Survey shows most college students don’t get First Amendment [updated]

This post has been semi-retracted. See update below.

Protecting the people’s freedom of expression is one thing the US does uncommonly well, at least generally, compared to most nations. University in particular has long been called a free market of ideas, where students are exposed to a wide variety of different opinions. But according to a new survey by a UCLA law and public policy professor, a worryingly large number of them see this as more of a bug than a feature, and are willing to go to unconstitutional (and criminal) lengths to stop speech they don’t like.

To explore the critical issue of the First Amendment on college campuses, during the second half of August I conducted a national survey of 1,500 current undergraduate students at U.S. four-year colleges and universities. The survey population was geographically diverse, with respondents from 49 states and the District of Columbia.

[…]

The survey results establish with data what has been clear anecdotally to anyone who has been observing campus dynamics in recent years: Freedom of expression is deeply imperiled on U.S. campuses. In fact, despite protestations to the contrary (often with statements like “we fully support the First Amendment, but…), freedom of expression is clearly not, in practice, available on many campuses, including many public campuses that have First Amendment obligations.

The survey starts by asking students whether “hate speech” is allowed under the First Amendment (which it absolutely is):

Does the First Amendment protect “hate speech”?

		Political Affiliation			Type of College		Gender
	All	Dem	Rep	Ind	Public	Private	Female	Male
Yes	39	39	44	40	38	43	31	51
No	44	41	39	44	44	44	49	38
Don’t know	16	15	17	17	17	13	21	11

(The values in the table identify the responses by percent, weighted for gender. Percentages are rounded to two digits, so in some cases the total will not be exactly 100. […])

Courts have consistently ruled that “hate speech” (which has no legal definition) is no exception to the First Amendment, yet fewer than half of students across the three main political affiliations, and an especially low percentage of women, agree with this.

What about speakers who are “known for making offensive and hurtful statements”?

A student group opposed to the speaker disrupts the speech by loudly and repeatedly shouting so that the audience cannot hear the speaker. Do you agree or disagree that the student group’s actions are acceptable?

		Political Affiliation			Type of College		Gender
	All	Dem	Rep	Ind	Public	Private	Female	Male
Agree	51	62	39	45	51	51	47	57
Disagree	49	38	61	55	49	49	53	43

51% – half – of students think it’s fine to heckle and drown out an unpopular speaker until they can no longer give their speech. And this includes 62% of Democratic students. Damn them for making me align myself, even in this narrow case, with the 61% of Republicans who apparently understand the proper response to bad speech is better speech, not to shout the bad speech down.

But it gets even better. By which I mean worse. So much worse.

A student group opposed to the speaker uses violence to prevent the speaker from speaking. Do you agree or disagree that the student group’s actions are acceptable?

		Political Affiliation			Type of College		Gender
	All	Dem	Rep	Ind	Public	Private	Female	Male
Agree	19	20	22	16	18	21	10	30
Disagree	81	80	78	84	82	79	90	70

A fifth of all students believe it’s just peachy to use violence to stop someone from saying things they don’t want to hear (it’s unclear whether this entails physically assaulting the speaker or being aggressively disruptive enough to make the speech impossible). There isn’t even any notable difference between Democrats and Republicans on this one. And remember, this isn’t in response to hypothetical speech that contains overt threats or calls for ethnic cleansing or so on – respondents were only asked if violence was an acceptable response to “offensive and hurtful statements”, which is broad enough that it can include damn near anything that gets anyone’s knickers in a twist.

But then, what else can we expect in a culture that already largely thinks it’s okay to punch people if we really really hate them? After all, there’s just no way this can lead to innocents getting caught in the crossfire or anything.

But the students aren’t done being clueless about free speech law. They also think the First Amendment includes some sort of balance clause requiring that every offensive opinion be accompanied by a more acceptable counterpoint:

Consider an event, hosted at a public U.S. university by an on-campus organization, featuring a speaker known for making statements that many students consider to be offensive and hurtful. A student group opposed to the speaker issues a statement saying that, under the First Amendment, the on-campus organization hosting the event is legally required to ensure that the event includes not only the offensive speaker but also a speaker who presents an opposing view. What is your view on the student group’s statement?

		Political Affiliation			Type of College		Gender
	All	Dem	Rep	Ind	Public	Private	Female	Male
Agree	62	65	62	58	63	60	60	66
Disagree	38	35	38	42	37	40	40	34

To be fair, that question is missing a third and more fitting answer choice, which is “that student group is legally illiterate and should be laughed at for the rest of their existence on campus”. Just how much nonsense are people, young or otherwise, willing to attribute to the First Amendment? It’s fair to wonder whether anyone in that 62% (again note the lack of demarcation between liberals and conservatives) has ever bothered to read its actual text.

Finally, the survey asks outright whether they think schools should censor speech that students think is “offensive or biased”. Guess how that goes.

If you had to choose one of the options below, which do you think it is more important for colleges to do?

Option 1: create a positive learning environment for all students by prohibiting certain speech or expression of viewpoints that are offensive or biased against certain groups of people

Option 2: create an open learning environment where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints, even if it means allowing speech that is offensive or biased against certain groups of people?

		Political Affiliation			Type of College		Gender
	All	Dem	Rep	Ind	Public	Private	Female	Male
Option 1	53	61	47	45	53	54	52	55
Option 2	47	39	53	55	47	46	48	45

I truly hate to say it, but it seems that conservatives deriding college students as so afraid of opposing views that they prefer to suppress them outright may have a point, at least as far as the students responding to this survey are concerned. These numbers betray a staggering lack of understanding of what free speech actually is and what the law says (from the First Amendment itself to many decades of court rulings on the matter). And I bet these students would eagerly proclaim their support for freedom of speech, too; they don’t realize how desperately clueless they are about it.

All that said, I do want to make it clear that nothing in this survey has anything to do with similar conservative bugaboos, safe spaces and trigger warnings, something this Washington Post article fails to grasp in its lede. Despite Right-wing accusations to the contrary, neither has anything to do with free speech or censorship. Trigger warnings are basically content advisories some teachers place at the beginning of their classes when dealing with sensitive topics (such as sexual violence) so that students who may be affected by the subject matter (such as rape victims) can better prepare themselves for what’s ahead. Safe spaces are designated areas where certain kinds of antagonistic or harassing behavior isn’t permitted, such as when a teacher makes their classroom into a safe space for LGBTQ students by prohibiting homophobic and transphobic rhetoric. Any rational person can see these have zero bearing on free speech either as a constitutional right or in its broader sense; they’re just rules and practices that govern a limited set of activities in a few specific circumstances. Anyone trying to make them out to be more than that doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

(via @radleybalko)

Edit (09/23/17 @ 3:29 PM ET): Typo fix.

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UPDATE (09/25/17 @ 3:55 PM ET) —

International politics professor Daniel Drezner at The Washington Post has posted a critique of this study, casting heavy doubt on both the accuracy and relevance of its results. He explains how the study’s methodology was flawed with a sample pool that likely wasn’t all that representative of college students across the US, that the timing of the survey (immediately after Charlottesville) may have influenced the answers received, and that ultimately, this is just one snapshot of one group of (self-identified) students and doesn’t reflect a larger view of a trend, so the numbers above, whilst concerning, might not be as pertinent as they seem.

For all these reasons, consider this post semi-retracted – I stand by my comments in response to the results, but the matter needs further looking into before we can make any broader judgements about college students’ attitudes towards free speech.

(via @radleybalko)