What liberals and conservatives get wrong about free expression on college campuses
- Written by Timothy Ryan, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
When it comes to understanding disputes over free expression on college campuses, such as speakers getting disinvited[1] or having their speeches interrupted[2], conservatives tend to blame liberal professors for indoctrinating[3] students and ostracizing[4] those who don’t agree with liberal viewpoints. One prominent conservative organization, Turning Point USA, has gone so far as to create a database[5] of faculty it says “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”
Liberals, in contrast, argue that concerns about free speech on college campuses are overblown[6]. They also accuse conservatives of co-opting the language of free speech proponents in an effort to falsely position[7] themselves as victims.
Our research[8] indicates that each of these narratives is flawed. We are researchers who study political behavior[9], as well as strategies for business[10].
For the past year, we have been studying[11] free expression issues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a campus that has had[12] a number of flare-ups[13] related to free expression[14] in recent years. We wanted to look beyond single episodes and better understand the typical student’s experience concerning free expression.
We found that students who identify with the political right do indeed face fears of being ostracized that students who identify with the left do not. However, we also found signs that right-leaning students worry at least as much about reactions from peers as from faculty. Much of this plays out silently in classrooms at Chapel Hill and – we believe – at other colleges and universities throughout the nation.
It’s not about professors
For our research, we sent surveys to all 20,343 students – the entire undergraduate population at Chapel Hill. Two-thousand of these students (randomly selected) were offered a US$10 incentive to participate in the survey. This feature helped ensure we heard from a representative cross section of students. We received 1,087 complete responses. About half of those respondents were those who got $10 for their participation.
For each student who responded, we randomly chose one class from their schedule and asked – for that particular class – how many times during the semester they kept a sincere opinion related to class to themselves because they were worried about the consequences of expressing it. We found a large liberal/conservative divide – 23% of self-identified liberals said they censored themselves at least once, while 68% of self-identified conservatives did so.
References
- ^ speakers getting disinvited (www.thefire.org)
- ^ interrupted (www.insidehighered.com)
- ^ indoctrinating (www.washingtonexaminer.com)
- ^ ostracizing (www.thedailybeast.com)
- ^ database (www.professorwatchlist.org)
- ^ overblown (www.washingtonpost.com)
- ^ falsely position (medium.com)
- ^ research (fecdsurveyreport.web.unc.edu)
- ^ political behavior (scholar.google.com)
- ^ business (global.oup.com)
- ^ have been studying (fecdsurveyreport.web.unc.edu)
- ^ has had (www.dailytarheel.com)
- ^ flare-ups (abc11.com)
- ^ free expression (www.newsobserver.com)
- ^ campus controversy (www.npr.org)
- ^ Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day. (theconversation.com)
Authors: Timothy Ryan, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill