A Brookings Study of college students views on the first amendment right of free speech shows some shocking trends.
Only 31% of female college students believe in the constitutional right to free speech.
62% of Democrats think it is OK to shout down speakers.
30% of male students believe violence is an acceptable response by student groups.
College students’ views of the First Amendment are of profound importance for multiple reasons. First, colleges and universities are places where intellectual debate should flourish. That can only occur if campuses are places where viewpoint diversity is celebrated, and where the First Amendment is honored in practice and not only in theory. Second, what happens on campuses often foreshadows broader societal trends. Today’s college students are tomorrow’s attorneys, teachers, professors, policymakers, legislators, and judges. If, for example, a large fraction of college students believe, however incorrectly, that offensive speech is unprotected by the First Amendment, that view will inform the decisions they make as they move into positions of increasing authority later in their careers.
College students’ views on the First Amendment are important for another reason as well: Students act as de facto arbiters of free expression on campus. The Supreme Court justices are not standing by at the entrances to public university lecture halls ready to step in if First Amendment rights are curtailed. If a significant percentage of students believe that views they find offensive should be silenced, those views will in fact be silenced.
A surprisingly large fraction of students believe it is acceptable to act—including resorting to violence—to shut down expression they consider offensive.
Q: Does the First Amendment protect “hate speech”?
Q: A public university invites a very controversial speaker to an on-campus event. The speaker is known for making offensive and hurtful statements. A student group opposed to the speaker disrupts the speech by loudly and repeatedly shouting so that the audience cannot hear the speaker. Do you agree or disagree that the student group’s actions are acceptable?
Q: A student group opposed to the speaker uses violence to prevent the speaker from speaking. Do you agree or disagree that the student group’s actions are acceptable?
Q: A student group opposed to the speaker issues a statement saying that, under the First Amendment, the on-campus organization hosting the event is legally required to ensure that the event includes not only the offensive speaker but also a speaker who presents an opposing view. What is your view on the student group’s statement?
There is no such requirement, of course. Besides, the students would shout down the speaker, using violence, if necessary to halt the speech.
Shocking Beliefs
College kids are shockingly unaware of the constitution in their designated “safe zones” far from reality.
Who is to blame? In general, I would suggest college administers who spoon feed kids safe zone and socialist claptrap of all sorts.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
These beliefs are being indoctrinated long before college. Basic Civics is no longer taught in public schools. Neither is history prior to 1900. It’s shocking. But no worries, they ARE taught that a man can be a woman and the safest way to perform oral and anal sex.
They’re replacing the 1st Amendment with the FistTeenth. };^D
Neither is history prior to 1900. It’s shocking.
That’s news to me. But I gues I shouldn’t be shocked. That’s the beginning of the Progressive Era. I guess it meant to imply this country was founded on those principals.
I understand they don’t teach geography anymore either.
Years before Bruce Jenner and Bradley Manning got their winkies cut off, California public schools were teaching Congress member Maxine Waters that Crimea (in Europe) and Korea (asia) were the more or less the same thing.
Public schools were supposed to make sure our democracy was well educated, but instead the schools were transformed into very expensive political indoctrination camps… and now many of the $70K-$80K universities are becoming overpriced indoctrination camps too.
Joining a regular cult would give these “students” the same brain washing, but it doesn’t require going tens of thousands into debt.
Wrong, I was recently at parents night and attended my child’s high school world geography class.
“the safest way to perform oral and anal sex.”
… I might not have cut class for that one. I most certainly would have been kicked out, but not have cut.
Another shocking thing is that they don’t have a clue what the meaning of “Fascist” is. It is a centralized dictatorship marked by suppression of opposition through terror and censorship. These groups claim to oppose “Fascism”, but they are in fact the very definition of Fascists. They oppose free speech, and aim to prevent it through censorship and violence.
