How Do College Students Feel About Free Speech

And, does religion matter in this arena at all?

I’ve taught a course on a college campus as either a teaching assistant or the instructor of record since the Fall of 2006. The places I have worked at are not what most people would consider to be highly prestigious institutions. Outside of one course I lead as an adjunct at the University of Illinois about seven years ago, you probably haven’t heard of many of the places where I have been an instructor. But that’s honestly the norm.

Here’s a great statistic from the Pew Research Center - they looked at 1,364 four-year colleges and universities. How many of them had an admissions rate of less than 10%? The answer was 1.2%. Just 3% of them had an admissions rate that was below 30%. In other words, the average college looks a lot more like Eastern Illinois University than Stanford. My students are a whole lot of first generation kids. Many of them grew up within a couple of hours drive of Charleston, Illinois. Very few of them are activists of any kind. They keep their heads down, focus on their studies, drink a few beers, and get a pretty affordable degree.

That’s why when I see stories about disruptive political protests on college campuses, I realize that I have almost no personal experience with this phenomenon. I was especially struck with this bit of data analysis from the Washington Monthly about where those Gaza protests were happening.

If you plot the percent of the student body receiving Pell grants on the x-axis (which is a good measure of the affluence of the student body) and tuition and fees on the y-axis (which is a good measure of selectivity), it becomes clear where those protests were occurring—a handful of very elite institutions of higher-learning.

I was thinking about that when I was poking around data that was released last year by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). They are interested in topics related to free speech, especially when it comes to university settings. So they asked about 55,000 college students all kinds of questions last year. They included a question about religious affiliation, but some of the scenarios they pose to students are deeply intertwined with religion. Some of these findings were not exactly what I expected.

Let me start by just showing you the results of a question related to whether a student thought it was acceptable for “a student to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus.” I am just looking at respondents between the ages of 18 and 25 years old here.

Latter-day Saints were the most likely to say it was ‘never acceptable’ to shout down a speaker on campus. In fact, about three quarters of LDS said it was never or rarely acceptable. Basically all the Christian traditions are at the top of this graph - Protestant, Just Christian, Orthodox and Catholic, in that order. In each case about three quarters lean toward not finding it acceptable to shout down a speaker.

The groups at the bottom are the three types of nones and the Jewish sample. Among atheists, just 23% say it is never acceptable to shout down a speaker. That’s about half the rate of the LDS. Among agnostics, 25% chose the ‘never acceptable’ option compared to 29% of Jews and 32% of nothing in particular. However, I do want to point out that even among the atheists a majority were still on the ‘never/rarely’ side of the equation. There was no group where more than 50% thought it was a good idea to shout down a speaker.

If you have been thinking, even a little bit, about the factors that may impact the results of the first graph, then you can pretty much figure out that the groups at the top tend to be clustered on the right side of the political continuum (LDS, Protestants, etc.) while those on the bottom of the graph are more liberal (atheists, Jews, etc.)

So, let me cut the data both by religious tradition and partisanship to see what happens when I control for each dimension.

Okay, this is a much more helpful way to think about this data. Now, it’s crystal clear to me that a lot of the results from the first graph are just an artifact of political partisanship, not really religious tradition. The LDS are at the top because they are more Republican. The atheists are at the bottom because they tend to align with the Democrats. But partisanship is not entirely predictive, though. There is still some variation by religious tradition.

There’s a lot going on in this graph, but focus on this - compare Protestants to atheists. That makes it pretty simple. Among Protestant Democrats about 30% think that it’s never acceptable to shout down a speaker, it’s only 21% of atheist Democrats. So it does look like atheists are a bit more willing to constrain free speech, even when controlling for partisanship. But also notice how different Democrats are from Republicans inside each tradition. A Protestant Republican is twice as likely to believe it’s never acceptable to shout down a speaker compared to a Protestant Democrat. That pattern is all over this data - Democrats are more willing to shout down a speaker than a Republican.

But does the subject of a talk actually matter when it comes to free speech? Are there subject areas that are more sensitive than others? The FIRE data offers a good little battery of questions and many of them do touch on religion in one way or another. For instance, students were asked if their school should allow a speaker who believes that transgender people have a mental disorder.

That same general pattern from the previous graph appears here. Democrats are much more likely to say ‘definitely not’ compared to Republicans. In many cases, over half of Democrats in each religious subgroup think that the administration should definitely not allow such a speaker on campus. The groups that are the most opposed are Jews and the nones (atheists, agnostics, and nothing in particular.)

But the partisan divide here is an absolute chasm. Look at Protestants for an example of this. Just 5% of Democrat Protestants think that the administration ‘definitely should’ allow a speaker on campus who think transgender people have a mental disorder. It’s 35% of Protestant Republicans. You can see this partisan divide appear all over this data. Republicans are more permissive of a speaker with this view. But there is some variation by religious tradition. Christian Republicans tend to be a bit more supportive of free speech in this instance than atheist Democrats.

How about the same basic setup but instead of the issue being transgender individuals, this time it’s a speaker who believes that abortion should be completely illegal?

Okay, this one is really fascinating to me because this speaker will obviously be more objectionable to Democrats, just like the first scenario. But the willingness to allow this person on campus is significantly higher than the prior one. For instance, only 41% of atheist Democrats believe that their school should ‘definitely not’ allow a pro-life speaker on campus. It was 62% who were completely opposed to a speaker who thought transgender identity was a mental disorder. That’s not a small difference.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a partisan gap here. Democrats tend to not be as supportive of this kind of speaker being on campus compared to Republicans. However, the differences in those percentages are just significantly smaller in this situation. For instance, among Catholic Democrats, only 17% leaned toward allowing the anti-trans speaker. It was 33% of Catholic Democrats who were generally inclined toward the anti-abortion speaker. I don’t know what to do with this information, but it does seem that college students are more inclined to hear the anti-abortion argument.

What about a speaker on the other side of the political spectrum? The previous two were clearly included to raise the ire of liberals. FIRE also posed a scenario where the administration was considered bringing a speaker to campus who wanted to repeal the Second Amendment so that guns could be confiscated. This obviously wouldn’t be so well received by conservatives. But let’s take a look and see if that’s actually the case.

Okay, this set of bar graphs look completely different than the prior two sets of graphs. I think if there’s an overarching conclusion from this data it’s this: college students are overwhelmingly fine with an anti-gun speaker coming to campus. The most conservative group in this sample is likely LDS Republican college students. Among them, a majority lean toward allowing this type of speaker on campus (52%). There’s just no subgroup in this sample where a big chunk of them think that this would be a bad idea.

Of course, there’s widespread support among the Democrats on this topic. I am a bit shocked at how little variation there is among them across religious traditions. For instance, 69% of Protestant Democrats think their college should have a gun seizure speaker on campus. It was 76% of atheist Democrats. Obviously there aren't a ton of atheist Republicans roaming college campuses, but on this question there's no statistical difference in the way they view this situation compared to Democrats. That’s pretty stunning when you think about this in light of the two prior graphs where the partisanship gap was so wide.

Listen, I don’t know if these questions are actually that effective in measuring views of free speech. But I do think they are helpful in understanding the contours of what views are more or less acceptable on college campuses. My takeaway is this - a speaker who thinks transgender individuals have a mental disorder is going to face a ton more backlash than one who believes abortion should be illegal. But a speaker who advocates for repealing the Second Amendment and seizing guns is likely to receive a relatively warm reception.

As has become a common refrain for me—religion matters, but politics seems to matter more

Code for this post can be found here.