It’s no secret that college campuses aren’t exactly bastions of tolerance when it comes to diversity of thought or opinion. Universities, which should be environments that foster intellectual curiosity and diversity of thought, have become increasingly comfortable censoring or restricting students with conservative viewpoints.
Conservative students face attacks from many different forces, particularly First Amendment-ignoring administrations and bureaucratic liberal professors. Speech codes, political correctness, and left-leaning faculty make it difficult for conservative students to express their viewpoints on campus.
For example, until last year at Louisiana State University, free speech on campus was limited to “free speech alley,” an area of roughly 1,000 square feet on the university’s 650 acres. The university revised its policy when law student Deanna Candler sued.
A similar incident arose last year at Modesto Junior College in California, when a student handing out pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution on Constitution Day was stopped by a police officer. An administrator later informed him that he could only perform his activity in a designated “free speech zone” that took a bureaucratic process to secure. The school later revised its policy after a lawsuit was filed, as well.
The pro-life movement has also run into its share of roadblocks on college campuses. When a pro-life display at DePaul University was torn down, for instance, the president of DePaul’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter posted the names of the display’s vandals online — and was charged with violating the university’s “Code of Student Responsibility.” Never mind that he was the victim in the first place; the university threatened the student with expulsion if he didn’t keep quiet about the vandals, who had already admitted to the crime.
Last year, University of Buffalo professors wrote that pro-lifers are like “those who supported lynching.” This is the same school where a professor was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after a colorful rant against a group of pro-life students.
Just last week at The University of Alabama, I filmed an administrator informing me that the reason the university secretly removed a pro-life display from our student center was because there were “complaints” and “if somebody gets offended, we have to take it down.”
Take a moment to ponder the absurdity of the notion that being offended gives anyone the right to silence the person or group with whom he or she disagrees. If this were the case, there would be no room for meaningful speech on campus. Anyone could arbitrarily deem another’s opinion offensive.
Free speech exists to protect unpopular or “offensive” speech.
Young people crave the truth. College years are a time for students to explore this craving and to evaluate and learn about different ideologies. Suppressing this craving isn’t conducive to a diverse learning environment, nor does it allow students to freely explore and express a wide range of ideas.
Academia embracing students’ rights to express their viewpoints enables students to make the most of their college years without fearing discrimination or censorship.