Long ago I learned that the is no “right” nor “left”, but rather political thought is better illustrated with two dimensions rather than one. The two axis are “Individual Freedoms” and “Economic Freedoms”. The “Left” believes in individual freedoms, but not economic freedom. The “right”: believes in economic freedom, but not individual freedom. Libertarians believe in both individual and economic freedoms. Fascists believe in neither economic nor individual freedom.
For many years I have met many people on the left, many people on the right, and a fair number of libertarian. Until recently I have never encountered any fascists at all. That is all different in this new world. Fascists are growing explosively. They want government to control everything, and they want to silence anyone that thinks otherwise. This is not something I ever anticipated. Who would want to live in a world with no freedom?
They are frightened children. Their indoctrination is one of fear….the great source of all tyrannical government’s power.
What’s happening is not anything unusual – control is a very powerful survival force. Both the weak and the strong desire it and obviously the strong gain it most often.
My take on this is that the progressive left is in decline, and like the US in general, their best hope for control is intimidation and violence. The culture from which the left is derived is man’s oldest and hence its least relevant in the modern world. It worked for a couple of million years and got us here, but is currently running on fumes. Its proponents (carriers) are dead enders, hell-bent on using government to increase the predator (i.e. foragers) to prey (producers) ratio until economic collapse. All because they believe that that is the best, or only, way to survive.
They will remain clueless, not that the right is much better.
This is not “the left”. The left does believe in freedom of speech. This is a birth of a new fascism.
Fear, yes, but at the same time a young person today will willingly get into a stranger’s car because the Uber app on their Smartphone told them it would be okay.
They will travel across oceans to a strange land and rent a room from somebody they’ve never met because Airbnb said so. Not a moment of hesitation. Often wrong but never in doubt.
Just don’t bring in a speaker that says something they don’t want to hear. They will scream and rant and demand “safe space” on campus and possibly a therapy animal to pet and cuddle.
It is a strange damn world, for sure.
These results are nauseating. The blame needs to start with their parents.
Yes, for tolerating public schools that indoctrinate their kids….
This is what I am teaching students…
WHAT CONSTITUTES INTEGRITY?
Characteristics of People Who Have True Integrity,
by Awareness Act
1. They value other people’s time.
2. They give credit where it is due.
3. They are authentic.
4. They are honest.
5. They don’t take advantage of others.
6. They talk through disagreements in a civil manner.
7. They give most people the benefit of the doubt.
8. They know when something is bothering someone.
9. They accept your word as truth until it is disproven.
10. If they have done something wrong they will come to you and
apologize.
11. They are humble.
12. They do good when they can.
13. They are kind.
14. They follow through with whatever they said they would do. Keep
commitments.
15. They do not manipulate others.
16. They are able to be vulnerable and can express it, and hold space for
others to be vulnerable as well.
Do you have any characteristics to add?
I think giving most people the benefit of the doubt is not integrity. It is charity.
And why is it most and not all? Because there is a cost to charity. Often the cost of charity is a loss of justice; and sometimes the cost of charity is injustice to those who cannot afford the loss; and in that case the act is not charity — it is arrogance and injustice and (in fact) evil.
So I would take “benefit of the doubt” out, and move it from integrity to something else.
I haven’t thought about the others too much yet.
Sounds nice but none of that has anything to do with “integrity” with maybe the exception of #14, which still fails in some respects. Integrity is simply the condition of living or acting in accordance with one’s stated or closely held values. An opportunistic lying, cheating, racist can live with complete integrity if those are his stated values. I have known persons truly believe and openly admitted it is actually moral to lie and cheat, mentally and physically use and abuse others, because they were “smarter” than their victims or stronger or had some other sort of advantage that made them better somehow. These people lived their lived with a high degree of integrity. I have also met people who vociferously announced their “christian faith” or their “humanistic” belief in universal worth & brotherhood (if they happened to be atheists or agnostics) volunteered time and money to charities, served without pay in various community service capacities, fed people in soup kitchens, and yet cheated on their spouses, defrauded customers, or lead employees on about raises and promotions, never intending to follow through or engaged in nepotism to enrich themselves and family members at the expense of better workers and the sponsoring organizations. These people, for all the good they “did”, all the pious words they spoke, and their embodiment of many of your listed characteristics, lived life without much integrity. No, those characteristics, while noble, have nothing to do with integrity. Better to teach students the truth. A person with evil values can live with prefect integrity, but is still “evil”. While a person with good values, by accident, ignorance, or circumstance failing to act with perfect integrity, can still be good. In other words, integrity is neither a good nor a bad thing in and of itself, but the values themselves COUPLED with the degree of integrity, are what matter most.
