New Report Shows Almost ALL Colleges Restrict Free Speech
New Report Shows Almost ALL Colleges Restrict Free Speech. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education issued a report recently showing that 9 out of 10 colleges are restricting speech to some degree.While the trope tends to be that the far left and social justice activists are the ones causing this problem, often they are victims of these policies as well. A story from Vox showed that of faculty who were fired from a College for speech it was mostly liberal identified staff.Why then does mainstream media and the left claim there is no free speech crisis? Well for one whether there is or is not a crisis is an opinion, but it is likely just tribal.Conservatives have been complaining over restrictions on speaking events and it would seem like the left wants to deny them this claim. But in the long run, the defense of speech may actually benefit the right.
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A new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education finds that 9 out of 10 colleges are actually restricting free speech.
And it's kind of scary when you think about what college is supposed to do.
It's supposed to take young people and expose them to ideas they haven't heard before to prepare them for the real world.
But it seems like more and more universities are terrified of controversy, so they end up shutting down certain speakers or certain ideas.
It's not helped when Antifa shows up and actually burns things down and commits acts of violence so these universities are scared and have to pay for it.
But it does seem like they're treating their students more like customers, and thus just catering to their whims.
Now in reality, It is both left and right that get censored in terms of free speech.
But for some reason, the narrative from the left tends to be that there is no free speech crisis when the data actually says otherwise.
So today, let's take a look at the latest report and then look at some of the stories where free speech is winning and losing on college campuses.
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From thefire.org, 9 in 10 American colleges restrict free speech.
In 11 states, at least half of colleges rated earned FIRE's worst rating for clearly and substantially restricting free speech rights.
Almost 800,000 students at top U.S.
colleges must find a free speech zone to exercise their expressive rights.
In their report, Spotlight on Speech Codes 2019, the state of free speech on our nation's campuses analyzes the written policies at 466 of America's top colleges and universities for the protection of free speech.
The report finds that 89.7% of American colleges maintain policies that restrict, or too easily could restrict, student and faculty expression.
Most colleges impose burdensome conditions on expression by maintaining policies that restrict students' free speech rights, said FIRE Senior Program Officer Laura Beltz, lead authority of the study.
Colleges should be a place for open debate and intellectual inquiry, but today almost all colleges silence expression through policies that are often illiberal and at public institutions unconstitutional.
More than a quarter of institutions in the report, 28.5%, received FIRE's poorest red-light rating for maintaining speech codes that both clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech.
Alarmingly, red light schools still make up at least half of fire-rated institutions in the District of Columbia and 11 states.
Only 9% of institutions rated received fire's green light rating.
This total is up from only 2% in 2009.
Meanwhile, the number of institutions earning a yellow light rating is swelling from 21% in 2009 to 61% today.
While less restrictive than red light policies, yellow light policies still prohibit or have an impermissible chilling effect on constitutionally protected speech.
For some reason, the left narrative tends to be that there is no crisis even though left-wing individuals get censored as well.
The most notable story recently was that a young woman put up a sign saying F Nazis in her window, and the school actually tried to pressure into taking the sign down.
Now they did concede that she could keep her sign up.
But these things have affected the left as well.
As Glenn Greenwald puts it, they tend to be the people who have the least ability to learn, because the left that is advocating for banning hate speech will likely be the subject of these policies.
As has just recently happened.
A few recent examples of free speech winning at universities.
One from Inside Higher Ed.
A man was passing out U.S.
constitutions in Spanish and was told that he couldn't do it unless he was in a free speech zone.
However, he sued and recently won.
How ironic that he was handing out constitutions which explain how you have a right to free speech and had his speech restricted.
Another notable story from this month, UC Berkeley and college Republicans settle free speech case.
The story from December 3rd reads, UC Berkeley and a conservative student group have reached a settlement agreement in a prominent 2017 free speech case.
Both parties announced Monday.
Under the agreement, UC Berkeley has changed its campus events policy.
explicitly laying out which events require student groups to pay security costs.
The university also agreed to pay the Berkeley College Republicans and Young America's Foundation $70,000 in attorney fees.
The organization's father lawsuit in federal court in April 2017 alleging UC Berkeley violated conservative students' First Amendment rights by placing prohibitive restrictions on when and where events featuring Ann Coulter and David Horowitz could take place.
