Chilling study shows students’ hostility toward free speech

Here’s the problem with suggesting that upsetting speech warrants “safe spaces,” or otherwise conflating mere words with physical assault: If speech is violence, then violence becomes a justifiable response to speech.

Just ask college students. A fifth of undergrads now say it’s acceptable to use physical force to silence a speaker who makes “offensive and hurtful statements.”

That’s one finding from a disturbing new survey of students conducted by John Villasenor, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and University of California at Los Angeles professor.

In August, motivated by concerns about the “narrowing window of permissible topics” for discussion on campuses, Villasenor conducted a nationwide survey of 1,500 undergraduate students at four-year colleges.

Many of Villasenor’s questions were designed to gauge students’ understanding of the First Amendment. For example, students were asked whether the First Amendment protects “hate speech.” Four in 10 said no. This is, of course, incorrect. Speech promoting hatred — or at least, speech perceived as promoting hatred — may be abhorrent, but it is nonetheless constitutionally protected.

Students were asked whether the First Amendment requires that an offensive speaker at a public university be matched with one with an opposing view. Here, 6 in 10 (mistakenly) said that, yes, the First Amendment requires balance.

The most chilling findings, however, involved how students think repugnant speech should be dealt with.

Villasenor offered a hypothetical that may sound familiar to those who recall recent fracases at California State University at Los Angeles, Middlebury College, Claremont McKenna College and other institutions:

Let’s say a public university hosts a “very controversial speaker,” one “known for making offensive and hurtful statements.” Would it be acceptable for a student group to disrupt the speech “by loudly and repeatedly shouting so that the audience cannot hear the speaker”?

Astonishingly, half said that snuffing out upsetting speech — rather than, presumably, rebutting or even ignoring it — would be appropriate. It gets even worse. Respondents were also asked if it would be acceptable for a student group to use violence to prevent that same controversial speaker from talking. Here, 19 percent said yes.

None of this bodes well for the alt-right’s Berkeley Free Speech Week events next week.

Judging from the lineup — which includes professional troll Milo Yiannopoulos and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich — the apparent goal of this event is not to help students face hard truths or grapple with thoughtful conservative viewpoints. It’s to say disgusting things in an attempt to provoke liberals into doing something stupid, surrendering any claim to the moral high ground. If that happens, President Trump’s “both sides” comments will ring a little truer, while liberals and colleges are further cemented as whataboutist bogeymen for the right.

In truth, lefties can do more to call out threats to civil liberties perpetrated by their ideological allies. And colleges can do more to promote freer debate. But many of Villasenor’s results — like those from other data sources — show that the right is also astonishingly open to shutting down speech.

What’s more, colleges alone are not to blame for these findings. Other data suggest that freshmen are arriving on campus with more intolerant attitudes toward free speech than their predecessors did, and that Americans of all ages have become strikingly hostile toward basic civil and political liberties.

Colleges provide a crucible for America’s increasingly strained attitudes toward free discourse. But they are just the canaries in the coal mine.

Catherine Rampell Columnist