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College students are clueless when it comes understanding First Amendment protections, according to a survey conducted by the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution.
Released Sept. 18, the poll of 1,500 students found a plurality (44 percent) believe the First Amendment doesn’t protect “hate speech,” while 62 percent say it legally requires an event to present speakers from both sides of an issue.
More than half (53 percent) of respondents wants a protective bubble to shield them “from speech or expression of viewpoints that are offensive or biased against certain groups.”
Sixty-one percent of students who identify themselves as Democrats want to be sheltered from offensive speech, compared to 47 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Independents.
Brookings found a majority of students (51 percent) believe it’s acceptable to shout down a controversial speaker, while 19 percent support the use of violence to prevent one from speaking.
John Villasenor, senior fellow at Brookings and UCLA law professor conducted the poll.
He expressed concern that what happens on campus often foreshadows broaden societal trends.
“Today’s college students are tomorrow’s attorneys, teachers, professors, policymakers, legislators and judges,” he wrote. “If, for example, a large fraction of college students believe, 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.”
To Villasenor, college faculty and administrators have a responsibility to foster freedom of expression on campus.
He also thinks more attention should be paid to the First Amendment in middle and high schools.
The Charles Koch Foundation funded the survey via financial support it provided to UCLA.
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