Increasingly, students enter college with unshakable beliefs coupled with an animosity towards anyone who disagrees with them. High school and social media turn many of them into rabid Social Justice Warriors by the time they get into college.
Recently, the UNC system commissioned a survey on student views on the state of freedom of expression and it found, not surprisingly, that a large percentage hesitate to speak freely. In today’s Martin Center article, Eric Johnson looks at the survey and its import.
Johnson quotes the survey: “These concerns arise disproportionately from students who describe themselves as conservative, but they affect students of nearly all backgrounds. And contra a common narrative that liberal-leaning faculty members attempt to impose their views on the students they teach, we find that students worry about the reactions of their peers more than those of faculty.”
The UNC institutions have “green light” ratings from FIRE, although they didn’t always. Official university and state policy favors free expression and institutional neutrality on controversial topics. The problem is that the schools have a significant percentage of censorious students who cause others to keep quiet lest they arouse mobs eager to “cancel” them.
A big part of the educational mission of our colleges and universities must be to restore a climate of intellectual civility.
Johnson concludes that we face a cultural battle in which higher education can and should play a key role.