Nate Silver founded FiveThirtyEight – a poll-analyzing website that’s now owned by ABC. The site was routinely checked by lots of news and political analysts, but became somewhat famous – infamous, really – when Silver and his site were completely wrong about Trump’s chances, both for the 2016 primary and general election.
That said, I find him one of the smartest and most intellectually honest writers out there. His Substack is a great read.
Especially this entry, about how free speech is in trouble on college campuses and … by extension … everywhere else.
His post looks at the annual survey by College Pulse and FIRE (a pro-free speech group), where they surveyed over 55,000 college students about their opinions on free speech on campus and elsewhere.
Here are his conclusions:
“College students aren’t very enthusiastic about free speech. In particular, that’s true for liberal or left-wing students, who are at best inconsistent in their support of free speech and have very little tolerance for controversial speech they disagree with.”
He points out the big shift from a time when free speech was passionately promoted on campuses, especially by liberal-leaning students.
“Moreover, this attitude is broad-based — not just at elite schools. I was frankly surprised at how tepid student support was. A significant minority of students don’t even have much tolerance for controversial speech on positions they presumably agree with … this looks like a major generational shift from when college campuses were hotbeds of advocacy for free speech, particularly on the left.”
The survey asks students whether speakers with controversial views should be allowed to speak on campus. Here’s what they found. The “C” at the top indicates a conservative point of view and the “L,” a liberal view. Along the left are the students’ self-described political orientation.
Students overwhelmingly approved of guests with liberal views being allowed to speak at universities, but not those with very conservative views. But even so, just under half of conservative-leaning students don’t approve of people with opposing views speaking on campus.
Nate has five theories on why free speech might be losing popularity. Here they are, verbatim:
Woke ideas are popular on campus and are considerably less tolerant of free speech than traditional liberalism
Normie Democrats are turning against free speech because of concerns over misinformation
The younger generation is risk-averse in general
The United States may be reverting to the mean (meaning that as the U.S. becomes more like the rest of the world, our tolerance of speech that’s prohibited in Great Britain, Germany, and other places may decline)
The adults in the room are often hypocrites (“Republicans who rail against wokeness put significant limits of their own on academic freedom.”)
Nate’s article is worth reading in full. And while the agitation of coddled college students may seem easy to dismiss, they’re the same students who will be in white collar jobs in finance, journalism, law, and medicine in the next 10 years.
This matters.
— Ken
When the Conservative doesn't approve of the speaker he/she doesn't attend the speech.
When the Leftist (nothing "liberal" here) doesn't approve of the speaker he/she/whatever will protest and perhaps physically attack the speaker.
Free Speech has been in trouble since Trump 1st ran for office
I recall the threats etc from others on Facebook at time & My being booted off LinkedIn
Day 1 his first campaign etc to date but since on Truth Social , Gettr have No issues
But this is Online vs other deny free speech
This has 2 end or rip nation apart