New report examines the state of free speech on university campuses

* Editor’s Note: On November 17, the National Constitution Center hosts PEN America for a Town Hall program about campus free speech. Learn more and get tickets.

On Monday, PEN America, a non-profit organization that “works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship,” released a report on the state of free speech on university campuses. The report focuses on a wide variety of issues, including campus speakers, “safe spaces” and calls to “punish” speech. PEN America conducted this report by talking to students and faculty from UCLA, Yale and Northwestern—all have had recent incidents related to speech on campus—as well as outside experts.

Campus speech is a First Amendment issue, but the courts are very hazy on how they classify what can and cannot be spoken. In the 1937 case of Palko v. Connecticut, Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote that “free expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.” Indeed, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Westboro Baptist Church. The Court said in the latter decision, “Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure than we do not stifle public debate.”

The report notes that the American Bar Association did their own research and came to the conclusion that

[i]ndividuals have a First Amendment right to harass anyone they want, in the lay sense of the word ‘harassment’ as irritating or tormenting someone, though the rights of school and college employees to do so in their professional capacities are narrower than the free speech rights of students. Yet, when a person is called a ‘fag’ or any other derogatory term or epithet, or demeaned based on an immutable characteristic so often and so publicly that it impacts his or her peaceful enjoyment of the school or campus, then the right to peaceful enjoyment is the highest priority, and there is no First Amendment right to engage in discriminatory harassment.

With all this in mind, let’s dive into the report.

There are three main takeaways. The first is that colleges have greatly diversified in the last 50 years. In 1976, the college population was 84 percent white. Today, it is down to 59 percent. The Hispanic population bumped up to 16 percent from 4 percent; the black population is now 15 percent, while it was previously only 10 percent; the Asian/Pacific Islander population is up 4 points from 2 percent to 6 percent; and the American Indian/Alaska Natives population went from .7% to .8%.

But while colleges love to list these statistics and talk about how diverse they are, the students may not feel the same way. As UCLA student Liat Menna said “You enter campus, and you enter your pre-determined communities. You come from your house, and go exactly to that community that’s similar to your home. You don’t really learn about other communities yet, and you don’t learn their issues, and their sensitivities, and their challenges. I think that’s really been a reason for a lot of hostility on campus, is that people just don’t understand what are triggers for other communities, and what’s offensive.” The report suggests that colleges have welcomed students of all races and encourage diversity, but do not do enough to effectively blend this melting pot, leading to incidents across the country. At UCLA, for example, Palestinian students objected to any person affiliated with Jewish groups serving in student government. The report notes that this sort of tension is common when social change is happening, and that this change will ultimately be beneficial to the next generation.

The second takeaway looks at the issue of campus speakers, whether they are speaking at commencement, receiving an honorary degree or giving a lecture. Many high-profile speakers have faced protests, including Hillary Clinton at St. Catherine University, Ben Carson at John Hopkins, Mitt Romney at Liberty University and Michael Bloomberg at Harvard. For a variety of reasons, students and faculty have protested these speakers to the point that they were disinvited or made the decision themselves to decline the invitation.

PEN America disagrees with the universities who have disinvited speakers. “Except in the most extreme cases,” the report reads, “concerns over threats of violence or the potential outbreak of violence should not be grounds for canceling a controversial or event.” They argue that, if the universities give in to the protesters, then the protesters are given all the power, and university officials lose a lot of credibility. It is better to have the speaker and spark serious and productive debates than to cancel the speaker and worsen their reputation among future guests. (Interestingly, schools are showing some pushback when it comes to protests over the names of buildings, including the John C. Calhoun Residence Hall at Yale and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton.)

Finally, the third takeaway is about tensions between professors and students. There are certainly instances of professors oppressing speech, including a Georgetown professor writing an article condemning Justice Antonin Scalia, making many of his students wary of writing any papers about the late Justice. But in today’s world, professors are increasingly scared of their students, as even tenured professors have been fired because they insulted their students with provocative language or course materials. Professors have heard complaints from students that they were offended by authors such as Mark Twain, and students want the professors to put trigger warnings into their syllabi. One professor even wrote an article for Vox called “I’m a Liberal Professor and My Liberal Students Terrify Me”. While students are feeling like they are the ones being silenced, professors are also feeling silenced on the other end.

In conclusion, the reports finds that, although the current controversies merit attention, and although there have been some troubling incidences of speech curtailed, there is not, as some accounts have suggested, a pervasive “crisis” for free speech on campus.

Chris Calabrese is an intern at the National Constitution Center. He is also a recent graduate of St. Joseph’s University.