Free speech is a tool that anyone can use to voice their opinions and beliefs. Traditionally, free speech has been understood as a right that protects all speech, no matter how offensive it is. However, this belief is being challenged, especially on college campuses. The debate is, as almost any other contentious issue, multi-faceted. The free speech debate on campuses does not just revolve around whether hate speech is protected under the First Amendment, it revolves around topics such as: safe spaces, speaker dis-invitations, university speech codes, and even the role of professors’ rights, which will all be discussed in the blog in the future. For now though, it is vital to understand why each side believes that free speech is or is not being threatened on college campuses.
To understand why some people believe that free speech is being threatened on college campuses, we don’t have to look far. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights Education, 28.5 percent of schools maintain a “red light” rating. A “red light” rating is given to a school when they have a “speech code that clearly and substantially prohibit[s] constitutionally protected speech.” It is important to note, however, that just because a school has a policy which may prohibit freedom of speech, it does not mean that they have or plan to enforce the policy. Those who believe that free speech is threatened on college campuses would also point to examples of colleges taking, what they believe is, “unfair” action against students, faculty, or organizations. For example, a student from Jones College, Mike Brown was stopped by campus police from holding up a sign which invited students to engage in dialogue regarding marijuana legalization. He was told he should be “be smarter” than to engage in expressive activity without the permission of the school. He was even stopped when he set up a “free speech ball,” which consisted of him and a friend talking to people who wrote a message of their choice on the ball about the concept of free speech. He was stopped because the policy of the school required that there be administrative approval for any “meetings or gatherings.” Those who believe that free speech is threatened on college campuses would point to that anecdote and similar ones to prove their case. They might even mention a survey done by the Knight Foundation which showed that students on campuses prefer diversity and inclusion over free speech by a margin of 53-46.
The other side of the debate revolves around the idea that the First Amendment should evolve based on the changing demographics on college campuses. As Michael C. Behrent points out in his article discussing both sides of the free speech debate, “the number of Hispanic students ha[s] tripled and that of African Americans ha[s] grown by 72 percent” from 1996-2012. A Knight/Gallup survey Behrent mentions in his article suggests that “black students value diverse and inclusive environments over free-speech protections by 68 percent.” An editorial by Suzanne Nossel claims that people of color prefer diverse and inclusive environments over free-speech protections because they are concerned with “eradicating persistent manifestations of discrimination that have outlasted decades of efforts at integration.” Those who believe that free speech is not being threatened on college campuses would also claim that examples of students being stopped from expressing their opinions are just outliers and provide a false narrative as they are not symptomatic of a larger threat to free speech as a whole. They might even point out the said Knight survey which found that more college students prefer an open learning environment which includes offensive views than the American public does as a whole.
As evidenced by the studies mentioned above and the two competing views regarding free speech, this issue is not simple. However, since we are in college, I think that it is important to understand why some people would believe that their First Amendment right is being attacked and why others disagree. This blog will attempt to go further in depth on this issue by discussing some of the major points debated regarding the issue of free speech on campus.
This topic has been talked about quite a bit, though I think that FIRE has an agenda of a sort. I do like that you picked an example of free speech that was blocked yet wasn’t considered hate speech.