Campus protests against high-profile conservative speakers have made headlines since last year, stirring controversy over the principles of free speech and the effort to ensure that diverse student bodies feel safe and respected.
Despite these protests at schools across the country — including against Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, Steve Bannon at University of Chicago, and Betsy DeVos at University of Baltimore — 57 percent of Americans believe colleges should invite speakers to campus even if some students find their speech offensive, according to a new WGBH News/Abt Associates poll.
Thirty-two percent of respondents say they believe schools shouldn’t invite these speakers at all.
The poll of 1,002 adults, which was conducted from Aug. 21-25, 2018 and has a margin of error of 3.5 percent, also found that 64 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Independents agree with the decision to invite speakers who have offended others with their speech. Forty-seven percent of Democrats feel similarly.
A slight gender gap also exists when it comes to free speech on campus. Sixty-one percent of male respondents say that all types of people should be invited to speak on college campuses, while 53 percent of female respondents feel the same way. Race plays a factor as well —more whites agree with inviting speakers with offensive speech than non-whites.
These differences underscore a widening polarization in the national political discourse and the racial undertones of some speakers’ messages. Both Bannon and Yiannopoulos, conservatives, were in the past affiliated with Breitbart News, which published some content critics consider racist and white supremacist.
Inviting such speakers to campus can bring into conflict two values that colleges typically express: free speech and inclusion. As a matter of law, only public colleges are bound to abide by the First Amendment, although private colleges also embrace free speech to foster open academic inquiry. One thing colleges mean by inclusion is that intolerance is unacceptable on campus.
The poll also found that 59 percent of Americans think colleges lean more toward one viewpoint. Seventy-seven percent of those respondents believe colleges lean more liberal, and 15 percent believe they lean more conservative. Of those who believe politics on campus lean toward a particular viewpoint, 79 percent think this is a problem, and nearly half describe it as a major problem.
David Ciemnecki is a senior analyst at Abt Associates. For more on the poll's methodology, click here.
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