Suppression of Speech on College Campuses: PhD Update #1
I’ve to decided to update my progress of my social psychology PhD that investigates free speech and expression on my Substack. Here’s my first entry: A trawl through a past survey my lab helped conduct a couple of years ago.
"When you are deeply committed to the indefensible, you cannot abide by free speech or scientific inquiry.”
Jim Flynn
Between 2019 and 2022 the Heterodox Academy conducted the Campus Expression Survey that aimed to measure the degree to which American university students believed their opinions, when discussing controversial topics, were suppressed on university campuses:
… recent surveys by the Heterodox Academy (HxA) revealed that a majority of American university students thought their campus was not conducive to the free expression of ideas, and a substantial minority were personally reluctant to discuss “hot topics” like politics or sexual orientation in class.
In 2022, my research lab, the Social Cognition Psychology Lab at the University of Otago in New Zealand, helped put together and run a replication on New Zealand university students. The findings were similar to that of the original:
… overall, 65.4% [of students] were reluctant to speak on at least one of the topics surveyed, significantly greater than the corresponding proportion (i.e., for the same four topics) in the American sample (56.6%).
New Zealanders, like the Americans, were most reluctant to discuss politics, then religion, sexual orientation, and finally gender.
Right-leaning New Zealanders, like Americans, were more reluctant to share the views when compared to their left-leaning counterparts, especially about gender and sexuality.
When asked what groups were “less comfortable sharing their views in a classroom discussion compared to the average student”, students rated LGBTQ students and especially transgender students as far less comfortable than straight students.
But, when revealing their own reluctance, it was straight students, not Trans or LGBTQ students, that were more uncomfortable on campus. (In New Zealand, not in the States. As a result, I’ve just included my ‘regraph’ of the data.)
Overall, the researchers concluded that it was:
… clear that chilled campus speech is not confined to the United States.
Despite these concerning findings, there were many questions unanswered with a lot of data unanalysed. Here are some of the questions I attempted to answer and extra stuff I found after trawling through the dataset.
Straight is … Worse?
First was to speculate reasons why reality failed to conform to perception, when it was observed that straight students, not trans or LGBTQ students, were more uncomfortable discussing controversial topics (the graph from above). I could think of two possible ways:
1. Non-straight students are used to discussing controversial topics.
Over their lifetime LGBTQ people will get repeatedly exposed to sharing their personal preferences regarding choice of sexual partners that contradicts the norm (heterosexual). As a result, they may build up a resilience to discussing something that in polite conversation is usually uncomfortable. As an example, when a gay child grows up and has to come-out to friends and family, they will be repeatedly exposed to expressing their preferences (and their views) on sexuality, and even gender identity. They will build up resilience to difficult conversations, and by the time they reach university, they will no longer be uncomfortable.
Wait - look at the politics bars: Why should non-straight students also feel more comfortable than straight students discussing politics? Because gender identity and sexuality are also political issues; and so, by discussing sexual preferences, one is also discussing politics.
2. Professors and administrators create an environment where non-straight students are more comfortable discussing controversial topics than straight students.
Like American campuses, New Zealand university campuses are overwhelmingly left-leaning, with only 6.6% of students identifying as right-wing (more on categorisation issues later). The left purports to stick up for not only the rights, but even the emotional states of anyone ‘non-straight’. It should come as no surprise that university professors and administrators, who are also overwhelmingly left-wing, should create an environment where their identities of preference feel more comfortable discussing difficult issues than their less preferred identities.
This explanation also aligns with other groups whose ideals do not align with left-wing ideals, such as right-leaning students, and Pasifika students (more on both of these below).
Pasifika Students are the Most Uncomfortable
Across three of the four topics (gender, politics, sexual orientation), Pasifika students are by some margin, the most uncomfortable. Religion is the only topic they aren’t the most, though they are second.
Before speculating as to why, I should note we only had 30 participants - and some more extreme individuals may be pulling the numbers up.
(For my non-NZ audience, Pasifika is a cultural sub-category of the larger ethnic category of Polynesian. It refers to pacific islanders, such as Tongans, Samoans, and Fijians, excluding New Zealand’s indigenous Māori.)
Besides some unknown internal cultural reason that restricts speech (like an aversion to causing unnecessary conflict in a public place by discussing something controversial like politics), Pasifika being the most uncomfortable to discuss controversial topics could be because of their awkward socio-political position on University campuses in New Zealand.
It makes sense to assume they vote left-wing (though I couldn’t find any good statistics on this - I have heard they often don’t vote too), yet many of their cultural practices are traditional and decidedly anti-left-wing. It would be fair to say they are - by quite a large degree - more socially conservative than your average NZ conservative. For instance, they barely have a concept of ‘mental illness’ and allow ‘smacking’ (punishing children with force) in the islands; they have traditional, clear cut gender roles for men and women; and finally, they are highly religious (Christian) and this likely affects their acceptance of homosexuality (not to mention trans). Together, they have beliefs and practices totally at odds with common left-wing ideals like LGBT rights, mental illness acceptance, affirmative parenting styles, fluid gender roles, atheism, and drug legalisation (a large majority of Pasifika voted against the legalising recreational cannabis referendum a couple of years ago). Like straight students above, they are in an environment where their beliefs are, at the very least, implied as backward.
Like straight students above, and right-leaning students below, it should be no surprise then they would be uncomfortable discussing these topics.
