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Feigning Free Speech on Campus
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: January 29th, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/opinion/feigning-free-spee...
Colleges and universities are supposed to be bastions of unbridled inquiry and expression, but they probably do as much to repress free speech as any other institution in young peoples lives. Since the 1980s ... colleges have enacted stringent speech codes. From protests and rallies to displays of posters and flags, students have been severely constrained in their ability to demonstrate their beliefs. The speech codes are at times intended to enforce civility, but they often backfire, suppressing free expression instead of allowing for open debate of controversial issues. In a study of 392 campus speech codes last year, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education ... found that 65 percent of the colleges had policies that in [their] view violated the Constitutions guarantee of the right to free speech. Some elite colleges in particular have Orwellian speech codes that are so vague and broad that they would never pass constitutional muster at state-financed universities. A 2010 study by the American Association of Colleges and Universities of 24,000 college students and 9,000 faculty and staff members found that only 35.6 percent of the students and only 18.5 percent of the faculty and staff strongly agreed that it was safe to hold unpopular positions on campus. Colleges have promulgated speech codes that are not only absurd in their results but also detrimental to the ideals of free inquiry. Students cant learn how to navigate democracy and engage with their fellow citizens if they are forced to think twice before they speak their mind.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on civil liberties, click here.
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