Is Free Speech in Danger on University Campus? Some Preliminary Evidence from a Most Likely Case

Abstract

Although universities play a key role in questions of free speech and political viewpoint diversity, they are often associated with the opposite of a free exchange of ideas: a proliferation of restrictive campus speech codes, violent protests against controversial speakers and even the firing of inconvenient professors. For some observers these trends on university campuses are a clear indicator of the dire future for freedom of speech. Others view these incidents as scandalized singular events and regard campus intolerance as a mere myth. We take an empirical look at some of the claims in the debate and present original survey evidence from a most likely case: the leftist social science studentship at Goethe University Frankfurt. Our results show that taking offense is a common experience and that a sizable number of students are in favor of restricting speech on campus. We also find evidence for conformity pressures on campus and that both the desire to restrict speech and the reluctance to speak openly differ significantly across political ideology. Left-leaning students are less likely to tolerate controversial viewpoints and right-leaning students are more likely to self-censor on politically sensitive issues such as gender, immigration, or sexual and ethnic minorities. Although preliminary, these findings may have implications for the social sciences and academia more broadly.

Subjective Freedom of Speech: Why Do Citizens Think They Cannot Speak Freely?

“…One could transpose this “projection argument” into the ideological left–right continuum by roughly equating the conservative right with a preference for social order and the progressive left with political tolerance. But a stream of recent research suggests that equating only one political side with political (in)tolerance is empirically untenable (Crawford and Pilanski 2014 ; Revers and Traunmüller 2020 ).…”

“…Against the background of these debates, it is curious that political science has not paid more attention to the question of whether and why citizens think they can express themselves freely. While recent work has begun to investigate “campus cancel culture” (e.g., Revers and Traunmüller 2020 ; Traunmüller 2022 ; Norris 2021 ; Kaufmann 2021 ) and has looked into the democratic effects of hate speech regulation (e.g., Van Spanje and De Vreese 2015 , Jacobs and Van Spanje 2021 ) the more fundamental question of what explains citizens’ subjective freedom of speech remains largely unanswered (but see Gibson 1992 , 1993 and Gibson and Sutherland 2020 for the United States).…”

“…While one author scores a 2 on the ideological left-right scale, a 2 on the cultural dimension, and an 11 on the economic dimension, the other author scores an 8 on the left-right scale, a 6 on the cultural dimension, and a 3 on the economic dimension. 6 For a similar logic of adversarial collaboration on free expression, but in the more narrowly defined university context, see Revers and Traunmüller (2020), Traunmüller and Revers (2021), Villa et al (2021), and, most notably, Wuttke et al (2021). 7 Self-censorship is a behavioral consequence of, and therefore conceptually distinct from, a lack of subjective freedom of speech.…”

“… 6 For a similar logic of adversarial collaboration on free expression, but in the more narrowly defined university context, see Revers and Traunmüller ( 2020 ), Traunmüller and Revers ( 2021 ), Villa et al. ( 2021 ), and, most notably, Wuttke et al.…”

Subjective Freedom of Speech: Why Do Citizens Think They Cannot Speak Freely?

“…Against the background of these debates, it is curious that political science has not paid more attention to the question of whether and why citizens think they can express themselves freely. While recent work has begun to investigate "campus cancel culture" (e.g., Revers and Traunmüller 2020;Traunmüller 2022;Norris 2021;Kaufmann 2021) and has looked into the democratic effects of hate speech regulation (e.g., Van Spanje and De Vreese 2015, Jacobs and Van Spanje 2021) the more fundamental question of what explains citizens' subjective freedom of speech remains largely unanswered (but see Gibson 1992, 1993and Gibson and Sutherland 2020 for the United States).…”