Students Fear Other Students and Professors Will Criticise Their Views as Offensive
Students, like in the original Campus Expression Survey, were asked the reasons for why they might be afraid to discuss controversial topics. This was balanced with an attempted baseline, which was, somewhat awkwardly, reasons why they might be afraid to discuss non-controversial topics.
The consequences provided for the participant to endorse were; 1) professor will criticise my views as offensive; 2) professor will give me a lower grade because of my views; 3) professor will say my views are wrong; 4) students will criticise my views as offensive; 5) I will be criticised on social media about my views; 6) someone will make a complaint to administration because of my views (for some reason I couldn’t find the baseline category for complaint, that’s why it's empty).
Also, the researchers included a Likert scale of ‘level of fear’, that ranged from ‘not at all’ to ‘extremely’. The bars you see are simply everything from ‘slightly’ to ‘extremely’ afraid (do note that in most of the categories ‘slightly’ was the highest individual percentage.)
As you can see, the highest category is students will criticise my views as offensive and second is the professor will criticise my views as offensive (though the latter is the highest difference between fear and baseline), which aligns with the Heterodox Academy’s findings. If most students are left-wing, and most professors left-wing … this makes sense. Let me explain.
Tertiary institutions' historical mission was to promote the seeking of truth using the vehicle of free expression, even if these truths were uncomfortable, inconvenient, and offensive. The belief was that creating social policies based on anything other than the best understanding of how humans actually are would lead to worse outcomes in the future. Of course, there have been powerful censorial movements which threatened the virtue of truth-seeking; with often cited being the McCarthy anti-communist movement of the 40s and 50s, and overly prudish Christian political correctness … for basically all of time.
Recently however, as the left have taken over institutions, we have seen restrictions on speech - speech codes - by the left. (Jim Flynn records the history of speech restriction on campus in great detail, in A Book To Risky To Publish, Free Speech and Universities)1. Questions like the validity of gender identity theory, if fluid gender roles are actually making men and women less happy, if intersectionality removes agency from minorities instead of providing it by consolidating an external locus of control, if affirmative action is a racist policy as based on the definition of racism in the dictionary, if trans-women should compete in sports against biological women because they have a clear genetic advantage, and more recently, whether the radical left has anti-Semitic tendencies, will at the very least raise eyebrows, and the very worst, get academics ‘cancelled’, their lives ruined as a result.
One of the main justifications used for these questions to be censored is that they are offensive and will cause harm to a specific person or group (even if it is true). For instance, one is inflicting psychological damage upon trans-people if they ask whether trans-women should compete in sports against biological women.
If the left has created fear by stating that to discuss these controversial topics from a different angle is to cause offence (and by effect, harm), then we should see greater discomfort if professors and students are to the left of you, than if they are to the right.
Greater Fear of the Left
The researchers also asked students what they believed to be the political orientation of other students and professors. The categories were 1) About as many are to the left as to the right of me; 2) Don’t know; 3) Most are to the left of me; 4) Most are to the right of me; 5) Most have views similar to mine. I’ve excluded 1), 2), and 5), so we can compare left versus right (‘Don’t know’ was also one of the highest categories).
As you can see, quite clearly, if students believed their Professor was to the left of them, they were more uncomfortable discussing Gender and Sexual Orientation (by over double) and Politics (a smaller margin) than if they were to the right. Not surprisingly, the topic where the effect is reversed is Religion; with religious faith traditionally being seen as a virtue on the right. (Also: There is a historical code of politeness to not question another’s faith or the foundations of their belief. This politeness, while perhaps a good thing in one’s everyday conversations, has led to speech restrictions on campus in the past, and appears still in effect … at least for Professors).
When judging other students' political orientations, the differences between left and right are consolidated and at times exacerbated.
Gender and Sexual Orientation are about the same, still around or just above double, however Politics has jumped up to double, and the gap between Religion has closed. It seems if students believe their classmates are to the left of them they are even more uncomfortable discussing controversial topics.
Note: That left-wingers compared to right-wingers are less tolerant of speech deemed offensive and speech that simply differs in viewpoint aligns with findings from a study conducted in 2020 on toleration of free speech, using the long-running New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey.
Issues and Further Thoughts
The plan is to effect changes to the survey, alter some wording of the questions, and refine the methodologically. For instance, for some weird reason the question of ‘Race’ was left out - arguably the most controversial topic so we’d include that; we want a better capture of political orientation so it includes not just left-right but libertarian-authoritarian; we want a short personality measure; we want to ask students specific controversial questions - i.e. “Rate your comfort level expressing your views in class about whether trans-women should compete in biological women’s sport?”; and so on.
The chilling of speech on college campuses is well documented. Researchers have offered reasons as to why, from the intolerant minority concept by Nassim Taleb, or that younger generations are more fragile and less capable of interacting with challenging ideas as proposed by Lukianoff and Haidt in the Coddling of the American Mind, to Jim Flynn’s observation that universities are now largely controlled and operated by left-wing administrators in A Book To Risky To Publish, Free Speech and Universities.
Hopefully, with an updated survey, we can gather more information on whether the trend is improving or worsening, and what may be the cause of the “chilling” of speech on college campuses.
Chur,
The Delinquent Academic
Ironically, Jim Flynn’s original publisher backed out because the ideas in the book were too … risky and offensive. They unintentionally proved his point.