Downplaying the campus free speech problem was suddenly very fashionable among writers on the Left last month. They published several articles arguing the uproar was overblown and receives a disproportionate share of conservative media coverage.
Though some of the critics seemed more interested in condescending to conservatives than engaging in debate, the exercise was probably helpful for forcing free speech crusaders to actually lay out their evidence and not take conventional wisdom for granted.
Heterodox Academy’s Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt published one such rebuttal on Wednesday, specifically addressing the articles, and making a strong case for why concerns about the state of free speech in higher education are warranted. Surveying available data, Stevens and Haidt showed that college students believe forces on their campus inspire censorship and that conservatives are consequently more likely to self-censor.
“The majority of current American college students perceive that the climate on their campus prevents some people from speaking up, and they perceive this to be more true in 2017 than they did in 2016,” the pair concluded, further noting, “Left-wing views are more socially acceptable (‘politically correct’) than right-wing views, as shown by the findings that students across the spectrum agree that conservatives are less free to speak openly; conservatives say that they self-censor more than progressives; and conservatives are more concerned than progressives about suffering negative consequences from their professors and from fellow students if they were to share their views openly.”
Stevens and Haidt also tackled claims that conservatives are more active than liberals when it comes to disinviting campus speakers, documenting the uptick in liberal speaker disinvitation and disruption efforts over the past ten years.
Those conclusions are all based on data the paper lays out, which can be read in full here.
As I argued last month, it’s hard to quantify how intensely higher education’s overwhelming liberalism chills conservative speech on campuses. (The same is probably true of liberal speech on conservative campuses, though such places are few and far between.) But Stevens and Haidt make a strong case based on the available data, especially polls probing how students perceive the climate on campuses, to prove the problem is very real and very serious, and has worsened since 2015.
Toward the end of their paper, the authors thanked the skeptics for “waking us all up and making us refine our arguments and check our empirical claims.” The gratitude is well-placed, given that it produced Stevens and Haidt’s research, which helpfully measured a problem that we cannot afford to downplay.
