Polling tends to find that millennials are the generation least friendly to free speech. They focus more on potential downsides and harm that words can cause than the upside of being able to speak their minds freely. Perhaps they never learned the axiom about sticks and stones.
Or perhaps it’s because the millennial generation has, largely, been through four years of a college education on a modern university campus (Remember, the millennial generation starts with those born in 1980. Most of them already have their bachelor’s degrees). With speech codes, speech zones, funding inequities and more, they’ve been educated in an environment that teaches that free speech can be tolerated if absolutely necessary, but never encouraged.
That this flies in the face of 200 years of American legal and normative precepts doesn’t much matter. But even the college campus might begin to find that the ivory tower is sometimes subject to antiquated notions like those contained in the U.S. Constitution.
It’s important to realize how dependent colleges and universities are on taxpayer money at both the state and local level, which is why they continue to run into issues that don’t affect private institutions. “Spending on higher education is the third-largest budget item for state legislatures, after Medicaid spending and public schools,” Casey Mattox of the Alliance Defending Freedom said at a Washington policy summit hosted by the American Legislative Exchange Council. “So you have quite a lot at stake.”
Issues of free speech and due process are what colleges and universities may run up against in 2017. Judges have had to continually intervene in schools’ investigations into sexual assault, as happened recently at the University of Cincinnati. Colleges and universities have continually encouraged students to use their own intra-school adjudication processes rather than work through the justice system. Courts have begun to find that these kinds of setups violate students’ rights to due process.
The ways in which campuses institute speech codes and distribute public money have constitutional implications as well. Speech codes and assembly laws have routinely been reviewed by courts and have frequently been found to be in violation of the Constitution, as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has documented. What’s more, so-called “student activities fees,” collected as mandatory dues from students, are prohibited from being used in a one-sided political way, and schools routinely run into challenges on this basis.
Colleges and universities are training the next generation of politicians and leaders, which is why all of this matters. It’s not just an example of ivory tower eggheads exerting their grasp over limited geographic areas for four years of a student’s life. As Mattox said, “what happens on campus does not stay on campus.”
Kevin Glass is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is director of outreach and policy at The Franklin Center and was previously managing editor at Townhall. His views here are his own. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
