February 20, 2020
By Jonathan Butcher
The University of North Carolina yearbook is aptly named the “Yackety Yack,” an album of ideas, events,
and activities—“speech”—on campus each year. Yet a recent
survey finds many UNC students are afraid to do just that: Speak.
Consistent with the results of a 2019 Knight
Foundation survey of students from across the country, a significant slice
of the Tarheel study body hesitates to share their opinions because they fear how
their peers or professors may respond. And students are divided sharply along
ideological lines. Almost 40 percent of students that identify as conservative
say that they have some level of “concern” that other students would file a complaint
against them based on something they say in a class that discusses politics.
These concerns are not unfounded: The University of Michigan recently
disbanded the school’s Bias Response Team after the student membership
organization Speech
First filed a lawsuit. Nearly all—more than 96 percent—of self-identifying
liberal students at UNC say this issue is “irrelevant” or that they are not
concerned about others filing a complaint.
Seventeen percent of conservative students said they “kept an opinion
related to class to themselves” more than 10 times. This sounds like a modest
figure, but just 1.5 percent of liberal respondents said they self-censored to
this degree. Seventy-six percent of liberal students said they never chose to
keep ideas to themselves, compared to 32 percent of conservatives.
The researchers write that “sharing diverse viewpoints serves an
indispensable pedagogical and epistemological function,” which means
self-censorship interferes with the primary purpose of the academy. The authors
go on to say: “The asymmetry between left-leaning and right-leaning students’
concerns about expressing sincere views raises significant questions about
whether a full range of political views are finding voice in campus
discussions.”
Other institutions have also recognized this problem. Last week, the Georgetown University student
newspaper reported that “some conservative students…may temper what they
say to others because of their ideological minority status.” One student
described receiving “dirty looks” while simply handing out copies of the U.S.
Constitution.
Here again, the fears are grounded in reality. The Knight survey mentioned
above found that 51 percent of students approved shouting down speakers with
which they disagreed “always” or “sometimes,” another idea reflected in the UNC
report. In Chapel Hill, 25 percent of respondents were prepared to create an
“obstruction” to interfere with a speaker. Approximately one in five UNC students
surveyed approved of forming “a picket line to block students from entering an
event.”
Heritage
Foundation and Goldwater
Institute research explains that when college administrators allow such
disruption, state lawmakers must act and protect the rights of everyone to
listen and be heard in a public university. In 2017, North
Carolina lawmakers adopted a proposal that instructs university officials
to consider sanctioning students that violate someone else’s expressive
rights—such as shouting down a speaker.
The survey authors warn that the report is not meant to highlight political
differences on UNC’s campus. “Politics is not a regular topic of conversation
in most classes,” the researchers write. “Most instructors are perceived…as
encouraging participation from liberals and conservatives alike,” they said.
“The wrong way to interpret our report would be to see it as pitting
liberals against conservatives,” they said.
The correct—and nonpartisan—way to describe the results is that schools such
as UNC should do more to encourage “constructive dialogue.” Everyone in a
campus community should “arrest human tendencies toward sectarianism,
partisanship, and resentment.”
Concerned about similar problems in 1969, William F. Buckley told a college
preparatory school’s graduating class, “It is the students’ responsibility…to
insist as best they can that reason be introduced to all discussions,
especially those most highly vexed by passion.” Buckley’s God and Man at
Yale was one of the first books to confront the lack of ideological
diversity in the academy, so his admonition to bring order to debates while
holding on to our convictions comes from experience.
It is the responsibility of academics, and if not these instructors or
administrators, then state lawmakers, to make sure students are not living in
fear. Students should make speech their “principal contribution,” as Buckley
says elsewhere, to the pursuit of truth.
Jonathan Butcher
is a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute.