Perhaps you should look at a definition of the word before posting this type of misdirection. Words have meaning and intentionally twisting the meaning to suit your needs is counterproductive to engage in civil debate.
It would be nice to have a historical version of these statistics 10, 20, or 30 years ago. It would also be nice to have longitudinal data on various cohorts. For example, do 40 year olds now hold the same positions on these issues that they did 20 years before, or not?
Either way, these numbers are disturbing, and in the absence of solid historical data, there does seem to be a sad trend towards the belief that speech can be a form of violence, or at least that speech and violence cannot be separated.
As I posted above, I believe this is entirely new. Until recently, I have never in my life encountered anyone opposed to free speech, much less in favor of violence to oppose free speech.
Radicalized cult members are all opposed to speech that goes against the cult’s teachings. This isn’t new.
Millennials went on highly structured “play dates”, collected participation trophies, and had helicopter parents who pushed schools to “teach to test”. Thinking for themselves was discouraged. This made them ideal targets for radicalization and recruitment into cults.
At the same time incestuous faculty committees only awarded tenure to the most extreme left wingers. Assistant professors who wanted tenure either moved left wing or switched professions (or they never got tenure). The next generation of incestuous faculty started from an already extreme leftist viewpoint, and they only picked extreme leftists for tenure.
The perfect storm of weak minded children ready for indoctrination into a cult, cloistered on campus (isolated from society) and left under the supervision of extremist faculty with a few radicalized faculty mixed in.
I must be blessed. My co-workers are patient to hear other’s points of views and agree to disagree. The only time we have disagreements is when management proposes bad solutions to technical problems.
This is the young generation, not the people in the work force. They are a generation or two away from when the schools replaced history with social studies, and without historical bearing on the importance of free speech. It’s also a counter rebellion to people who resist the concept of PC speech. If your speech is not acceptable to them, you won’t be allowed to speak at all, and it will be prevented with violence.
Antifa is 100 years old, so these types in at least small numbers have been around a long time. It is a German Bolshevik import so I do not know how long it has been in the US. It was the armed militia of the German Communist Party following WW1.
Attending college in the early seventies after growing up in a very conservative home, made for some very heated conversations. I have found my old college essays explaining the rationale for universal income and vast social safety nets, something my parents growing up in the great depression and WWII abhorred.
After actually living…experiencing life, not in silicon valley or wall street, but working in construction, I changed my mind. I saw decades of stupidity in the people I worked with every day. People, working, making largely the same wage, some buying a home and raising children and even sending them to college, while others pissing everything they made away, destroying relationships and their own lives while almost in every case blaming virtually everyone else for their mess. I spent thousands trying to help out some of these disasters only to have them fail…and fail large.
I have lost hope in helping people who have obviously no hope. I still believe in charity…..voluntary charity. A charity where those giving can actually decide who is worthy and who is not….with their own money.
I reject state charity, state social programs, state welfare and entitlements.
I believe in voluntary participation………in all things.
While I recognize that we do not all have the same opportunities, and that opportunities ARE important, the MOST important thing is the person, their motivation, their willingness to actually try, to work hard, sacrifice, which for most people regardless of opportunity is the true factor of their success. We have spent billions…possibly trillions trying to balance the field, to equalize opportunities and still see inequality in outcomes. These inequalities are seen by progressives as proof of a failure to overcome racism, white privilege and hate, rather than accept that it is mostly in the power of the individual….a notion they cannot comprehend given they do not see individuals, only groups or the “collective”.
