5 Most Insane Campus Free Speech Controversies of 2018

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11693

1. Gonzaga cites Christian mission in rejecting Ben Shapiro event

In November, Gonzaga University, a Christian college, refused to allow conservative pundit Ben Shapiro from speaking at the college.

Shapiro had been invited by Gonzaga’s College Republicans chapter, but was ultimately rejected from being able to speak because of the perceived likelihood of protests. The college also argued that Shapiro’s speech would go against the university’s mission statement.

“Mr. Shapiro’s appearances routinely draw protests that include extremely divisive and hateful speech and behavior, which is offensive to many people, regardless of their age, politics or beliefs,” vice president of student development, Judi Biggs Garbuio told the College Republicans.

2. During a “Change My Mind” event in May, hosted by the Young Americans for Freedom chapter at the University of Texas at San Antonio, liberal students protested and called campus security multiple times.

Leftists call cops to report conservative free speech event

Campus Reform correspondent Peyton Dillberg who attends the University of Texas at San Antonio wrote an op-ed on the campus culture and what took place at the “Change My Mind” table. Check out his op-ed here.

[RELATED: 5 most anti-conservative statements and actions on campus in 2018]

3. In January, a student group at Oklahoma State University, called “The Four Percent,” sent a list of demands to the college, which include mandatory diversity training and punishments for certain speech that may be viewed as “racially insensitive.” The group also specified that students who violate the proposed rules “would be subject to sanctions.”

Students ask Oklahoma State to punish 'insensitive' speech

OSU President Burns Hargis responded to the demands, stating “we will review the ideas presented by the students as we continue to look for ways to improve. We remain committed to working with all Oklahoma State students to create a culture and environment that are welcoming to all and a model for others."

4. Back in April, three University of Illinois students filed a lawsuit accusing the university of violating their First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of the press.

Lawsuit claims U of Illinois muzzled student journalists

The students, who were journalists reporting for Campus Reform on campus issues, claim to have been punished for reporting on an anti-Trump rally, where two of the journalists were allegedly assaulted by a university employee.

One student in the lawsuit claims that a university administrator directly told him to stop reporting for Campus Reform if he wanted the situation to improve.

The lawsuit is currently ongoing.

5. At Columbia University, a professor disciplined an entire class for using “racially microaggressive” language in a course-related online discussion board. Students were given extra reading assignments focused on “white identity” and “microaggressions” as a punishment.

Entire class punished for 'microaggressive' comments

The professor, who described the incident in an academic journal article, reported the microaggressions to Columbia administration and during the next class period, racially segregated the students into “affinity groups.” One group was comprised of white students and another group was comprised of “People of the Global Majority.”

Meanwhile, back on Earth:

Myth #1: Young people in general (and college students in particular) don’t support free speech

In fact, the opposite is true. For nearly 50 years, the General Social Survey (GSS) has asked Americans about their tolerance for offensive speech. Some questions include: Should an anti-American Muslim cleric be permitted to teach in a public school? Should the local library stock books hostile to religion?

On almost every question, young people aged 18 to 34 are the most likely to support free speech. Check out the data for yourself. Not only are young people the most likely to express tolerance for offensive speech, but with almost every question posed by the GSS, each generation of young people has been more tolerant than the last.

Furthermore, in a 2018 Gallup-Knight Foundation survey, the vast majority of students (70 percent) said that they preferred their campus to be an “open learning environment” where they might be exposed to offensive speech, while only 29 percent said they preferred a “positive” environment where offensive speech is banned.

In fact, students were actually more supportive of an open learning environment than U.S. adults overall, based on this 2016 survey.

And while otherstudies paint a more alarming picture, subsequentresearch has raised serious questions about their findings.

Of course, college students are not a monolith. Their race and gender (that is, the likelihood that one is the target of racism or sexism) influences their tolerance of free speech. Very conservative students also tend to report that they are less comfortable expressing themselves in the classroom than very liberal students. And according to the 2018 Gallup-Knight Foundation survey, students were more willing to support speech restrictions when given specific scenarios, like using slurs against certain groups, which 73 percent were willing to restrict, or wearing costumes that stereotype racial or ethnic groups, which 60 percent were willing to restrict.

However, to the extent that college students are hostile to certain viewpoints or support restrictions on speech, college itself may be part of the solution. That brings us to the second myth.

Myth #2: Universities make students less tolerant of offensive or opposing speech

Consider the findings of one recent survey of over 7,000 students from more than 120 schools. After one year of college, a plurality reported improved attitudes toward students holding opposing political views.

Similarly, a 2009 study from the University of California at Los Angeles, the most recent publicly available, found that college seniors were 6 percentage points less likely to support a campus ban on racist or sexist speech than when those same students were surveyed as freshmen. In other words, evidence suggests that college attendance may actually bolster a student’s support for free speech rather than undermine it.

Myth #3: Universities may claim to support free speech, but their actions show otherwise

This one is not so much a myth as an exaggeration. In particular cases, students, professors or members of the community have tried to blockcontroversialspeakers or demand that faculty be fired for airing offensive views.

But these incidents are rare. Take the phenomenon of blocking invited speakers from speaking on campus, also known as no-platforming. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reported 35 no-platforming attempts in 2017; out of those, 19 succeeded. In a country with over 4,700 schools, that hardly constitutes a crisis.

Finally, despite claims that college administrators are increasingly coddling students with speech codes, FIRE shows that the opposite is the case. The number of universities with restrictive speech codes has been dropping each year for the past decade and is currently at an all-time low. Most universities are not the ideological safe spaces their critics imagine.