The campus maintained the restrictions were set in place due to legitimate security concerns,
following violent protests that forced the cancellation of Milo Yiannopoulos' speech
earlier that year, not the political views of the speakers, and that the rules did not
prevent the groups from holding their events. So I'll add this. The protesting didn't work.
There's something called the heckler's veto.
That basically because of security concerns or because of what a third party will do, the government or some institution will shut down an event.
And that's typically frowned upon and in some instances not actually permissible.
But activists have tried to de-platform speakers.
In some cases, it's worked.
In this case, it did work in the past, but now UC Berkeley has lost the lawsuit.
It would seem like in the long run, conservatives will win on this front, and the far left is not going to win on this front.
But for some reason, it is the left that claims there is no free speech problem on campus, even when FIRE says, no, we're finding that there is.
Even when the left is censored themselves.
Vox published this story in August.
Data shows a surprising campus-free speech problem—left-wingers being fired for their opinions.
In the story, they say Jeffrey Sachs, a political scientist at Canada's Acadia University, put together a database of all incidents where a professor was dismissed for political speech in the United States between 2015 and 2017.
Sachs' results, published by the left-libertarian Niskanen Center, actually found that left-wing professors were more frequently dismissed for their speech than conservative ones.
We can see in this chart that, going into 2017, speech deemed politically liberal is, well, they're the majority.
Yet, just about a month later, in response to a critic, the writer wrote this piece, The Myth of a Campus Free Speech Crisis.
Forbes wrote a story, There is No Free Speech Crisis on Campus.
And the Washington Post wrote a story, The Campus Free Speech Crisis is a Myth, Here are the Facts.
But I'm going to wrap up that thought with a story I mentioned earlier about a college administrator asking a student to remove her F Nazis sign because it wasn't inclusive.
The culture war, in my opinion, is making people crazy.
Even in a piece where a Vox writer shows that the left is being censored or fired for their speech, they still have the nerve to say there is no free speech crisis.
They want to side against conservatives who are complaining about issues of free speech.
When Ben Shapiro showed up to DePaul University in Chicago, he was told that he couldn't speak and was actually threatened with arrest if he tried to go into the building.
Sounds to me like there is a free speech problem, to say the least.
But when you combine these stories with the data presented from Vox, I would say you actually do have a crisis.
People being fired and disinvited for their ideas is a problem when college is supposed to expose people to these ideas.
But I will admit, the issue is particularly dangerous and kind of subjective, especially when you see a story like this from Quillette.
The free speech crisis on campus is worse than people think.
Now I think it's reasonable to say that it's the far left, even though they're small in number, that push for banning things like hate speech and oppose the idea of free speech.
There's that famous photo of an activist burning a sign that says free speech.
But there are many neoliberals who claim to support free speech but also don't mind massive multinational corporations doing whatever they want because they're a private business.
Something typically at odds with what the left wants because the left tends to be okay with certain regulation.
But it's not all bad news.
As much as I believe there is a crisis brewing, and with the expansion of identitarianism and opposition to free speech, it could get worse, we actually see a trend in the other direction from FIRE.
So as I mentioned earlier, it seems like the libertarian types, the free speech types, might actually win on this front.
Although the FIRE report is rather alarming, they do point out, for the 11th year in a row, the percentage of red-light schools has declined.
And a red-light institution is one that has at least one policy both clearly and substantially restricting freedom of speech, or that bars public access to its speech-related policies by requiring a university login and password for access.
While the red light schools may be decreasing in number, it's still kind of scary to see that green light schools, who get the best rating on protecting speech, are only at 9%.
It's kind of funny that conservatives concerned about free speech would actually address this problem, which in the long run may benefit liberal and progressive ideas.
If the left wasn't so busy with their tribalism, they would recognize that it negatively impacts them more often than not.
Well, at least according to Vox's story.
So by them trying to downplay the narrative and push conservatives aside, they're only hurting themselves.
And interestingly, whether or not the conservatives know it or not, they're actually doing something principled.
And their actions protect more than their own beliefs.
But I guess...
You know, that's to be expected, because people who support free speech pretty much agree with the right of other peoples to express themselves.
So, it's kind of funny that those who oppose free speech are more negatively impacted.
But let me know what you think in the comments below, we'll keep the conversation going.
It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of college, but the data may actually be a good thing.
Because, like I mentioned, fire says things may be getting better.
But do you think it's getting better, or do you think it's getting worse?
Because we might see these policies being lifted, but certainly political violence may be worse than it's been in a very long time.
Comment below, we'll keep the conversation going.
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