Freedom allows failure as well as success, and the better this is understood, the more success, REAL SUCCESS, we will have.
Straight from the mouths of members of the Party of Peace & Tolerance.
U of Berkeley, the progressive liberal bastion of democracy, has proven to be one of the most anti-Constitution and violent campuses in the nation.
How outrageous is this?
NO NEED TO KEEP ILLUSIONS AFLOAT
You’re hereby relieved of any responsibility you think you have to keep
everyone’s illusions afloat (including your own).
See how much fun you can have by telling the lush, pulsating, up-to-the-
minute truth with kindness and elegance.
Hipchick please stop arguing with everyone. Enough is enough.
Just as the madrasahs in Pakistan had “faculty” that sought out vulnerable students who could be radicalized into terrorist sympathizers and in some cases terrorists…
Berkeley has hundreds of adjunct professors, assistant professors and even tenured “faculty” who seek out weak minded, vulnerable students with low self-esteem — so those students can be radicalized into socialists and in some cases violent antifa activists.
Any US citizen who wonders how Islam, a peaceful religion, could allow its madrasahs to be used to radicalize terrorists… need only look at the exact same tactics being employed on college campuses in the USA. Its the same exact process, with the same outcome.
That warning goes double for parents about to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars sending their children to college. Even if they have the grades (participation trophies?), not every child is mentally ready or has the maturity to go live away from home. This goes double for children of helicopter parents — the children have never thought for themselves.
These children are ideal targets for radicalization, and unfortunately most US colleges have allowed socialist extremists to hunt for vulnerable youngsters on campus with impunity. College faculty have become incestuous, only far left or extremely far left assistant professors are considered for tenure (and the rest quickly get the institutional message).
If your child exhibits the personality traits that cults look for (search online, lots of sites discuss the warning signs) — then don’t send your child off to college.
Weak and impressionable people have always been with us and are always the ones cultivated for these purposes. America has had some resistance to this given our history of freedom and individuality, whereas Islamic cultures have been centered upon submission to religious dogma. As you suggest however, America is quickly catching up, but weirdly it is those sounding the loudest warning that are the worst perpetrators. The home of free speech silencing speech.
Could you possibly substantiate any of this? Why do you say that only far left or extremely far left are considered for tenure? I have nothing but anecdotal evidence to the contrary, but that’s more than the propaganda you post here. Yes, the 2nd time in this comment stream you have brought this up. Seems like you have an axe to grind.
Sorry Medex man, islam is NOT a peaceful religion as the quran and hadiths are full of passages directing the submissives (islam means submission) to engage in jihad and to kill/rape/enslave the enemy. To say islam is a peaceful religion is taqiyya (as taqiyya is permitted by islam to deceive).
Maybe the students should be asked how to solve some differential equation, and those who ask these questions should be on their own, i.e. no student loans for them. That would separate out those that do not belong to any university.
Absolutely!
Solving differential equations is no barometer of potential college success. I am suddenly remembering why I generally stay away from comments here MISH.
Saw a bumpersticker today. It said, “Fuck all you haters…” And that is the USA in a nutshell
What an upside-down world where “hate speech” is worse than actual violence???!!
Especially when the “hate speech” is merely something not in line with another’s theoretical notion of utopia. Here in Illinois it’s practically hate speech to oppose Chicago tax scammers because it’s “all about helping and strengthening the middle class.” Oppose this “logic” and you must be a hater.
These young cells full of mush have lived in a bubble cocoon all their lives. They’ve been given every advantage (most apparently are the beneficiaries of “white privilege”) and have no concept of the difficulties of life. They are crowd followers and social justice “warriors”, in their feeble brains. I can’t imagine why a conservative would waste his/her time trying to speak truth in their direction. But never mind.
Soon enough, they will be out on their little asses and have to make independent decisions and start thinking about those hundreds of thousands in student loans. When they run up against somebody who doesn’t give a damn about their SJW views or their degree in social work, they just might get a lesson in real life. Somebody might just “open up a can of whup ass on them” if they get in the wrong face. Couldn’t come too soon.
