A new survey of professors found widespread support for the free exchange of ideas on campus.
Samuel J. Abrams, a Sarah Lawrence College professor and visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, polled about 900 faculty members from December 2016 to January 2017. Ninety-three percent agreed with the statement, “University life requires that people with diverse viewpoints and perspectives encounter each other in an environment where they feel free to speak up and challenge each other,” according to Abrams’ write-up of the survey in the American Interest.
Eighty percent agreed, “Faculty members should be free to present in class any idea that they consider relevant,” including 88 percent of liberal professors and 67 percent of conservatives.
Asked to choose between the statements, “An open learning environment where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints, even if it means allowing speech that is offensive or biased against certain groups of people” and “A positive learning environment for all students that prohibits certain expressions of speech or viewpoints that are offensive or biased against certain groups of people,” 69 percent selected the first option. Thirty-one percent preferred the second.
Abrams rightfully suggested in the American Interest that a survey of administrators would be of “great value.” That’s very true, since they’re most often at the center of speech controversies, like when student groups try to host speakers or battle bureaucratic obstacles to promote their ideas. An age breakdown would be interesting as well, as I suspect younger faculty members are more sympathetic to censoring certain speech.
Abrams’ research also seems to support the notion that students have successfully tipped the balance of power into their own hands on campuses, intimidating opponents of their tactics out of taking strong stands against them. If the rates of support for free expression Abrams found are correct, there’s a lot of power to be harnessed among professors, who could find the strength in numbers to push back more and more when anti-speech activists tread into dangerous territory on a given campus.
