The poll, conducted by Gallup and the Knight Foundation, produced both good news and bad news.
First the good news. Fully 97% of the students polled believe that free speech is an essential pillar of American democracy. Moreover, a majority of students (58%) support the Trump administration's decision to ban federal funding for colleges that do not protect free-speech rights, and more than four-in-five students prefer a campus environment that exposes students to all types of speech.
Kakutani quotes Evette Alexander, director of learning and impact at the Knight Foundation, who said that survey respondents felt greater pressure from their peers, rather than their professors, about voicing their dissenting opinions:
We understand that [pressure] mostly comes from peers. The professors would be open to hearing different thoughts, but the people who feel uncomfortable usually have a point of view that doesn't align with the most vocal students in the room. And so they feel like by speaking up, they would expose themselves to retaliation.All of that is cause for hope that a majority of students and a lot of faculty still hold to the value of open discussion that have traditionally prevailed on college campus until political correctness managed to co-opt so many administrations and faculty. But the poll also revealed some bad news, not least of which is that, as noted in the above quote, students who hold unpopular opinions are afraid to voice them for fear of their peers. In fact:
Sixty three percent of students feel that their campus climate deters students from expressing themselves openly, up from 54% in 2016. The students say that conservative students experience greater barriers to openly expressing their opinion in public, with Democrats feeling more comfortable than Republicans about sharing dissenting views in class.This is disturbing but not surprising. Part of the reason for this is that students on the left are often uninterested in a calm discussion of differences. Their preferred mode of argument is the ad hominem abusive or the "shout them down" technique.
Also disturbing is the finding that 17% of pupils would impose restrictions on the distribution of Christian pamphlets on campus. Why? Would those 17% of students be willing to impose similar restrictions on Muslims?
In any case, 78% of students also want "safe spaces" on their campuses that are free of "threatening actions, ideas, or conversations." More than 80% favor the establishment of a "free-speech zone" where preapproved protests and the distribution of literature are permitted. Yes, but why shouldn't the entire campus be a "free-speech zone"?
Kakutani quotes Spencer Brown, a spokesman for Young America's Foundation, a conservative activism group, who noted that universities often create safe spaces explicitly to shut down viewpoints that break from liberal orthodoxy:
In almost every case, safe spaces are set up in response to a conservative speaker visiting campus. The powers that be at a given school issue trigger warnings to spook students, offer them a safe space to hide from harmless words, and ensure that the coddled minds of impressionable youth don't hear a conservative idea that, God forbid, might make them reconsider the leftist ideas they're all too often force-fed in the classroom.The only safe space in an intellectually vibrant community, such as a university should be, is a student's own dorm room. The idea that students need to be protected from ideas which may challenge their firmly-held convictions is not only a capitulation to their psychological fragility, it also stifles their intellectual development. The only way to grow one's mind is to sharpen one's ideas on the whetstone of contrary opinions.
To deny students this opportunity, to actively encourage them to shun it, is pedagogical malpractice.