Lawmakers and free speech advocates debated during a Congressional hearing Wednesday whether America’s colleges and universities are doing enough to safeguard free speech on campus, actively seeking to squelch it, or selectively doing a little bit of both.
Rep. Burgess Owens, a Republican from Utah, cited statistics that show 59% of college students self-censor around their peers; 71% believe it’s OK to “shout down” speakers and 34% believe violence is justifiable to stop a speech.
“We are creating a culture that accepts fear, bullying and cowardice as a culture — versus a bold confidence and debate of ideas,” Owens said at an April 29 hearing held by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce regarding free speech on campus.
Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat from North Carolina, said across thousands of institutions of higher education, “only a small number” of campus incidents have involved speakers being disinvited or having their speeches disrupted.
“That is not a systemic problem warranting congressional intervention,” Adams said.
She accused opponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion of “inconsistency” as they seek to restrict what can be taught on campus, but at the same time complain about their own free speech being violated.
“If the concern is truly about viewpoint diversity, then we should protect all viewpoints, not just those that align with a particular political agenda,” Adams said.
Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC) and Burgess Owens (R-UT) stood on opposite sides of Wednesday's hearing on free speech.
Tyson C. Langhofer, senior counsel at the Center For Free Speech at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Virginia-based organization that fights for religious freedom and free speech, told lawmakers that “most public universities are actively violating” free speech by restricting certain speech to small “speech zones.” Or, he said, universities will deny student activity funds to religious student groups that require members to agree with the organization’s statement of faith to serve as leaders.
“These policies are most commonly enforced against conservative and religious students to shut down speech that others disagree with,” Langhofer said. As an example, he cited a successful lawsuit that his organization filed on behalf of Ratio Christi – a Christian student organization – against the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. UNL had denied the organization a 2021 request for $1,500 in student activity funds to bring a Christian philosopher to campus unless the group invited someone to counterbalance the speaker’s views. UNL was ordered to pay Ratio Christi a judgment of $1,500, plus $25,000 in attorneys' fees and costs.
On the other hand, Langhofer said, many universities refuse to enforce certain policies and instead allow students and faculty to “violently disrupt or shout down student events.”
“The widespread nature of these policies demonstrates that today’s colleges have failed to educate their students about the rights afforded by the First Amendment, and about their duties as citizens,” Langhofer said.
“Instead, they’ve enacted policies to punish speech they deem contrary to the majoritarian view on campus,” he continued. “That’s the essence of fear, the opposite of freedom and contrary to the purpose of the university and the First Amendment.”
Emerson J. Sykes, senior staff attorney at the Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that there have been “unprecedented efforts” by state and federal officials in recent years to “regulate what ideas can be taught in public colleges and universities.”
“Traditionally, academic freedom has served to protect individual professors from censorship, as well as to protect the university from interference by courts and the political branches of government,” Sykes said. “This traditional understanding of academic freedom is under severe threat from all sides.”
Sykes urged the Congresspeople to “refrain from misusing your investigatory authority to intimidate universities” and to stop trying to “commandeer” universities’ curricular and research decisions.
“The courts are not the only branch of government charged with protecting constitutional rights,” Sykes said. “Congress has an equal obligation to protect the Constitution, including by protecting academic freedom.”
