Comes this week from the Brookings Institution a new survey by John Villasenor demonstrating that undergraduate students at four-year colleges and universities have no idea what the First Amendment means.
Most believe that hate speech is constitutionally unprotected. Half think it’s fine for a student group to disrupt a speech by a very controversial figure whose views it disagrees with. Almost 20 percent say it’s OK for a student group to use violence—yes, violence—to prevent the speaker from speaking. A majority believe that compliance with the First Amendment requires a student group sponsoring a controversial speaker to also offer a speaker who takes an opposing view (it does not). And a majority think their schools should create an environment on campus that shelters them from offensive views. A rather anodyne place, no?
We have known anecdotally that “freedom of expression is deeply imperiled” on American campuses, as Villasenor says. The data in this survey support that depressing assessment. What can be done?
It’s true that faculty and administrators have “a heightened responsibility to do a better job at fostering freedom of expression on their campuses.” But Villasenor is a realist. “I expect that if college faculty and administrators were asked the same questions in this survey, the results would, at least, in broad terms, be similar to the student results.”
Oddly, Villasenor would like for these same schools to teach entering students constitutional principles including the freedom of expression vouchsafed by the First Amendment. But whether they could get the Constitution right would have to be a concern. Perhaps local bar associations could help. We are teaching for the future, as the saying goes, and, with respect to free expression on campus, there’s obviously lots of work to be done in furtherance of what it means.