Stop blaming teachers and parents. This lands squarely on politicians, police enforcement and the court system. Arrest protesters, give them jail time, enforce the law and all this foolishness will disappear.
Politicians.
Those that think themselves the annointed ones.
Arrest protesters? Good Lord man, the post is on the lack of understanding our civil rights ffs!
Too funny, in a dark way. The foundations of our civilization are being replaced with silly putty. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a gibber.
It’s not funny, but it is alarming, and it is dark. It’s been a given that in time our democracy would end, and be replaced by a totalitarian dictatorship. After all, that’s how democracies always end. The end is coming sooner than I imagined, and will be more violent than I imagined.
Is it still a democracy when the majority of people are intimidated into not voting by a small but vocal and violent minority? We already have half of Americans not voting, so what percentage of our population would need to fail to participate before we could honestly say that we had no democracy…or at the very least democracy had failed? Progressives already perceive democracy has failed in that Trump was elected, but they see opportunity in that failure. They see it as cause to redefine it and demand that democracy be defined as simply the loudest and most violent voice. A false consensus defined not by an actual majority of individual people, but by volume and intimidation….exactly as fascists intended.
……And in the other corner, The Jihadis!
With a track record of 8 kids per woman vs 1.5. And enough brains to by now have recognized that paper constitutions to be “interpreted” by some leeching class, are exactly 100% meaningless; unless backed up by meaningful armaments, AND the demonstrated ability and will to use them.
Now, who will win that one?
And, thank goodness for that….
Indoctrination. A direct result of the corruption of public schools Marxism is a morally. Ankrupt world view adopted by phony intellectuals who if they had a single original idea would have died of loneliness.
Neither is history prior to 1900.
As a father of 3 school age children, this statemetn is false.
“30% of male students believe violence is an acceptable response by student groups”. I suggest that we call these cretins by their real names. Communist useful idiots and pussies.
And they are going into massive debt for this!!! Ha Ha HA HA HA !!!!!!!!!!
These douches might have to go without entertainment for a few days if there is a real crisis. What are they going to do then? What happens when the food runs out in their parents’ pantries?
Keep your guns, guys, S**t could get real at any time.
Moderate muslims get radicalized into terrorists in madrasahs.
US children get radicalized into socialist antifas on college campuses like Berkeley.
Same brainwashing, same use of cult control tactics, same extremism…. same output
Well moderate Muslims won’t kill you.
They want the radical Muslims to kill you.
SJWs? They aren’t killing anybody just yet.
Females who major in liberal arts are one of the most indoctrinated and brainwashed groups on the planet.
Males are just as vulnerable to cults and radicalization as females — and from protest pictures it certainly looks like half of the antifa radicals are male.
Being weak minded and having low self-esteem (needing validation from a group)… those are the traits cult leaders look for.
Right but look at the gender differences in the polls Mish reported in his post. In my experience there tend to be a lot more men that are libertarian/independents than female. A lot more female SJW’s. Whenever we have an election the Dem candidate always gets a lot more female votes than male. There are a TON of liberal females.
History demonstrates that women are much more likely to vote to trade freedom for security, winding up with neither.
And also there are a lot more men that major in STEM types of majors. I find people that major in hard sciences can be a lot more rational and not as subject to propaganda and hysteria. I believe well over 90% of women in college are in non STEM majors (mostly liberal arts). Asian women do have a better representation in STEM.
‘Brainwashing’ is a universally applied by all forms of government including our own to “Preserve The Status Quo”.
It eventually fails and REVOLUTION results.
Most revolutions end badly.
O/T — As the Mueller witch hunt continues, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the FBI, under James Comey, was indeed “wiretapping” the Trump building (even if the technical term “wiretapping” is out of date).
That means Comey perjured himself before Congress, and it means that Comey (and probably several Obama White House officials who requested “unmasking” of NSA intelligence sources).
