BUZZ
Almost 1 in 3 students say using violence to stop a campus speech is acceptable, according to the results of a nationwide survey of college students released Wednesday.
About 63,000 students at 262 schools surveyed online by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression were asked, among other questions: “How acceptable would you say it is for students to engage in the following actions to protest a campus speaker? Using violence to stop a campus speech.”
Three percent said “always acceptable,” 12 percent said “sometimes acceptable,” and 16 percent said “rarely acceptable.” The rest, 69 percent, replied it’s never acceptable.
When the responses are broken down by political ideology, both conservative and progressive students maintained similar percentages in how they answered the question.
Last year, the annual FIRE survey found 34 percent of students said some level of violence acceptable to stop campus speech, three percentage points higher than this year’s results.
This year, 50 percent of respondents said “blocking other students from attending a campus speech” is acceptable on some level, and 69 percent said “shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus” is always, sometimes, or rarely acceptable.
“Encouragingly, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s seventh annual College Free Speech Rankings found the percentage of students who said it was acceptable to shout down a speaker, block entry to a campus speech, or use violence to stop a campus speech declined slightly from last year’s record highs,” the foundation stated in a news release.
Yet the results still prompt alarm, according to the group.
“The impact of Charlie Kirk’s assassination continues to negatively reverberate on campuses across the country,” FIRE Chief Researcher Sean Stevens said in a news release. “Rather than view the tragedy as a warning about the extreme results of partisanship and inability to peacefully engage in dialogue, many college admins took it as an invitation to double down on censorship.”
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