some headlines suggest. While there is still room for improvement, colleges and universities are clearly making an effort to improve their campuses’ open discourse and debate.

About one in 10 students feel that they have been harassed or discriminated against for their views at least occasionally. While this number may not seem very high, it is higher than one would like. These students are expected to graduate and enter the workforce. A workforce wherein 10 percent of college-educated participants have learned that having a different opinion and speaking it aloud results in harassment is not good. Many have focused on surface-level diversity metrics, such as race and sexual orientation, being an asset in the workplace. However, viewpoint diversity is more indicative of a healthy workplace environment.

Colleges and universities may be under a magnifying glass due to the current news cycle, but they clearly are making efforts to improve the speech environments on their campuses. Yet there is still room for improvement. Without an open environment, students will never learn to properly express themselves while tolerating others’ opinions. Free speech also helps improve critical thinking and allows students to grow and potentially change their views as they confront differing viewpoints. One of U.S. citizens’ defining rights is the right to freedom of speech. Colleges and universities should continue to improve their free-speech environments and help students understand the importance of this unique right.

Grace Hall is a communications assistant at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. She works and lives in Georgia.