Over 450 U.S. colleges and universities, public and private, maintain some form of a reporting system aimed at policing campus speech, according to a new report from a campus free speech organization.
Speech First found that, out of 821 institutions, 454 have a system for reporting incidents of “bias” to school administrators, who would then be empowered to investigate such incidents and, in some cases, take punitive action against the offending party.
“College students emerge stronger, smarter, and more resilient when they are exposed to varying opinions, yet [bias response systems], or ‘censor squads,’ aim to silence unpopular, contrarian, and dissenting views,” Speech First executive director Cherise Trump said in a press release. “This shocking report reveals that a growing majority of universities across the country implement Stalinesque systems that suppress, shut down, or unjustly punish constitutionally protected speech, something that should happen at exactly zero American schools.”
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The colleges generally define incidents of “bias” as speech by someone at the institution that is “biased” against someone else based on a number of categories, including race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, or, in some cases, political orientation.
“[Bias response systems] are typically staffed by the university’s senior faculty and staff. And some include a police officer on the team itself — a literal speech police,” the report says. “After receiving a complaint about an alleged ‘bias incident,’ the BRS reviews the incident report and will either conduct an ‘educational intervention’ with the accused student or forward the complaint to another university department for further review.”
Public colleges were more likely than private colleges to maintain a bias reporting system, the report found. Out of the 380 public higher education institutions reviewed by Speech First, or slightly below half of all U.S. public colleges, 66% maintain a bias reporting system. In contrast, out of 441 private colleges reviewed, about 23% of all private U.S. institutions, 46% have a bias reporting system.
According to the report, the only states without a college with a bias reporting system are Delaware and Alaska. Institutions in the report include the University of California system, Yale University, Cornell University, the University of Notre Dame, Ohio State University, the University of Wisconsin, Harvard University, and the University of Alabama.
Examples of complaints filed to bias reporting systems included a professor at SUNY-Cortland who was reported for saying race relations had improved since the 1930s, a student who reported their professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago for requiring that homework be turned in on time, and students at Florida State University who reported the existence of an anti-abortion club.
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In recent years, Speech First has secured multiple legal victories when challenging the constitutionality of bias reporting systems at public universities. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that a lower court had erred in throwing out a challenge to the bias response team at the University of Central Florida. The organization had previously secured victories in challenges to bias response teams at the University of Michigan and the University of Texas at Austin.
