Are Free Speech and Inclusion at Odds on College Campuses?

What is happening to freedom of expression on college campuses?

According to some, colleges have become breeding grounds for progressive groupthink, inhospitable to dissenting views. Others, by contrast, say shifting speech norms on campus reflect a positive change—one that reflects increased consideration of people from marginalized communities. To shed light on these differing views, More in Common partnered with the Constructive Dialogue Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the next generation of Americans communicate across differences.

Our report, Free Speech and Inclusion: How College Students Are Navigating Shifting Speech Norms, illustrates that neither of these binary interpretations accurately captures the reality of life on today’s college campus.

Support for Academic Values

Encouragingly, we found that college students expressed widespread support for traditional academic values. For example, 94% agreed that it is important to “listen to others with an open mind—even those with whom we disagree,” and 88% agreed that “the alternative to violence is discussion and debate.” By the same token, most students reject totalizing notions of power and privilege; for example, only 14% agree that “only people who have power and privilege can be considered racist.”

Students across the political spectrum endorse traditional academic values but show less agreement on social justice values survey results graphic

Fear of Speaking Up

However, many students’ experiences in the classroom do not reflect this reality. Notably, we found that almost half (45%) of college students said they have “somewhat” or “very often” been afraid to share their opinions in the classroom for fear of offending peers or classmates. This fear is most pronounced among politically conservative students, but it is also felt to a significant degree by students on the left side of the spectrum.

Taking Offense

Supporting these perceptions, our study shows that a meaningful percentage of students (25%) have felt offended by their classmates’ views “somewhat” or “very” often, and 38% of students are aware of an incident where someone or a group has been called out, punished, or ‘canceled’ for inappropriate behavior. This suggests that students’ perceptions that their statements might offend their peers—and that they might face consequences as a result–has some basis.

Ideology over Identity

On the whole, 22% of students have “called out” their peers. Notably, those who identify as “very liberal” have called out at the highest rate, 42%, while Black and Hispanic students have lower percentages for calling out at 26% and 20%, respectively. This illustrates a counterintuitive finding: that ideological differences between liberal and conservative students, even more than race or gender, are the main drivers of conflict about speech.

Graphic showing the percentage of college students afraid to express their opinions, the percentage of college students actively called out, punished, or "cancelled" and the percentage of college students regularly offended by classmates

Part of these ideological differences stems from the degree to which students subscribe to social justice ideas like “marginalized groups understand society better than others.” For example, liberal students are much more likely to agree with that statement than conservative students (84% vs 24%).

“College classes are a place for students to feel uncomfortable and grapple with difficult concepts in the world. Students need the opportunity to correct one another and have hard and sometimes offensive conversations with one another.”

—Natalie, a conservative and a senior at a private school on the West Coast

“[Cancel culture] is just a shift in general culture. Ideas that were once deemed as normal are simply now being confronted and questioned.”

—Eduardo, a liberal and freshman at a public community college on the West Coast

In sum, college communities and individual students appear to be grappling with how to reconcile two valid pursuits: first, to convey empathy and respect towards other students, especially those from marginalized communities, and secondly to preserve an open discourse that allows for healthy disagreement.

Recommendations

These insights can inform how campus leaders frame inclusion and free expression initiatives. Solutions focused on shared values, not just identities, can improve culture and open discourse. We provide several recommendations to ensure colleges remain the bastions of learning and growth they have long represented, including:

Resist the false binary between free speech and inclusion, and challenge students to do the same.
Offer students opportunities to engage in discussions regarding the divisive topics and beliefs found in this study.
Create campus environments where a broad range of ideas are debated regularly within well-defined norms of respectful dialogue.

More information on the report can be found here.

Methodology: Constructive Dialogue Institute and More in Common partnered with Qualtrics, a research firm known for its best-of-class survey platform and research panels, to conduct this study. The survey was conducted with N = 2,618 U.S. college students from March 27 to May 18, 2023. The margin of error is +/- 2% for the overall U.S. college students sample and higher for subgroups. Demographic quotas were set to ensure adequate representation of participants by gender, race, institution type (public vs. private), and region of the country. As a result, the sample’s demographics closely resembled the population of college students in the U.S.

Sign Up For Our Report Webinar

Hear from report research leads Mylien Duong, Senior Director of Research at CDI, and Stephen Hawkins, Director of Research at MiC, about the significance of our findings and implications for higher education institutions. Additionally, we will share recommendations for higher education institutional leaders derived from the data and answer audience questions about the research.

When: November 9, 2023 at 2:30 p.m. (EST)