Is Higher Education Losing the Battle for Free Expression?
“Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.” – T. Jefferson
In a 2010 essay ([link removed]) for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Mollyanne Gibson wrote that, “not only does freedom of expression help individuals better develop and articulate their ideas, it encourages a free marketplace of ideas. When there is freedom to present opposing views, truth is more likely to emerge.” But higher education is losing the battle for free expression.
In a recent article ([link removed]) for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dr. Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill ([link removed]) , director of the Campus Free Expression Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, spoke of a fear among college students to express unpopular points of view. Students arrive on campuses unprepared to engage with—or even combative toward—differing views and opinions.
A 2019 College Pulse survey ([link removed]) found that 68% of students believed that “their campus climate precludes students from expressing their true opinions because their classmates might find them offensive.” Unfortunately, discomfort and offense are often prerequisites to advancement.
Galileo’s telescopic evidence of heliocentrism (the model in which the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around) made people uncomfortable and the Inquisitors of his time forced him to recant. The election of anti-slavery President Abraham Lincoln offended southern states and they attempted to secede from the Union.
In time, heliocentrism was proven true and slavery deemed morally reprehensible. The unthinkable idea whispered today may be the unshakable truth of tomorrow—but only if given the right to be argued.
The first line of defense for the argumentation of ideas should be at our great institutions of higher learning. Struggling first with the great ideas of others and then contextualizing them with our own is one of the greatest gifts of a university education.
Which is why, in 2014, the University of Chicago produced its Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression – referred to mostly as
“the Chicago Statement ([link removed]) ” – in which the values, expectations, and responsibilities of the institution are made clear vis-à-vis free speech and inquiry. “Because,” the statement reads, “the University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.”
The statement goes on to note that “it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”
To date, dozens of colleges and universities have adopted the Chicago Statement at their own schools. That number, though, represents but a fraction of the total number of institutions of higher education in America.
Donors are vitally important to colleges and universities. If we are to reassert a commitment to free thought, speech, and inquiry on campus, leadership will need to come from the philanthropists whose names adorn buildings, schools, tenured professorships, and programs. No donor should give to a university without insisting on the adoption of a statement of principles of free expression such as the Chicago Statement.
Freedom of speech has been thought to be critical to a free society throughout history.
“The happiness of the times being extraordinary, when it was lawful to think what you wished and to say what you thought.” —Tacitus, Roman Historian, Year 90 AD.
“The very aim and end or our institutions is just this; that we may think what we like and say what we think.”—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. 1860
“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.” —Benjamin Franklin
Or perhaps some college students today feel that in order not to be ostracized these days, they must follow Mark Twain’s advice:
“In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.”—Mark Twain
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History can always teach us something about the present, but only if it remains a priority. Without knowledge of our predecessors' struggles, we have no basis to make important decisions about our country's future.
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About the Jack Miller Center
The Jack Miller Center is a 501(c)(3) public charity with the mission to reinvigorate education in America's founding principles and history. We work to advance the teaching and study of America's history, its political and economic institutions, and the central principles, ideas and issues arising from the American and Western traditions—all of which continue to animate our national life.
We support professors and educators through programs, resources, fellowships and more to help them teach our nation's students.
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