[caption id=”attachment_43753″ align=”alignleft” width=”396″] 62 percent of universities and college are “red light” schools, schools that have policies that violate students’ right to free speech.
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More than 60 percent of American colleges have speech codes that infringe on students’ constitutional right to free speech, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) exposed in a new report.
Of the 409 American colleges screened in the study, 254 “have policies on their books that restrict a substantial amount of speech,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff wrote at Ricochet.
He explained, “Speech codes are university policies that prohibit expression protected by the First Amendment.” According to Lukianoff, any speech code at a public college is considered unconstitutional.
Only 15 of the schools surveyed in the study were considered “green light” schools, meaning they have no codes that violate the First Amendment.
This should hardly come as a surprise considering just last December, a Georgetown University professor called for the U.S. Constitution to be abandoned altogether.
Last November, Fordham University President Joseph McShane reprimanded College Republicans for inviting conservative political pundit Ann Coulter to speak on campus. In 2004, a University of New Hampshire student was kicked out of his dorm for posting a funny flier about the “Freshman 15,” and in 2007, a middle-aged Indiana University-Purdue University student was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book about the Klu Klux Klan.
The good news is that the number of colleges with unconstitutional speech codes is waning. According to Lukianoff, “Back in 2007, for example, 75 percent of schools surveyed had ‘red light’ code.”
FIRE calls for college students to fight against any unconstitutional speech codes they find within their own universities’ policies.
“Students themselves are a tremendously effective vehicle for change when they are aware of their rights and willing to engage with their administrators in defense of them,” the report reads. “The suppression of free speech at American universities is a national scandal.”
Find out if your university is a “red light” school here.
(h/t Washington Examiner)