And not for the first time, James Clapper also perjured himself — making the false claim that the Obama regime was not spying on an opposition party politician.
Time to hold these criminals accountable to the law
Remember that “hate speech” is anything that they disagree with, even if is the truth.
So where is the trend (over time). This is a static opinion poll. I seriously question if the results would have been much different 40 years ago. Seemed to be a lot of shouting and intolerance back in those ‘nam protests. Asking kids about intolerance of other ideas and violence as a reasonable solution seemed like it woulda got a lot of similar responses back when i was in high school in the 80’s.
Haymarket Square, McCarthyism… oh history is replete with example after example of violence and intolerance against freedom of ideas, expressions, and speech… This is a new thing? I think not.
Individual freedom, private property rights, and the scientific method.
All recent innovations despised by mankind’s least evolved.
??????? Who is to blame????? Can you say NDAA? Can you say “Patriot” Act? Can you say Bush? Can you say Obama?
When judges have no interest in what was actually written in the Constitution, when the Bill of Rights is routinely trampled by those in power, and when colleges teach that the Constitution is a “living document” (code for “it says whatever we say it does,” is it any great surprise that this fundamental element of a free society is at risk?
College students are being indoctrinated into totalitarianism.
I don’t think this necessarily reflects changing political viewpoints but rather overall change in levels of education. Here in UK we have dumbed down everything. And with that you get idiotic outcomes similar to this.
Well, that’s what happens when you let communists rule your education system.
First we outlaw hate speech. Who could be against that? Then we start defining it. Whoops. Cart before the horse
Who’s to blame? How about the parents of these little wannabe Maoists who had these kids for 18 years before they ever ended up at these overpriced leftist echo chambers that pass for higher education theses days.
In this case, I’m going to defend the colleges and universities – and you have no idea how much it pains me to say that.
This type of behavior starts when they are young – as in toddlers. They play on the playground and every single interaction is monitored by the parents who – at the first sign of conflict – interject themselves and “solve the problem” typically by separating the kids in question.
This behavior never allows small children to learn to solve their own problems – to deal with violence – or the realities of establishing a “pecking order” in social situations. They will constantly look to an “authority figure” to do these things for them – or to move them to a safe space if they feel attacked.
From there, it moves into the school system where the same thing happens only now you add on the fact that the school begins to teach them that nothing is their fault. If they can’t behave, or study when they need to, or do their homework, it’s because they have “something” wrong with them – physically or emotionally – which means the school must provide them exceptions or extra attention. Not to mention the parents are still riding shotgun – doing the kid’s homework, intervening on the kid’s behalf when there are disciplinary issues…etc.
This “support” system is fully ingrained and irretrievably embedded in the mushy brains of the eighteen-year-old college freshman long before they set foot on a university campus. They have no idea how to solve their own problems, advocate for themselves, or deal with the ugly reality that is the “real world”.
So they look for an authority figure – and they find it in the mob.
Does the university do anything to counter it? Nope. But I can’t really blame them. If they tried, they’d have to deal with the wrath of the parents – who would yet again interject themselves to solve the problem.
This won’t end well.
Absolutely! Anyone that has raised kids in the past 20-30 years has seen this progression (regression) in parenting. It’s an unbelievable challenge to bring children up in today’s culture when you want them to learn how to exist in free society. I have managed 1 out 3 for sure, the other 2 are proving to be more of a challenge (mostly because of friends’ siblings – hard to knock sense into kids these days, but harder when their friends older siblings are so bought into the BS).
“Today’s college students are tomorrow’s attorneys, teachers, professors, policymakers, legislators, and judges.”
And Hollywood actors. The awards shows have become unwatchable to me, as they have been turned into a platform for political attacks by some of the participants.
Mish, you just cant help seeing the irony in the title of your article
“Students Stand Against Hate Speech: “With Physical Violence If Necessary”
surely shouldnt that mean “Students Stand for Violence”
and “Students Stand against for “free” speech (so long as its the right kind of speech)” .
Reblogged this on John Barleycorn and commented:
Agreed